King's Daughters

This article is about the 17th-century immigrants to New France. For the movie, see The King's Daughters.

The King's Daughters (in French: filles du roi, filles du roy) were approximately 800 Frenchwomen who immigrated to New France (now part of present-day Quebec) between 1663 and 1673 as part of a program sponsored by Louis XIV. The program was designed in the hopes of boosting New France's population both by encouraging colonists to settle down with families and stay there, as well as through the children that the women would hopefully have once they arrived in the colony and married. While women and girls certainly emigrated to New France both before and after this time period, they were not considered to be filles du roi, as the term refers to women and girls actively recruited by the King's program, and before 1663, the colony was under the control of the Company of New France rather than the King directly. They were also occasionally known as the King's Wards, where "wards" meant those under the guardianship of another.

Origins

In the mid-17th century, there was a severe imbalance between single men and women in New France. The bulk of the French population in early New France were male voyageurs, soldiers, or priests. Most female immigrants had to pay their own passage, and few single women wanted to leave their familiar places to move and settle in the harsh climate and conditions of New France. The majority of the women in the colony were indentured servants or nuns. For a long time, the French government had considered New France as an outpost rather than a colony, and was not concerned with increasing the population. The growth of population in the English colonies awakened concern among some officials. To increase population and the number of families, the Intendant of New France, Jean Talon, proposed that the King sponsor passage of at least 500 women. The King agreed, and eventually nearly twice the number were recruited. They were predominately between the ages of 12 and 25, and many had to supply a letter of reference from their parish priest before they would be chosen for emigration to New France.

Over the years, there have been several attempts made at defining who and what the Filles du Roi were. Marguerite Bourgeoys was the first person to use the expression in her writings , but having a clear definition was deemed important in order to distinguish the women brought here on the King’s dime and given a dowry from those who came here of their own volition and using their own money. Other historians used chronological frameworks to determine who could be called a Fille du Roi. Most historians agree on the fact that about 770 to 850 Filles du Roi established themselves in New France between 1663 and 1673.

The title "King's Daughters" was meant to imply state patronage, not royal or even noble parentage. Most of these women were commoners of humble birth. The Filles du Roi received the King’s support in different manners. The King started by paying one hundred pounds to the East Indies Company for the woman’s crossing, as well as furnishing them with a trousseau. He also paid their dowry, which was originally supposed to be four hundred pounds, but as the Treasury could not spare such an expense, many were actually paid in kind. As was the case for most immigrants who came from France to New France, 80% of the Filles du Roi were from the Paris, Normandy and Western regions. The Hopital-Général de Paris and the St-Sulpice parish were big contributors of women for the new colony. As such, most of the Filles du roi were from urban areas. A few women came from other European countries, including Germany, England, and Portugal. Those who were chosen to be among the filles du roi and allowed to emigrate to New France were held to scrupulous standards, which centred around their "moral calibre" and whether they were physically fit enough to survive the hard work demanded by life as a colonist. In fact, several of the filles du roi were sent back to France because they were judged not to satisfy the standards set out by the King and the intendant of New France.

Socially, the young women came from very different social backgrounds, but were all very poor. They might have been from a good, reputable family that had lost its fortune, or from a large family with children to spare. Those women of higher birth were usually matched with officers or gentlemen living in the colony, sometimes in the hopes that they would marry nobles living in Canada and thereby encourage the nobles to stay in the colony rather than return to France after spending a short period of time abroad.

Integration into New France society

The women disembarked in Quebec City, Trois-Rivières, and Montreal. When the women arrived in New France, the amount of time it took them to find husbands varied greatly. For some, it was as short as a few months, while others took two or three years before finding an appropriate husband. When it came to choosing a husband, and the actual marriage, most couples would officially get engaged in church, with their priest and witnesses present. Then, some couples went in front of the notary, to sign a marriage contract. Marriages were then celebrated by the priest, usually in the woman’s parish of residence. While the marriage banns usually had to be published three times before the wedding could take place, the colony’s need for women to marry quickly led to very few Filles du roi actually having marriage banns announced. We know that 737 of these Filles du roi were married in New France.

The marriage contracts represented a protection for the women, both in terms of financial security if anything were to happen to them or their husband, and in terms of having the liberty to annul the promise of marriage if the man they had chosen proved incompatible. It would seem this habit of cancelling a marriage contract was particularly strong in the Filles du roi who arrived in New France between 1669 and 1671, as the dowry they had received had probably led to some competition between suitors.

An early problem in recruitment was the women's adjustment to the new agricultural life. As Marie de L'Incarnation wrote, the filles du roi were mostly town girls, and only a few knew how to do manual farm work. This problem remained, but in later years, more rural girls were recruited.

There were approximately 300 more recruits who did not marry in New France. Some had changes of heart before embarking from the ports of Normandy, some died during the journey, some returned to France to marry, and a few never did marry.

Integration of the King's daughters in Ville-Marie

Before 1663, all the women who’d immigrated to Fort Ville-Marie, now which becameMontreal, had been recruited by the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal founded by Jean-Jacques Olier and Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière in 1641 in Paris. Amongst these women were Jeanne Mance (who became part of the Association in 1641) and Marguerite Bourgeoys (who became part in 1659) This association led to the foundation of what Monsieur de la Dauversière already called Ville-Marie.

