The King’s Daughters or Filles du Roi were somewhere between 700 and 800 French women who were sent to the French colonies in eastern Canada in the decade between 1663 and 1673 to try and encourage colonial migration to what was then termed Nouvelle France (New France). The population of New France lagged well behind the kind of settlement which was being seen in the English colonies to the south in what would become the East Coast of the United States of America and the move was designed to promote French settlement and population growth in the colonies. The women in question were called the King’s Daughters or King’s Wards in recognition that they went to Canada under royal patronage. Although the project failed to produce extensive settlement in New France, the women in question created family lines which have become prominent in North America and millions of French Canadians are descended in one form of another from these women.[1]
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The King's Daughters chronology of eventsThe King's Daughters chronology of events
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The French had begun colonizing the regions around Quebec, Acadie and Newfoundland in eastern Canada, what they termed New France, in the first years of the seventeenth century. Progress was slow here. This was not uncommon for burgeoning European colonies. The English colony at Jamestown in Virginia, for instance, was nearly wiped out twice up to 1622 and it was often difficult to draw settlers to North America from Europe. This was especially the case with women. While hardened younger sons who did not expect to inherit any land back in England or France were willing to risk everything to find their fortune in a strange land across the sea, far fewer women were attracted to migrating to the Americas. New France, with its cold environment, was especially susceptible to this issue and by 1660, over half a century after the first colonies had been established in New France, the French colonial community had barely exceeded 3,000. This was the context in which the project to send the King’s Daughters to North America from France was conceived.[2]
The project was simple. On the recommendation of the first Intendant or Governor of New France, Jean Talon, and with the support of the chief minister of France, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, King Louis XIV of France was convinced to provide royal financing and sponsorship for the sending of young, unmarried women from France to New France. Once there they would be encouraged to marry and start families that would grow the colonial community beyond its limited base. A significant amount of financing was provided to both the women and the French East India Company who managed the scheme on the government’s behalf in order to ensure that sufficient women could be convinced to undertake such a life-altering voyage. The scheme was in operation for just over ten years between 1663 and 1673.[3]
Extent of migration of the King's DaughtersExtent of migration of the King's Daughters
The exact number of women who were sent to New France under the scheme is unclear. One definitive study by the Programme du Recherche en Démographie Historique places the figure at 711 identifiable women, but several dozen unidentified women were also probably involved, bringing the figure up closer to 800.[4] The peak of the scheme came between 1667 and 1671, with over 620 arriving during these five years. The women primarily arrived to Quebec, the heart of New France, though a small number were sent to Trois-Rivieres or Montreal. Most of them married within a few months or two to three years and by the 1690s they had given birth to several thousand children.[5]
Demographic impact of the King's DaughtersDemographic impact of the King's Daughters
On the one hand, the project of the King’s Daughters did have the desired impact. It led to an immediate increase in the population of New France, which grew from around 3,000 colonists in 1663, when the project was initiated, to around 16,000 colonists by 1700, by which time most of the women had married and produced children. However, it failed to inspire the kind of mass migration to North America from France which Louis XIV and his ministers had hoped might ensue Thus, the colonial population of New France in 1750, which by then included Louisiana and the growing town of New Orleans, was only around 70,000,[6] while there were, by way of contrast, somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 million people living in England’s Thirteen Colonies.[7]
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This surely meant that the scheme did not live up to the expectations the planners had of it. But this aside, the project of sending the King’s Daughters to New France has had a truly enormous impact on the heritage of North America since then. Studies estimate that approximately two out of every three people of French Canadian ancestry in Canada and the United States are descended to one degree or another from the King’s Daughters. This means approximately four and a half million people in Canada and the United States are the descendants of the nearly 800 women sent to New France between 1663 and 1673. Thus, the King’s Daughters in turn became the mothers of Canada.[8]
Because we know the identity of the women, it is also possible to trace their influence by examining the surname landscape in Canada today. For instance, two of the women had Bouchard as a surname, while a third, Anne Roy, married a Nicolas Bouchard. Bouchard is the fifth most common surname in Quebec today and is also a widely found Canadian surname. Two of the women had Gauthier as a surname, while four of the King’s Daughters married men with Gauthier as their surname. Little surprise then that Gauthier is the sixth most common surname in Quebec today. The most striking element though is that seven of the women had Roy, meaning ‘King’, as their surname and seven others married men with Roy as their surname. Roy is the third most popular surname in modern-day Quebec. The influence of the King’s Daughters is everywhere to be seen and heard in Canada today.[9]
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See alsoSee also
Explore more about the King's DaughtersExplore more about the King's Daughters
- Canada, People of Quebec records collection on MyHeritage
- Canada Newspapers, 1752-2007 records collection on MyHeritage
- Canada Burials, 1800-2019 records collection on MyHeritage
- 1851 Canada Census records collection on MyHeritage
- Canada, Nova Scotia Parish Baptisms, 1748-1930 records collection on MyHeritage
- Canada, Quebec, Marriages records collection on MyHeritage
- Canada, Quebec, Catholic Parish Burials records collection on MyHeritage
- How to Find Birth, Marriage and Death Registrations in Canada at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Hidden Quebec Records on FamilySearch at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Quebec Civil and Parish Registers at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Quebec Census Records at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
References
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/filles-du-roi
- ↑ Cornelius J. Jaenen, ‘Problems of Assimilation in New France, 1603–1645’, in French Historical Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Spring, 1966), pp. 265–289.
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/filles-du-roi
- ↑ https://www.prdh-igd.com/en/les-filles-du-roi
- ↑ Peter Gagné, King’s Daughters and Founding Mothers: The Filles du Roi, 1663–1673 (2 volumes, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, 2001).
- ↑ https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/peuplement-de-la-nouvelle-france
- ↑ https://web.viu.ca/davies/H320/population.colonies.htm
- ↑ https://www.cbc.ca/2017/canadathestoryofus/most-french-canadians-are-descended-from-these-800-women-1.4029699
- ↑ https://www.prdh-igd.com/en/les-filles-du-roi; https://statistique.quebec.ca/en/produit/tableau/the-first-1000-family-names-by-rank-quebec