Subject: [COULOMBE-L] Fw: Les Filles du Roi

There has been quite a discussion on this list regarding "Les Filles due
Roi" after some user made the fatal mistake of telling someone that these
women were prostitutes recruited by the King... Thought some of you might
like to read this post.

For the newbies; we are descended from one of "The King's Daughters."

----------
: From: Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
: To: All
: Subject: Les Filles du Roi
: Date: Sunday, November 02, 1997 10:41 AM
: 
: Those with access to the documents have proven beyond a doubt that the
: women who came to New France were neither paragons of virtue nor saints,
: but they were definitely not what  Louis-Armand de Lom d'Arce, baron de
: Lahontan, accused them of being.. 
: 
:  "Arrived in New France in 1683, at the age of seventeen, this military
: officer from Gascony stayed ten years and published in 1703 the account of
: his voyage in America." reports Yves Landry in "Les Filles du Roi au XVII
: siècle, Orphelines en France, pionnières au Canada," Leméac, 1992.  It is
: this baron's allegations that led to some of the myths about these women. 
: 
: Landry's book is only one of several to refute the myths.  He confronts 
: both Lahontan's and the myths advanced by the "purists" who cannot abide
: an ancestor who was not of noble lineage.  In more than 400 pages, he
: documents the origins of the women, their marriages, and the nature of
: their families in New France, complete with charts, maps, 19 pages of
: bibliography, and a list of 770 of the Filles du Roi who came to New
: France between 1663 and 1673.
: 
: Whom would you rather trust, a twenty-year-old visitor or someone who has
: studied the facts to the extent they may be known?
: 
: I do not know whether Landry's book is now available in English. The title
: translates as "The Daughters of the King in the seventeenth century,
: orphans in France, pioneers in Canada."  He concludes that their social
: origins were more diverse than had been previously presented, but the great
: majority of these brave women were from humble origins.  Humble, however,
: does not equal immoral.  
: 
: Landry suggests that their experience in the New World with its climate,
: better food supply and sanitary conditions, and enormous hope, together
: with their response to these conditions, overcame much of the handicap of
: their poverty and lack of education.
: 
: All of us who descend from them--and we are legion--can be proud of them.
: 
: Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
: Descendant of at least 60 Filles du Roi
:

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