Anne Ledet's first husband was a bigamist. Her daughters were declared illegitimate. But in 1657 she married Gilles Pinel, raised eleven children, and became a founding matriarch of Neuville, Quebec.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France

Jeanne Petit was a young woman protected by the king, part of the contingent of 125 Filles du Roi who came to New France in 1671. At just 16 years old, already orphaned, she crossed the Atlantic to build a new life. She married François Séguin dit Ladéroute, a soldier turned weaver, and together they raised 8 children to adulthood at Boucherville. Today, her descendants number nearly 2 million people—a legacy built from nothing but hope and determination.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France

On August 3, 1672, the ship La Nativité arrived at Québec carrying a young Parisian woman named Jeanne Juin. One of approximately 770 Filles du Roi sent to populate New France, she married Norman cobbler Bernard Dumouchel dit Laroche and raised six children across the frontier settlements from Champlain to Longueuil. Today, her descendants number in the hundreds of thousands.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France

Shipped to New France at 13. Widowed at 15. Property owner at 16. Executed at 36. Gillette Banne's life spans only three and a half decades, but within it lies the full complexity of women's experience in colonial New France. When her 12-year-old daughter was beaten bloody by a drunk husband and the law offered no refuge, she made her own justice—and paid with her life. Her descendants now number over 2 million.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built New France

Marie Riton crossed the Atlantic carrying the weight of an illegitimate birth and a Protestant conversion. In New France, she reinvented herself as a Catholic matriarch at Beauport—mother of seven, ancestor to millions.

Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Filles du Roi & Filles à Marier — The Women Who Built 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

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