Lindsey Palka last wrote for The Toast about What Katy Did.
Today we forget how hard it was to leave home in the past. We can video chat our loved ones on the other side of the world, text them our every thought within a second, fly (in an emergency) to visit them in a day. Would you leave home if it meant you would probably never return? That you would almost certainly never see your loved ones again and only exchange letters once or twice a year? Hundreds of young French women made that trip and exchanged their existing lives for an adventure that would last their whole lives.
Known in French as the “Filles du Roi” or in English as the “King’s Daughters,” just under eight hundred young women, most of whom were between 15 and 25, were sponsored by the king to marry in New France between 1665 and 1675 to help settle the area. Not to be confused with the king’s actual daughters (three daughters by his queen and six or more illegitimate girls), they were given the name to demonstrate that they were his wards and it was their job to create this new society. Many were orphans, some were from upper-class but destitute families, but all shared a ready sense of adventure and a lack of other options.
Now imagine very seriously for a moment that you are about to embark on the biggest adventure of your life. That you are lying in bed—probably unable to sleep—and that tomorrow you will board a wooden ship and sail what could be six weeks or could be three months. You will sleep in a narrow, hard bunk that you may share with another young woman you do not know. You will have no fresh food or fresh water. The ship may capsize. Fever might break out. Someone, or quite possibly several people, will probably die. Once you make it to Canada, there are no cities to greet you. And when you get there you will marry someone you have never met and start a new life.
And once you get there, the life will not be anything like the life you have known. Every task we take for granted today is a major physical job—cooking three meals a day from scratch, using vegetables you’ve grown and preserved yourself, and meat you’ve raised and slaughtered yourself, using an open fire in a hearth. Spinning your own thread and weaving your own cloth, if you raise sheep, but certainly making all of your own clothes, and those of your husband and children. Washing the clothes and linens in an iron kettle over an open fire, using soap you’ve made yourself, and mending them after they inevitably begin to wear out. Keeping your house clean from the ever-present soot and dirt and ash, washing your dishes in a basin and scouring them with sand, sweeping with a broom made of tree boughs.
If you live on a farm you will take part in the farm labour as well—not only looking after chickens and milking cows, but actively helping with the planting, the harvest, and millions of other tasks a farm demands. All of this will take place in the sweltering heat of summer without air-conditioning and the numbing cold of winter in an uninsulated house with no central heat. And if all goes according to plan, you will do all of this while pregnant, breastfeeding, and looking after small children, until you enter menopause, at which point you will do all of the above work but at least you will not be pregnant.
And you will have very few neighbours, for New France in the 1660s was still quite a lonely place. Although Jacques Cartier had claimed the Gaspe peninsula for France in 1534 (ninety years before the Pilgrims would appear, shivering, on the Massachusetts shore), the colony lacked direction. Fishermen who didn’t mind deprivation spent summers there before returning to Europe, and when the wealth of fur was discovered, trappers began to flock to the woods. For the next several decades, New France attracted young single men in search of money, adventure, and danger, though not necessarily in that order. By the time Quebec City was established in 1608, there were barely two dozen permanent white residents of New France. Few families were willing to stay permanently in a distant wilderness replete with dangerous wild animals, very few other white people, and terribly harsh winters. Thirty years later the population was still only 355–partially due to the poor conditions, and partially to poor mismanagement by the fur trading companies. Relations with the local Iroquois and Algonquin groups were constantly tense and did not make it any easier to attract families to the area.
New France had a wealth of resources, but by the 1650s it was verging on becoming a failed colony. There were a few hundred colonists, but they were mostly young, single men and a smattering of families. Married couples and families in France were unwilling to uproot themselves to a dangerous land, and there were vanishingly few young women with the means and desire to pay their own way to Quebec. In order to build a stable population, you must have families; and in order to have families, you must have childbearing women.
There were women in New France already, of course. Native women very occasionally married a white explorer, but it was not a common or popular choice among both groups. Mixed-race children were not unknown in the area, but for the vast majority of white explorers, a white wife was non-negotiable. White women had been in Quebec since 1639, with the creation of the Ursuline Convent. The nuns were expected to provide a moral and stabilizing force to the Catholic colony and to teach young Native girls English, therefore allowing them to become intermediaries between the two populations. However, since neither nuns nor Native women were viable marriage options for the vast majority of French men, the major issue remained.
