History

Louis Hebert seeding his land.

The First Immigrants

The founding of Quebec, in 1608, attracted a small number of families, including those of Louis Hebert and Abraham Martin. Both are our ancestors. Many wives were hired along with their husbands and they worked as servants until they became self-sufficient. Except for the filles du roy, few single women, widowed or unmarried, came to live in the colonies.

Until the middle of the 1600's, three-quarters of the emigrants are men. Their trades are useful to the progress of the colony. They are surveyors, wood-cutters, ploughers, carpenters, cabinet makers, masons, wheelwrights, blacksmiths... The colony relies on them to clear and till the land and build the first houses.

The King's Daughters

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. Most were single French women and many were orphans. Their transportation to Canada and settlement in the colony were paid for by the King. Some were given a royal gift of a dowry of 50 livres for their marriage to one of the many unmarried male colonists in Canada. These gifts are reflected in some of the marriage contracts entered into by the filles du roi at the time of their first marriages.

The filles du roi 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.

We descend from 95 King's Daughters.
About half & half on both Madore & Presse lines.

Large Families

As the flow of migration toward New France was very low, land development and occupation of new lands relied on the birth rate. Until 1673, when Louis XIV tightens the budgets he reserved for populating New France in order to concentrate on European wars, measures designed to encourage early marriage and population growth were applied. Young men who married at 20 years or younger and girls who married at 16 years or younger each received 20 pounds on their wedding day.

A yearly pension of 300 pounds was given to families of ten living children and 400 pounds to families of twelve or more children. Finally, some community duties - church warden or militia captain, were as much as possible given to fathers of large families.

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The king's daughters arriving
We descend from 95 King's Daughters.

Montreal in 1642