The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Marie-Michelle Duteau dite Perrin: A Protestant Pioneer of New France
Before the King's Daughters. Before royal dowries. Before the colony had a plan, there were the Filles à marier—262 brave women who crossed the Atlantic on their own terms. Marie-Michelle Duteau was one of them: a Protestant girl from La Rochelle who emigrated at 19, converted to Catholicism to marry, bore 9 children, and died at 36 on the frontier she helped settle. Today, over 2 million Québécois carry her DNA.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France
Jean Perrier dit Lafleur: Soldier of the Islands, Settler of Beauport
He sailed from La Rochelle to the Caribbean, survived the siege of Cayenne, built forts along the Richelieu, and chose to stay in New France when his regiment went home. Jean Perrier dit Lafleur died at thirty-five, leaving behind a widow, five young children, and a lineage that would number over a million descendants.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Carignan-Salières — From Soldiers to Settlers
Marie Gaillard: Fille du Roi, Matriarch of Two Lines
Marie Gaillard, Fille du roi, widow twice over, and matriarch of two converging family lines, stands among the most consequential women of early New France. She crossed the Atlantic at 22, buried her first husband before she was 35, merged two families into a household of eleven children, watched her daughter marry her stepson, relocated westward to build a new life, and died at 89—having outlived nearly everyone she had ever known. Her descendants now number over a million Quebecers. Yet Marie left no letters, signed no documents. Her power was the power of survival, adaptation, and deliberate family-building in a world where women's choices were constrained but never irrelevant.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France
When One Ancestor Appears Twice: Catherine Lemesle
How does the same woman become your 8th great-grandmother twice? Discover pedigree collapse through Catherine Lemesle, a Fille du Roi whose descendants married each other 85 years later—and what this common phenomenon means for your French-Canadian research.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France
The Seven Fires: Understanding Marie Josephte’s Ojibwe Heritage
Before French traders arrived at the St. Mary's Rapids, before the fur trade reshaped the Great Lakes, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe's ancestors had already completed a 500-year journey guided by prophecy—from the Atlantic coast to the land where food grows on water. To understand who she was, we must understand where her people came from.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story
Following the Canoe Routes: How the Fur Trade Families Moved Between the Interior and Quebec
Genealogists researching French-Canadian voyageurs often encounter a puzzling pattern: a man appears in Quebec records, disappears for years, then resurfaces—sometimes with a wife and children who seem to have materialized from nowhere. The explanation lies in the geography of the fur trade. Understanding how these families traveled helps you know where to look for records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: A Storyline Genealogy Research Guide
The North West Company: A Genealogist’s Guide to the “Pedlars from Quebec”
From 1779 to 1821, the North West Company employed thousands of French-Canadian men as voyageurs, paddlers, and laborers across a network stretching from Montreal to the Pacific. Their records survive—and they can tell you where your ancestor worked, what he earned, what he purchased, and who he may have married in the pays d'en haut.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy Series: A Storyline Genealogy Research Guide
Gabriel’s World: Life as a Voyageur in the Pays d'en Haut
What was it actually like to be a voyageur? To paddle 18 hours a day, carry 180 pounds across brutal portages, sleep under an overturned canoe, and spend years in the wilderness waiting to be paid? This was Gabriel Guilbault's life—and understanding it helps us understand the man behind the records.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Baawitigong: The Place of the Rapids
At the St. Mary's River, where Lake Superior tumbles twenty-one feet into the lower Great Lakes, two worlds met. For the Ojibwe, it was Baawitigong—the gathering place. For the voyageurs, it was the strategic gateway to the fur trade interior. Somewhere at this crossroads, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe and Gabriel Guilbault's lives first intersected.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Abitakijikokwe: The Woman Behind the Name
On January 26, 1801, Father Leclerc at L'Annonciation in Oka did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe identity of an Indigenous bride—her personal spirit name Abitakijikokwe ("Half-Day Woman") and her tribal affiliation as Saulteaux of Lake Superior. This rare documentation preserved both identifiers when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse." Discover what her name means and why this record matters for Métis genealogy.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: When a name carries centuries of meaning.
Marriage à la façon du pays: The Unions That Built a Nation
During the 1700s and 1800s, marriages between French fur traders and Indigenous women were fundamental social and economic institutions in North America. These unions—called mariage à la façon du pays—created strategic alliances that facilitated the fur trade and led to the emergence of the distinct Métis culture. Learn where to find these families in the records, from Hudson's Bay Company Archives to Métis Scrip.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documenting the lives of our earliest ancestors through primary sources.