Jean Talon was named Intendant of New France—a sort of head honcho representative for the French government—in 1665, and his solution was simple: Import women with no other options. It is families that settle colonies, not single adventurers, and Talon knew that to go much longer with such an unstable population may doom the whole enterprise. Imagine New France as a rowdy frat full of wild young men, and Jean Talon as their slightly anxious parent who keeps telling them “Don’t you think it’s time you found a nice girl and settled down?” And expediting that process by arranging for almost eight hundred “nice girls” to show up at the doorstep.
The king thought the idea nothing short of genius, and arranged to pay for the passage of the women, along with a dowry consisting of money, some clothing, and a few household items like one hundred needles and a thousand pins. (Sewing needles and pins were invaluable items–used daily, easy to lose in a room lit by firelight or candlelight, and nearly impossible to make a homemade replacement for.) The women were selected to be hard-working, devoutly Catholic, good-natured, and above all, willing to go.
The most amazing thing was that it worked. Although the filles du roi were overwhelmingly poor, and many orphans, none were forced to make the trip. Many were from farming backgrounds, and girls raised in French orphanages at the time would have been expected to have learned all necessary household skills and to do them well. Three-quarters of the women married within a month of their arrival, and most of the remaining quarter did not wait much longer. Several couples realized after their first dizzy meetings that their partnership may not have been the best idea, and broken-off engagements were not unusual nor looked down on. A very few women returned to France with their new husbands, but the vast majority married and began large families, just as the king had intended. The population began to swell as most filles du roi had at least six children, and seven to nine was more common. Ten was not unheard of. Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, the head of the Ursuline convent that had been a temporary home to most filles du roi before their marriages, declared: “It is surprising how very many exceptionally good-looking children are born every year.” In later years, children born to these families were described by a later Intendant as “tall, well-made, and strikingly handsome.”
Many attribute Quebec’s unique set of circumstances, including its exceptionally high fertility rate well into the twentieth century, directly to the role of the filles du roi. By deliberately choosing women who would be hard-working and strictly Catholic, and encouraging them with state support to bear large families, the French crown created a culture that valued these qualities in its families. Quebec’s history has been irreversibly shaped by these women–young women who chose a life they knew would not be easy and that would take them away from everything they knew. How many of us could make a trip where the stakes were so high and stay there forever? How many of us would want to?
Tags: canada, history, lindsey palka, something something canada, travel
Related Posts
Very interesting! Are there any books about this you could recommend?
Bonus points if written in first-person for a YA audience, Dear America/Royal Diaries style (were there Dear Canada versions of these? There had to be…)
Yes! There is a Dear Canada series, which is excellent, and the one about the filles du roi is called Alone in an Untamed Land. http://www.amazon.ca/Dear-Canada-Untamed-Filles-H…
Since we’re talking about the Dear Canada series I need to plug my childhood favourite: Brothers Far from Home. That book made me cry like no other.
I LOVE the Dear Canada books (love, in the present tense), and that one is amazing. As is the Halifax Explosion one, No Safe Harbour, which also made me cry horribly. Also excellent is the Home Child diary and the War Guests one, and the polio epidemic one.
Hello! There are not a lot of books specifically on the filles du roi–usually they wind up as a chapter in a textbook on French settlement of Quebec–and much of the research on them is about ancestry and genealogy. I would actually suggest looking into some more general “settlement of New France” books for a starting place that’s not too focused on the genealogy thing. Try “A People’s History of Quebec” for one not too focused on politics!
Thanks! This post combined with news coverage of the elections has clued me in to the fact that I know embarrassingly little about Quebec – time to fix that!
I am totally intrigued now and searched my library catalog for stuff and found this:
Bride of New France
Obviously not a scholastic account but maybe an interesting read?
I actually read that after seeing it advertised on an ad on the Toronto subway and was not favourably impressed. But it is entertainingly trashy!
“Entertainingly trashy” is all I ask of my historical fiction.
“Entertainingly trashy”? SOLD
It’s not specifically about the Filles du Roi, but I need to put in a plug for Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather. Yes, the same Willa Cather who wrote evocative contemporary (for her) novels about farming in Nebraska also tackled coming of age in 17th century Quebec. Because why not.
