The Storyline
"Real families.Real discoveries.Real stories."
The Aversion: A Family War Over a Fille du Roi's Estate
On February 28, 1697, Provost Judge Guillaume Roger wrote a word that changed everything: "aversion." He wasn't describing a mild disagreement—he was documenting hostility so severe that normal legal proceedings couldn't work.
Who were these people who hated each other so intensely? A 52-year-old widowed farmer named Pierre Guilbault and his three adult children: Marie (29), Joseph (25), and Étienne (22).
What were they fighting over? Their dead mother's estate.
Louise Senécal arrived in Quebec in 1667 as a Fille du Roi—a King's Daughter sponsored by Louis XIV. She married in eleven days, raised four children, and built a prosperous farm over 26 years. When she died in 1693, her husband tried to remarry immediately and refused to settle her estate.
Her children waited nearly four years. Then they struck.
This is the story of how three siblings used the 17th-century court system to honor their mother's memory—and how primary sources documented a family war that would end in death, division, and justice.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
Crossing the Atlantic: How Louise Senécal Became a Fille du Roi
Before the family war that required judicial intervention, there was a ship. Louise Senécal ignored the warnings of 20 women who filed formal complaints about conditions aboard the St. Louis de Dieppe. She crossed the Atlantic anyway, survived 107 days at sea, and married a man who had failed twice before to secure a bride. Eleven days after stepping off the ship, she became Louise Guilbault of Charlesbourg.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.
The Hidden Years: Marriage, Crisis and the Same-Day Contract
Pierre Guilbault appeared before a notary on April 13, 1693, to sign a marriage contract with 20-year-old Jeanne Morin. It was the same day his wife Louise died. The shocking timing—documented in colonial records—reveals the tensions that had been building in a marriage that survived separation, reconciliation, and 26 years of frontier life, only to end in a family war over Louise's estate.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Uncovering the extraordinary stories hidden in ordinary family histories, one ancestor at a time.