Filles du Roi
Les Filles Du Roi- “Daughters of the King”
The information contained in this Posting was sourced from numerous websites (all noted below) and is presented here to facilitate our genealogical research. All rights belong to the original authors. This is being used under the laws of ‘fair use’.
Wikipedia has an article on the subject of the Daughter’s of the King (Les Filles du Roi) as well.
The filles du roi, or King’s Daughters, were some 770 women who arrived in the colony of New France (Canada) between 1663 and 1673, under the financial sponsorship of King Louis XIV of France. They were part of King Louis XIV’s program to promote the settlement of his colony in Canada. Some 737 of these women married and the resultant population explosion gave rise to the success of the colony. Most of the millions of people of French Canadian descent today, both in Quebec and the rest of Canada and the USA (and beyond!), are descendants of one or more of these courageous women of the 17th century.
Anne Cloutier
Anne was born on January 19, 1626, in St. Jean De Mortagne, Perche France. She was just eight years old when they arrived in Quebec and her father was always stirred up about something; constantly feuding with Robert Giffard. Despite that, the family did quite well.
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Marie-Francoise Hebert
Marie-Francoise Hebert was born on January 27, 1638, in the small Quebec settlement; the daughter of Guillaume Hebert and Helene Desportes. Her paternal grandparents were none other than Louis Ganton Hebert and Marie Rollet, and though Louis only lived for a short time at the French Trading Post, Marie kept the family together through epidemics, war and even British occupation. More
Marguerite Langlois
Marguerite Genevieve Langlois was born about 1602 in St. Xiste, Montpelliers, France; one of four children to Guillaume Langlois and Jeanne Millette.
In 1619, Henri De Montmorency II and Samuel Champlain were recruiting workers for New France, and preference was given to young men with families. At the time, many French people were becoming disillusioned with the way things were at home, in the aftermath of the costly Religious Wars. Unemployment was high and the cost of living even higher, so when her brother-in-law, Pierre Desportes, a director in the Company of 100 Associates, announced that he would be going to the New World, the seventeen year old Marguerite and her nineteen year old sister, Marie; decided to go with them. More
Jean Nicolet
Jean Nicolet was a well known Coureur Des Bois, who first arrived in Kebec in 1618, settling amoung the Algonquins in Upper Ottawa, and the Nipissing on Allumette Island; learning their language and customs. While on the island, he married a local woman and they had a daughter Euphrosine Marguerite, born in 1630. At the age of 13, she would marry Jean Leblanc, but spent most of her life on the first “Indian Reservation’ in Canada at Sillery, where she died on September 30, 1689. More
Marie Crevet
Marie Crevet was born in 1621 at Benouville, Bayeux, Normandy, France; the daughter of Pierre Crevet and Marie Le Mercier. At the age of 15, she signed a marriage contract to become one of the Filles à Marier or “marriageable girls”; the first single women to set foot in New France since its return from the English in 1632. More