Eastern Canada was originally settled by French adventurers, fur trappers, and soldiers. There were plenty of men but few women in the early days. The French government realized this was a problem and soon recruited young, single women to travel to New France. These women, known in French as the "filles du roi" or in English as the "King's Daughters," agreed to travel to the new settlements in North America and marry a settler there in exchange for a 50 pound dowry from the French King. Of the nearly 1,000 women who undertook the journey, about 800 made it to Canada.
Upon arrival, the women made contracts of marriage with the men who had originally settled the New World and usually married within a few days or weeks of the contract signing. Sometimes the women broke the contracts, only to remake them or make new contracts with other men.
These couples were the founding families of Quebec and today have millions of descendants all over the world. Rosemary E. Bachelor has published an article that lists some of Hillary Clinton's descent from those early Quebec families. Hillary shares ancestors with former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, writer Jack Kerouac, singer Shania Twain, Madonna, Celine Dion, Angelina Jolie, Camilla Shand (wife of England’s Prince Charles) and with myself.
You can read more in Rosemary E. Bachelor's article at http://genealogy.suite101.com/article.cfm/hillary_clintons_french_ancestry.
Rosemary E. Bachelor's article correctly cites Moreau-DesHarnais, Gail F. and Sheppard, Diane W., "Hillary Rodham Clinton’s French-Canadian Ancestry:Detroit and Michigan Connection," Michigan's Habitant Heritage Vol. 28, No. 4 (October 2007) and Vol. 29, No. 1 (January 2008);
for the research that led to Hillary Rodham Clinton's French-Canadian ancestry.
What is not made clear is that the research that led to Madonna's French-Canadian ancestry was done by Gail and René Jetté and published in 1994 in the same Michigan's Habitant Heritage; and that a refinement of Angelina Jolie's French-Canadian ancestry was researched by Diane and published in our journal in 2007-2008.
It is a shame that the meticulous work of these members of the French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan is not usually cited when their findings are popularized. For example, the press release by the New England Historical Genealogical Society revealing Hillary Rodham Clinton's French-Canadian connection gave the impression that the NEHGS did all of the research. The NEHGS web site cites its source(s), including the article by Gail and Diane, accurately, but this fact did not make it to the wider media. It is appropriate that Rosemary E. Bachelor's article also does cite this source, after her omission was brought to her attention some weeks ago.
She could never have researched the King's Daughters without knowing that Hillary's direct maternal line leads back to New France, and that breakthrough was Gail's and Diane's.
Sources are important in genealogy, both the original sources for data and the sources of original research that interprets the data. We in the French-Canadian Heritage Society of Michigan are proud of Gail's and Diane's work.
Suzanne Boivin Sommerville
For the FCHSM
Here's a link to our article on our website:http://fchsm.habitant.org/Clinton.pdf
Posted by: Suzanne B. Sommerville | January 08, 2009 at 11:03 AM