I recently read The Bride of New France by Suzanne Desrochers (picked up in the Montreal airport), and I rather enjoyed it!
There’s a novel by Clare Clark called ‘Savage Lands’, which is on a similar subject: it follows the women sent to the French colony in Louisiana in the early 1700s. I wonder if it worked so well in Quebec they decided to try it again? The challenges must have been different (heat and swamp, not cold) but the bravery the same.
Anyway, I remember the writing style irritating me a bit, but the subject was fascinating.
“Jeanne, fille du Roy” (“The King’s Daughter” in English) by Suzanne Martel is a historical YA novel about a French orphan called Jeanne who becomes a fille du Roi. We read it for school last year, it was pretty good. I’m not sure it’s 100% historically accurate but it’s a great insight into early New France nevertheless 🙂
Also, just to offer a slight correction, one reason French Canadian families had so many kids was the church. Well into the 20th century the priests would actually confront couples if they hadn’t popped out a kid in the past year, and people were taught that it was their duty as hardworking French Canadian Roman Catholics to have a large family. My grandmother grew up in a family of 13! People don’t have as many kids today, but it’s still not totally uncommon to see families with 4 or 5 kids, and the Roman Catholic church still has a sort of monopoly on Franco-Ontarian society, at least in the north.
This is AMAZING. SO GOOD SO GOOD.
Several points to start us off:
TEN KIDS YE GODS. That is so many babies to birth in the wilds of Quebec–any ideas what the maternal and/or infant mortality rates were like? Or were they just selecting/self-selecting tough-ass ladies who scoffed at the idea of dying in childbirth because they’ve got shit to do and kids to raise?
I really love the idea of pins and needles as part of the dowry. Never would’ve even considered it but WHAT A GOOD IDEA. I’m imagining what a modern-day equivalent would be (dead useful, easy to lose, almost impossible to replace on your own)–probably phone chargers.
I’m not super familiar off the top of my head with mortality rates, though I think I can safely assume they fall into standard premodern data, which is usually VERY ROUGHLY estimated as one out of three children not living past age five, and one out of every eight women dying in childbirth over the course of her lifetime. (The usual death-in-childbirth rate is approximately 1 in every 100, barring complications, but if a woman gives birth 5-12 times over her life, is where the 1-in-8 number is coming from.)
Also, there is a famous song in 1776 where Abigail Adams informs John Adams (I think) about the importance of PINS.
UGH I LOVE THAT SONG.
I LOVE THAT SONG. I love that she’s negotiating saltpeter (I’m misspelling that, I think) with him and pins and she’s twirling in a goddamned orchard or something singing about not sending him his explosive materials until he sends her pins.
ABIGAIL, WHAT IS IN THESE KEGS??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oogv7qah3ik
tbh the description of the families sounded a lot like the poor catholic neighborhood my dad grew up in, number of children included.
Pins and needles should totally be a part of one’s wedding gifts to this day. Way more useful than only-used-on-holidays china.
Yeah, fuck that china. I flatly refused every offer of “Oh, should we get you nice china?” for wedding gifts. (I also refused a bridal shower or to do a registry.) If you insist on giving me – an adult woman who already has her apartment furnished – anything upon the occasion of my marriage, let’s do it with cash, hmm?
It looks like 10% of children died before their first birthday, 10% more died between the 1st and 5th, and another five percent died before turing 23.
I looked this up earlier this week because ANNE SHIRLEY, why did you leave Green Gables when there was good evidence staying with Marilla would be advantageous for your children? It’s the best evidence for the grandmother hypothesis being a thing that there is!
Of course, the author doesn’t mention the filles du roi, and thus the likelihood that a big chunk of the women who didn’t have their mom there were new mothers in a new colony, just beginning to hack farms out of the wilderness. I can see how that might increase child mortality a smidge.
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&i…
Also I’m picturing the pick-your-mate free-for-all when everybody got off the boat–kind of a primitive combo version of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette.
Before you wrote “Bachelor/Bachelorette” I was imagining the pick-your-mate free-for-all as more of a red-rover type game. The men all lined up and squashed into a crowd at the harbor, then the women started coming off the boat and there were scramblings and tussles and then you walked away victorious with your new wife held high.