Saint-Paul-de-Joliette : Where the Story Begins
On October 10, 1798, a voyageur named Gabriel Guilbault brought three children to Saint-Paul-de-Joliette for baptism. They had been born and "ondoyé" (emergency baptized) in the pays d'en haut—the upper country of the fur trade. Their mother was identified as "Josephte Sauvagesse de la nation des Sauteux"—the first documented reference to her Indigenous identity. The story of Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe begins here.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Places
Sainte-Madeleine-de-Rigaud : Where Her Name Was Lost
In 1801, Father Leclerc at Oka carefully recorded her full Ojibwe name: Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse. Twelve years later, when she was buried at Rigaud, she had become simply "Marie Josette Sauvagesse de nation"—an Indigenous woman, unnamed. The contrast tells the story of colonial record-keeping and the erasure of Indigenous identity.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
L’Annonciation d’Oka : Mission of the Lake of Two Mountains
For three centuries, this Sulpician mission has stood at the confluence of Indigenous and French Canadian cultures. Here, on January 27, 1801, Father Leclerc did something extraordinary: he recorded the full Ojibwe name of an Indigenous bride—Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe de la Nation Sauteuse sur le lac Supérieur—preserving her identity when most priests simply wrote "Sauvagesse."
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series : Sacred Spaces
The Guilbault Line: Charles Francois Guilbault
Charles François Guilbault died on June 16, 1760. Three months later, Montreal would surrender and New France would cease to exist. The priest who buried him at Sault-au-Récollet recorded a single word for his life's work: habitant. It was enough. His grandson would become a voyageur who married an Ojibwe woman—but first, there was this: a farmer who lived his entire fifty-seven years under the fleur-de-lys and died as the colony collapsed around him.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Ojibwe Baskets, Beads, and Art
When I discovered my Ojibwe 4th great-grandmother, Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe, I wasn't prepared for how profoundly that discovery would change the way I understood my family's history. For generations, she had existed only as a shadow in the records—"Sauvagesse," a generic French term meaning "Indigenous woman." No name. No story. No identity.
Then, in a marriage record from 1801, a priest had written her full Ojibwe name: Abitakijikokwe. After 200 years of silence, she emerged from the records with her Indigenous identity intact.
And so began my journey into the world of Ojibwe art—searching for tangible connections to the woman who founded my Métis family line.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies — From Research to Story
The Guilbault Line: Pierre Guilbault
Every family line has a beginning. For the Guilbaults of New France—whose descendants would include master masons, Quebec patriots, voyageurs who married into Ojibwe families, and eventually a million people living today—that beginning was Pierre Guilbault, a young man from La Rochelle who crossed the Atlantic in 1657. He failed twice to marry before wedding Fille du Roi Louise Senécal just eleven days after her arrival. They built a prosperous farm, survived a marital separation, and raised four children. But when Louise died in 1693, Pierre's attempt to remarry the same day triggered a family war so bitter that the judge used the word "aversion" to describe their mutual hatred.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
The Guilbault Line: Joseph Olivier Guilbault
He was born just five years after his parents' wedding—the first son, baptized in the parish church of Notre-Dame-de-Québec in March 1672. His father Pierre had arrived from La Rochelle fifteen years earlier; his mother Louise Senécal was a Fille du Roi who crossed the Atlantic to build a new life in New France. Joseph Olivier Guilbault would never know that ocean crossing. He was the second generation—born in the colony, rooted in the soil of Charlesbourg. He would marry twice, father eighteen children, bury too many of them, and live to see his son become an established habitant.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
The Guilbault Line: Charles Gabriel Guilbault
Before Gabriel Guilbault paddled canoes into the pays d'en haut and married an Ojibwe woman, there was his father—another Gabriel, born Charles Gabriel Guilbault in Quebec City in 1731. This Quebec patriarch married twice, raised four sons to adulthood, and established the family in L'Assomption that would eventually bridge French and Indigenous worlds. His 53-year life span encompassed the British Conquest and the transformation of New France, setting the stage for his son's frontier adventures.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
The Guilbault Line: Gabriel Guilbault pere
Gabriel Guilbault was born into the rhythms of New France and lived to see that world transform. A voyageur who paddled canoes to Lake Superior, he married an Ojibwe woman whose name—Marie Josephte Abitakijikokwe—would be preserved in parish records for over a century. His 71-year journey from L'Assomption to St-Benoît, from paddler to mason to landowner, left behind something extraordinary: documented proof of Métis heritage for generations of descendants.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story