In addition to female children accompanying their families, two types of unmarried women, including a very small number of widows, settled in New France after the founding of Québec and of Montréal.  History has grouped them under a general heading : girls for marrying.  Although they were girls for marrying, les Filles du roi are distinct from that group and the expression used to designate them applies exclusively to that women and girls who emigrated to New France between 1663 and 1673.  These young women of marriageable age, for the majority having been very well educated, capable of bearing children and able to adapt to the climate and the rough life, are so called because their transportation and settlement expenses, as well as the dowry for some of them, were assumed by the royal treasury.  Nevertheless, among them, several had to face the problem of being colonists with very slender financial means to establish themselves.  More than a third of these women were from 16 to 20 years old.

    38 Filles du roi were received in 1663 and about 20 in 1664.  Over 80 arrived in October 1665.  A few weeks later, they are almost all married to men from Québec, Montréal or Trois-Rivières.  After 1673, the year after the war broke out between France and Holland, the sending of Filles du roi to Canada was finally stopped.  In total, almost 800 of them came.
 

    One of these women was Jeanne Sauvenier (Savonnet), born in Paris, daughter of Jacques Sauvenier and Antoinette Babilotte.  Arrived in New France in 1669, she marries at l'Île d'Orléans, in automn 1670, Jean Soucy (known as Lavigne), ancestor of my great-grandmother;  the documents relating to this marriage are yet untraceable.  When their first child was baptized, on September 15 1671, they were living in l'Île-aux-Oies.  They were even neighbours of my ancestor Pierre Micheau.  The couple established then in the seigneurie de Rivière-Ouelle.  The family counted 4 children when death struck down Jean in 1678.

    Jeanne Sauvenier marries again, the following year at L'Islet, on August 22 1679 more precisely, Damien Bérubé, ancestor of my grandmother.  They settle at Rivière-Ouelle where Damien owns a land.  The Soucy  children (4) and the Bérubé children (6) live there in the same house.  It is also there that died Damien at the age of 41;  he was buried on March 7, 1688.

    Widow once again, Jeanne Sauvenier marries for the third time to François Miville (it was his second marriage), on November 7, 1692 at Rivière-Ouelle.  This one was buried on November 24, 1711;  with François, she had a daughter, Marie-Françoise, her eleventh child.  The burials of Jeanne took place on March 13, 1721 at Rivière-Ouelle;  she was 80 years old.
 
 

back to my side of the Bérubé Family

back to my side of the Soucy Family