This unusual peopling of a colony means most people with Canadian ancestry reaching back to Quebec in the 17th and 18th centuries descend from a king’s daughter.
Why the King’s Daughters Were Needed
Early inhabitants of Quebec, founded in 1608, were soldiers, fur trappers, privileged landowners and members of religious orders. Some married Indian women.
A few women paid their own way to Quebec by fulfilling a contract of indenture to their sponsor.
By the early 1660s French authorities felt a need to encourage permanent settlement in New France; that meant families. The king directed recruitment of young women of quality.
The first recruits were desmoiselles, girls with good background and some education, suited for military officers and men of property. Most were city girls from Paris and nearby.
Soon, Jean Talon, the king’s man in the colony, requested “strong, intelligent and beautiful girls of robust health, habituated to farm work.” The bachelors wanted strong partners to shoulder the work. Consequentially, girls from the Normandy and Ile-de-France farm country were selected.
The Working Formula
How this process worked is why it worked. A selected girl was given a dowry by the king--50 livres if she wed a habitant or soldier and 100 livres if she married an officer. It was good money and why the process worked.
Each girl was also given 10 livres for personal and moving expenses, 30 for clothing and 60 for the passage. She was provided a small hope chest, head dress, taffeta handkerchief, pair of shoe ribbons, 100 sewing needles, a comb, spool of white thread, a pair of stockings and of gloves, scissors, two knives, 1,000 pins, a bonnet, four lace braids and two livres in silver money.
At Quebec they were given clothing suitable to the climate and provisions from the king’s warehouse.
Men eagerly awaited each shipment of filles du roi. Women could pick and choose and often did several times over. Once married, the couple received 50 livres for provisions, an ox, cow, two pigs and two chickens, two barrels of salt meat and 11 crowns in money.
Hillary’s King’s Daughters
Hilary Clinton descends from three king’s daughters: Catharine Paulo (m. Etienne Campeau), Madeleine Plouard/Polet/Plouart (m. Jacques Viau) and Madeleine Niel (m. Etienne Charles.)
Genealogists know the most about Madeleine Niel. Etienne, her husband, came to Quebec in 1665 with the famed Carignan Regiment. Its mission was to repel Iroquois Indians who raided settlements and killed inhabitants.
This couple settled at Boucherville near Montreal and raised 12 children. They survived devastating Indian raids on their village and lived into their 80s. Etienne and Madeleine left 111 grandchildren. In addition to Hillary Clinton, one famed descendant is Emma Lajeunesse, better known as opera singer Albani, who sang at Queen Victoria’s funeral.
Etienne and Madeleine’s daughter Helene married Michele Viau. His mother, Madeleine Plouart, was also a King’s daughter.
Hillary descends from the Viau couple’s daughter Marguerite, who married Jaques Pilet (1703-1765), settler at Detroit, then in Canada and now in the United States.
When 852 King’s daughters arrived at Quebec they were 17% of the total population, then less than 5,000. They are mothers of millions of descendants in Canada, the U.S. and other locations.
See companion articles on Hillary’s overall ancestry, her French ancestry and her shared ancestry with other celebrities.
SOURCES: Laforest, Thomas, Our French-Canadian Ancestors, Vols. 1, 3 and 4 (1983, 1985, 1986: Palm Harbor, FL); William Addams Reitwiesner, genealogist specializing in celebrity lineages.
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