Wait, that’s NOT how reality TV dating shows work?
That’s about what happened in Australia when the first boatload of female convicts landed except, erm, more so. Much more so. As in, bystanders needed brainbleach.
My brother and I were just discussing the Fille du Roi a few weeks ago, in the context of a modern “dating site” plan to ship single women into San Francisco. I vividly remember reading about them in Grade 8 Social Studies and being really disappointed that our textbook only had a few sentences on them, since it seems like a fascinating story.
Is San Francisco short on single ladies?
Apparently!
Yes but does this service ship you there with your own supply of pins and clothing? If not, NO DICE.
I may or may not have just re-opened my okcupid account to investigate this whole “too many single men in certain states” thing, and I have to say if I were single I might be heading to Wyoming right now.
Love reading about my great great grandmeres. Why is there a statue of my great great(don’t recall how many) grandfather in Montreal, when it looks like all the grandmothers were far more responsible for the colony’s success? Ten babies!!! Just asking…
We need some sort of sparkly “PATRIARCHY” .gif to use for just this sort of situation.
edit: changed to something less flashing and more actually what you wanted:
Yay – I am descended from one or some fille(s) du roi! I got my aunt some books about it for Christmas a few years ago since she is the one that traced our genealogy back that far. They were definitely genealogy books though, not much on the history of the subject.
fascinating!
And it rhymes with the 200 “filles de joie” [convicted prostitutes] who were non-voluntarily deported to the French territories in Louisiana.
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/fiahtml/fiath…
I hate to say it, as Irish/English-Canadian Ontario farmer stock already, but I would not have wanted to come here as a Filles de Roi. Hell to the no.
Makes you think about what their lives were like in France to make this seem like a viable option…
I always get so intensely excited when Americans learn about Canadian things, and moreover, find them interesting!
America and Canada are like step-siblings or something. So similar in so many ways – part of the same family and all – but grew up in different houses, only spending weekends together and sometimes summers and other holidays, and have views of the world that reflect this.
I sometimes think about the simultaneous but very different histories of Florida and the Southwest/former northern Mexico like this, too. But more in terms of parents divorcing and splitting the kids up.
This is fascinating! I had no idea this was ever a thing.
I believe the Dutch tried something similar, sending poor girls to their colony of Batavia (now Jakarta), for much the same reasons. Didn’t work, tho. White people sent out to that neck of the woods at that time pretty much mostly just up and died.
As a Québecoise by marriage and a women’s history buff, I could hardly love this more. If you need a data point about that “exceptionally high fertility rate well into the 20th century,” I offer my husband, born in 1957, oldest of 9 kids.
This was one of my favourite Canadian history things growing up and it was always super sad that it didn’t get much coverage in our textbooks.
The conditions for this (ladies needed for functioning society) are basically the same as A Town Like Alice, except instead of importing women, the main character just starts building ice cream parlors and beauty salons and a shoe factory that employs young women, so they stay in their dusty little Australian town and everything becomes great because women. It occupies some strange feminist territory: no-nonsense English secretary sort, not highly educated or cultured or particularly “strong-minded,” she just Gets Stuff Done.
This was fascinating!
Since we're talking about the Dear Canada series I need to plug my childhood favourite: Brothers Far from Home. That book made me cry like no other.
They did this in New Orleans too! Under the name fille a la cassette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casquette_girl
They did this in New Orleans too! Under the name fille a la cassette http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casquette_girl
That does make sense! I hadn't thought of the scarcity of supplies to make bricks, though I did consider that there's no way they'd have had iron pot-bellied stoves back then, so the more modern types (19th century) wouldn't have been available to them. I think a lot of the Alsatian units were combinations of tile, brick, and some kind of cement-like mixture, and of course the Chinese ones are traditionally mud brick.
I really honestly don't have a good understanding of cold or how to deal with it, too, so that limits things a bit. 🙂
This sounds much more positive than the Anglo-Indian “Fishing fleet” of unmarriageable daughters.
I read about the Filles du Roi as a school kid. I always thought those women must have had the hardest life I could imagine. Just coming over on the ship, and getting here was an event. Then, married and expected to “start a family” with some guy who was likely dirty, coarse and not likely too pleasant. It would be many generations before women had any rights, could own property or even be considered as anything much above a farm animal.