Meeting My Ancestors in New France
DL: This is an excerpt from Here to Stay an account of the lives of my seventeenth-century ancestors in New France. Everything in the book is factual or a reasonable surmise (and referenced as such). ___ This book is not a history of New France. It is about some of my ancestors who came here […]
The Life of a Fille du Roi After She Settles into New France
This is the story of the life of a fille du roi, of one of my first female ancestors in Canada. For more stories about Marthe Quittel, click on the tag words Marthe Quittel and Franco-American women. French sail ships generally used the north channel of the Saint Lawrence there where the Ile d’Orléans splits […]
A “Fille du Roi” Enters into a Marriage Contract
It is unlikely that either Barthélémy Verreault or Marthe Quittel, my maternal ancestors, came to their marriage with an expectation of romance. Marriage was a state of life, a way of surviving, of producing children who could take care of you in your old age. So much the better if the proposed partner was attractive […]