Only between 1663 and 1673, did the King's daughters begin to arrive in Quebec City. There they were welcomed by Madame Bourdon (Anne Gasnier) who lodged them in a house which the intendant Talon had constructed.

They would only arrive at Ville-Marie during the summer of 1663 and 1664 and there they were taken in by Marguerite Bourgeoys . In Ville-Marie they weren’t welcomed with the same comfortable lodgings as in Quebec. It was only in 1668 there appeared to be somewhere proper to host the women; Maison Saint-Gabriel that Marguerite Bourgeoys constructed out of a farm.

With the help of the women already there, they acquired the skills in order to adapt to the harsh climate of Ville-Marie and to thus eventually become the wife of a coloniser. They had be married off quickly as it was the law that if the men hadn’t married a girl fifteen days after their ship had docked, their fishing and hunting rights would be revoked. Additionally, the men were recompensed if they were married to a king's daughter; 50 pounds for any solider or coloniser and 100 pounds for any officer, civil servant or any man of status.

Out of all the girls who are said to have arrived in New France between 1663 and 1673, it is unsure how many of them went to Ville-Marie. There are lists of names of the founding families that can be found in the Archives of Montreal and Quebec, but they are considered to be incomplete and uncertain.

Notable descendants of the King's daughters

• Hall of Fame hockey player Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion was a direct descendant of Marie Priault, a King's daughter who married Pierre Joffrion, a farmer and former grenadier from the Carignan-Salières Regiment shortly after her arrival in 1669.
• One of the descendents of Catherine Guichelin became a founding father of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's capital. Louis Coutlée descended from one of Catherine's illegitimate children (Marie Vacher). He was the first sheriff of Ottawa (after serving in the lower Canadian Militia during the Anglo-American War of 1812 with his father.)
• Coutlee's son, Dominique-Amable Coutlee, served as a member of Parliament in Canada.

Rumours and legends

Because the ships bearing the filles du roi arrived at Quebec first before proceeding to Trois-Rivières and Montreal, the men of Quebec had the first choice. This is still cited as the reason Quebec City women are (allegedly) better-looking than their upstream sisters. However, some sources contend that the girls were chosen primarily not for attractiveness, but rather for their apparent hardiness and capacity to bear children.

The idea that the filles du roi were prostitutes has been an insidious rumor ever since the inception of the program in the 17th century. It seems to have arisen from a couple of misconceptions, both contemporary and modern, about immigration to French colonies in the New World. The first of these, which took root long before the first fille du roi emigrated, was that Canada was a penal colony. While there were two campaigns in the mid-16th century that involved the immigration of French criminals to Canada in exchange for their record being expunged, they were both short-lived, and resulted in little more than establishing a precedent for viewing Canada as a place where those "of questionable morality" could be sent for one reason or another. In addition, there was a small contingent of prostitutes and female criminals permitted to emigrate to the French West Indies and Louisiana in the 17th century, a fact that was often generalized to be true of all French colonies in the New World. The popularization of the idea that the filles du roi in particular were prostitutes can be traced to an account by Baron La Hontan of his time in New France, although there were several sources predating La Hontan making the same contention, including Saint-Amant, Tallement des Réaux, and Paul LeJeune. In La Hontan's account, he refers to the filles du roi as being "of middling virtue", and that they had emigrated in the hopes of religious absolution. However, his description was rejected as early as 1738 by Claude Le Beau and 1744 by Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix in their respective accounts of their journeys to New France.

According to the author Peter Gagné, there is no record of any of the Caribbean women having gone to Canada. Out of nearly 800 filles du roi, only one, Catherine Guichelin, was charged with prostitution while living in Canada. She appeared before the Sovereign Council of New France under the charge of carrying out "a scandalous life and prostitution" on 19 August 1675. Her two children were 'adopted' by friends, and she was banished from Quebec City. She was reported to have turned to prostitution after her husband, Nichols Buteau, abandoned the family and returned to France. She later gave birth to many children out of wedlock. Guichelin had at least two marriage contracts cancelled. She also wed twice more after returning to Sorel, Quebec, then Montreal, Quebec.

See also

• Baleine Brides, French women who immigrated to Louisiana in 1721

Sources

Further reading

• King's Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663-1673, Peter J. Gagné, 2 volumes, Quintin, 2000)
• Les Filles du roi au xvii'ème siècle, Yves Landry (Leméac, 1992)
• King's Daughters, The, Joy Reisinger and Elmer Courteau (Sparta, 1988)
• Alone in an Untamed Land: The Filles du Roi Diary of Hélène St.Onge, Maxine Trottier (fiction)

External links

• La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan: Organization for the descendants of the Daughters
• A list of the Daughters and their husbands, Andre Therriault
• "Filles du Roi", Morning Sentinel & Kennebec Daily Journal
• The documentary, The Scattering of Seeds: the Creation of Canada
• Filles du roi
• Fille du roi Catherine de Baillon was a descendant of Charlemagne