FILLES DU ROI- Daughters of the King(Louis XIV)

   The girl's family name is French.  Grandpa came from Canada and his family roots were in Quebec, French Canada.  It would be years before  discovering that the Adam and Eve of the family lineage in the New World was a man named Claude Delaunay and a woman named Denyse Leclerc.

Claude Delaunay:  Only a few facts are know about this man.  He was born on May 30th 1627 in Amiens, France.  Living near the port city of Abbeville he must have learned his trade listed in the 1666 New France census as rope-maker.  He probably left France around 1664.  France was devastated by the 100 Year War with England, Spain was invading it's territories, and was still reeling from the effects of the plague (1635-37).  France was in ruin.   It was in these desperate times that Claude bid farewell to his family,  a family he would never see again.  It is almost certain that he boarded one of two vessels containing a total of 100 men  for a journey across the sea on the sailing ship "St. Jeane-Baptiste."  The journey took two months at sea.  It is recorded that Claude was granted land on Ilse de Orleans.  This is a large island in the St. Lawrence River just east of Quebec City.    Claude's land was on the south side, approximately 385 feet wide and  2 miles deep.  The land was granted in long strips extending from the water's edge.  From this land Claude cleared and built a rustic cabin.  It was to this cabin, he brought his bride, Denyse Leclerc on October 3 1669.

Crossing the Bridge to Isle de Orleans

http://www.ameriquefrancaise.org/en/article-312/%C3%8Ele_d'Orl%C3%A9ans,_a_Treasured_Natural_Heritage.html  See this link for more information.

       I wasn't aware of this connection.  In 2008 Mother and I toured the island as part of a Fall
Color Cruise.  I wish I had known at the time.  One of the Denomme genealogists had pinpointed the location of the land once claimed by our ancestor Claude Delaunay.   When Claude laid claim to the land it was a wooded wilderness.  By hand, he cleared and built the first log structure.  The first church, also a wooden structure was called St. Famille.  It was in this church that Denyse and Claude were married.

Denyse Leclerc

Born and baptized in Paris she was left as a child at a hospital in the care of the Sisters of Charity.  Her mother was believed to be a widow who could no longer provide for her.  It must be understood that the the hospitals of the mid 1600's were places of misery and suffering.  The Sister's of Charity were the first religious order to leave the confines of the Convent to dedicate their lives to caring for the poor and sick.  Hospitals were places that the poor came to die.  In the dark days of her orphan hood she worked side by side with the nuns in dank and dreary surroundings with the smell and sounds of death her constant companion. 
       King Louis XIV took an interest in New France as more than just an outpost and sought making the French territory a colony like the English had done.  There were many missionaries, explorers, trappers and soldiers in the region known as New France.  There were very few women.  To establish a more stable society based on community and family about 700 women voyaged across the Atlantic for an unknowable future as a pioneer.  Most of these women were orphans educated in convents.  Only girls of good character were chosen.  Did this poor child have a choice?  These were desperate times and so Denyce left everything she had known, loneliness, depravity and servitude with a dowry of 50 livre for a life she could not begin to imagine.  She was 17 when her vessel docked in Quebec City.  These women, the 700, were known as the "fille de roi" (girls of the king) or "Daughters of the King."  Most of the French descendants in the Americas are somehow related to these brave and tenacious women. 
    Denyse was boarded at a convent run by the Ursuline Sisters in Quebec city.  Large numbers of men would greet the vessels as they docked and view the shy girls as they were whisked to the convent.  The men paid their respects at the convent and usually within a week or two had a marriage proposal for which  the girls were under no obligation to accept.  Once the proposal was accepted, a marriage contract was drawn up and signed by the parties and witnesses.  Within 30 days a Church sanctioned wedding took place.  On occasion some of the marriage contracts were annulled if either party had second thoughts but almost always before the Marriage Sacrament.  Claude and Denyse had three children before his death in his 50's
      Although it is certain that our family progenitors arose from the common class of 17th Century France, with courage and hard work they laid a foundation of prosperity in the New World far surpassing any possibilities open to them in France.
      Ancestors, the traces of which live on today in our DNA hearken back to a spirit of survival and strength in the face of adversity.  There is a line in the movie Amistad spoken at the trial.  One of the men, stolen into slavery and now on trial for mutiny said, "I will call into the past and beg my ancestors to come and help me for at this moment I am the whole reason for which they existed."