The Story

Each chapter follows a thread through the records — a ship manifest, a marriage contract, a census entry — to tell the story of who these people were and what they built. Every fact is sourced. Every name is verified.

I

The Crossing

April – July 1670

Françoise Durand, orphan from the chalk cliffs of Bracquemont, boards La Nouvelle France with 120 women and arrives at Québec eighty-two days later with nothing but a comb and two livres in cash. She marries a Huguenot convert, clears a farm on the Île d’Orléans, and raises nine children. She never leaves.

FdR #117 on Landry ListShip: La Nouvelle France, 14 cannons48 years in New France15-generation maternal line
II

The King’s Daughters

1663–1673

Louis XIV sent roughly 770 young women across the Atlantic to build a colony. Ten of them are in Carl’s verified ancestry. They ranged from the daughter of a master painter to an illiterate orphan with no dowry. Two men in the tree each married two King’s Daughters.

10 verified Filles du Roi~70 combined childrenWealth range: 0–850 livresClinton shared ancestry
III

The First Family of Canada

1606–1675

Louis Hébert arrived in 1617, three years before the Mayflower. His son married Hélène Desportes — the first European child born in Canada. Champlain was her godfather. She became the colony’s first recorded midwife. Their granddaughter is Carl’s direct ancestor fourteen generations later.

First European born in CanadaChamplain’s goddaughter14 generations to CarlFirst midwife
IV

The First Farmer

1575–1627

Louis Hébert, a Paris apothecary, sold everything to farm in Canada. He cleared the land where Old Québec stands today with an axe and a spade — no plough existed in the colony. He slipped on the ice in 1627 and died at fifty-two. His wife Marie Rollet stayed for thirty-two years. Their descendant line runs fourteen generations to the present.

First land grant in New France14 generations to CarlMonument in Parc MontmorencyChamplain connection
V

The Wendat Line

c. 1649–1709

Catherine Annennontak, daughter of a Wendat Bear Clan chief, survived the destruction of Wendake in 1649, fled 700 miles by canoe to Québec, was raised by Ursuline nuns, and married a French settler. She is the only verified Indigenous ancestor in the tree. At her third marriage, she signed her Wendat name in the parish register.

Bear Clan (Attignawantan)PRDH record 198409 generations to Rose3 marriages
VI

Four Centuries

1663–2026

What became of the daughters’ children. From Île d’Orléans farms through the British Conquest, the Patriote Rebellion, and La Grande Hémorragie to the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. How ten King’s Daughters became two-thirds of modern Québec — and how one branch ended up in Kansas.

7-part narrative4 centuries of descentBritish Conquest to mill townsNotable descendants
VII

The Maternal Line

1645–1942

Fourteen generations of mothers, traced through parish registers from a Fille du Roi in 1663 to the present day. One signed her name when every man in the room could not. One married at fourteen. One was wife to a militia captain during the British Conquest. The line never breaks.

14 generationsDrouin primary sourceApolline’s signature300 years traced
VIII

The Records

1621–present

How do you verify 507 ancestors across four centuries? Because Québec has the most complete pre-industrial demographic record on Earth. Parish registers since 1621, notarial archives, nominal censuses, and two modern databases that digitized it all. This chapter explains the system that makes the rest possible.

400 years of recordsPRDH databaseDrouin InstituteDual-source verification
IX

La Grande Hémorragie

1840–1930

Between 1840 and 1930, roughly 900,000 French Canadians left Québec for the mill towns of New England — nearly half the province's population. They called it La Grande Hémorragie. Rose Lea LaFlamme was part of that wave, settling in Lowell, Massachusetts, where the Highland Scottish McInnis line was already waiting.

900,000 emigrantsLowell mill townsRose Lea LaFlammeTwo lines converge