Early in my French-Canadian genealogical research I learned about the hardy, adventurous, pioneer woman of Canada now referred to as “Les Filles du Roi” or King’s Daughters. These woman are considered to be among the founding mothers of New France.
Depending on which list you use, roughly 700-900 of these unmarried or widowed women arrived in this French colony. They came between 1663 and 1673 from Europe with the intention of settling in Canada, marrying, and having many children to populate the young colony.
Their voyage was paid for by the King of France. They received some clothing and items to help them get their new households set up. When they married, they were awarded a dowry of 50-300 livres. Imagine the courage and determination it took to get on a wooden boat crowded with many others and endure most of the long voyage below deck in dark, dank, cramped conditions! Some did not survive the crossing. A few, chose not to marry in New France and returned to France. There is a good overview about these woman at https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/filles-du-roi.
I learned that our Vermont French-Canadian Genealogical Society (VT-FCGS) offers a special pin to those who can trace their lineage to a Filles du Roi who married a soldier of the Carignan-Salières Regiment.This regiment consisted of twenty companies totaling over 1200 soldiers and about 80 officers. They arrived on a number of ships in Quebec City in June 1665 to help protect the young colony from the Iroquois.
A third of these men stayed and settled in New France. To learn more about this pin program see: https://vt-fcgs.org/Filles_and_Soldats_Program.html.
A number of years ago, I set to work tracing my family history in hopes of finding among my ancestors a Fille du Roi who married one of these soldiers. As soon as I had identified a few of these couples I was thrilled to apply for and receive a pin from our society. I later purchased a few more as gifts for family members, given with the stories I had learned about our ancestors.
A key source, and apparently the most up-to-date list of the names of Les Filles du roi is found on the PRDH website https://www.prdh-igd.com/en/les-filles-du-roi. This list is accessible from home without a subscription to PRDH. It was researched and updated in 2014 for the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the first women in the colony under this program.
Over time I have learned the stories of the women connected to my family through Peter J. Gagne’s two-volume book set called “King’s Daughter and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi 1663-1673”. Our library has several copies of this set. One set is available to members through our lending library. The introduction to this first volume and the charts in the back of the second book are well-researched and highly informative. A short biography on each woman makes their presence in my tree even more meaningful.
I have learned about Carignan-Regiment through another book in our library. Jack Verney’s “The Good Regiment: The Carignan-Salières-Regiment in Canada 1665-1668”. The list I use the most for these soldiers is found on the webpage of “La Société des Filles du roi et soldats du Carignan” at https://fillesduroi.org/cpage.php?pt=12. The lists on this site are organized in a number of ways. Examples include members of the regiment who settled in the colony and married a Filles du roi, those who settled in the colony and married women who were not Filles du roi, and those who settled in the colony and never married. There is also information on the ships that the soldiers arrived on.
Since those early years, my research has shown that my family is descended from at least 74 of the 711 women currently designated as Filles du Roi. Because the population of the colony was so small, several descendants of one family often married descendants of another neighboring family. For example, several brothers from one family married the sisters from another. Therefore, many of us find that we are descended multiple times from a single woman. In my case, with all eight of my great-grandparents being French-Canadian, these 74 great grandmothers appear in my family tree 115 times – 53 times on my paternal lines and 62 times on my maternal side.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of learning about these women and men in my ancestry. Along the way I have learned some of the history of Canada, the birthplace and homeland of my grandfathers and that of my grandmothers’ parents.
How many Filles du Roi and soldiers of the Carignan-Salières Regiment do you descend from?
