Immigration of the Filles du roi to New France

Coming from different backgrounds and representing about half the women who settled in Canada during the French Regime, these approximately eight hundred women played a decisive role in the history of the settlement of New France. The majority of the “Filles du roi” [King’s Daughters] were impoverished orphans whose emigration was organized and supported by the royal administration. They contributed significantly to a French presence in North America during a time of serious gender imbalance, establishing a long tradition of brides in settler societies.

While New France received three waves of women immigrants, the largest was without question the second, from 1663 to 1673. The colony was still quite sparsely populated in the early 1660s, even though the French had been there since the turn of the century, and King Louis XIV wanted it to survive. Various measures were taken with this in mind: a new institutional regime was set up; soldiers from the Carignan-Salières regiment were settled there; and young women of childbearing age were brought in as immigrants. From 1663 to 1673, some 800 young women came to New France at the King’s expense, to marry and start families. Within six months of landing in the port of Québec, 80 percent of them were married. More than half of the new immigrants settled in and around the town of Québec, and the others, in the Montréal and Trois-Rivières regions.

The average age of the young women who immigrated during this period was 24; most were penniless orphans, and several came from the Paris region. Their presence had an impact on the language used in Canada at the time, when language was less uniform and regional dialects were very widespread. Because of their numbers and the role played by mothers in the transmission of language, these young women furthered to some extent the spread of the French language in Canada, although their greatest contribution will always remain demographic. In fact, ten years after the arrival of these courageous women, the French population of the St. Lawrence Valley had almost tripled, and the colony could now rely on its own people for its population growth.

Many studies have been done on the King’s Daughters over the years, beginning in 1703 with a publication in which the Baron de La Hontan called their morality into question. Since then, a number of authors have examined this subject, and today it is felt to have been a discussion with no basis in fact. However, the King’s Daughters continue to attract attention, and not only among genealogists. They are still a subject of interest to artists and have provided inspiration for a large body of artistic production, including literary, pictorial and cinematographic art. This should come as no surprise, given that they represent more than half of the female pioneers that contributed to the genetic inheritance of French Canadians, and their progeny in North America probably numbers among the millions.