The Storyline
Real families. Real discoveries. Real stories.
Jeanne Juin: A King’s Daughter From Paris
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
Gillette Banne: A Fille à Marier in 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: A Fille à Marier in 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
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
The Interconnected Families of Numancia
A distant cousin DNA match led to common ancestors through the Martelino line, launching an investigation that revealed six interconnected families in Numancia, Aklan Province. Using FamilySearch Full Text Search—a 2024 technology breakthrough that reads actual document text—eight primary documents spanning 35 years (1927–1962) documented the Roldan, Gonzales, Quimpo, Tamayo, Isturis, and Martelino families. The June 1927 Pacto de Retro sale provided the first proof that Fortunato Roldan was married to Margarita Isturis—a discovery that unlocked generations of family connections. This companion piece demonstrates professional Philippine genealogy research methodology.
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.
James Hamill of St. Louis: A Key to the Hamill Origins
A 1908 newspaper notice confirms that James Hamill of St. Louis visited "his sister, Mrs. Susan McCanna" in Joliet—documentary proof of their sibling relationship. His 1910 death certificate identifies their father as James Hamill of Ireland, while Susan's certificate adds their mother's name: Catherine Dougherty. Most intriguingly, James's obituary requested that "Chicago and Joliet (Ill.), and Buffalo and Tarrytown (N.Y.) papers please copy"—revealing unknown Hamill relatives in these locations waiting to be discovered.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Charles Francis “Frank” McCanna
Charles Francis "Frank" McCanna was the seventh child of Irish immigrants Charles and Susan McCanna, born in Joliet in 1869 and baptized at St. Patrick's Church. A skilled molder at Joliet's stove factories, he raised his family at 829 Cora Street for over sixty years with wife Mary Reilly. At 87, Frank became the longest-lived of all Susan's ten children—and through his son William R. McCanna, DNA evidence connects the family to the broader Donaghmoyne Network.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Ellen B. “Nellie” McCanna Sheridan
Ellen B. "Nellie" McCanna Sheridan was the sixth child of Irish immigrants Charles and Susan McCanna. After her 1897 divorce, she built a remarkable career as manager of the National Hotel in Joliet, Illinois—raising two sons as a single mother in an era when few women held such positions. Her descendants provide the strongest DNA evidence linking the McCanna family to the broader Donaghmoyne Network.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story
Irish Genealogy Challenges
Irish genealogy is widely considered among the most challenging in the world—and for good reason. Census records destroyed, parish registers that start too late, dozens of people with the same name in one parish, and DNA complicated by endogamy. After seven years researching my Hamall family from County Monaghan, I've encountered every obstacle the records can throw at a researcher. Here's what you're up against—and what you can do about it.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: From Research to Story
DNA Analysis & Conclusions: The Susan Hamill and Charles McCanna Line
Throughout this series, we traced Charles McCanna and Susan Hamill from their 1857 marriage in Donaghmoyne, County Monaghan, through their settlement in Joliet, Illinois. Now we bring together the genetic evidence. DNA testing across 9 descendants from three children's lines confirms their shared ancestry. More intriguingly, some matches appear with other documented Donaghmoyne families—though at levels that require careful interpretation. This episode presents the DNA evidence, explains what the match levels mean, and explores the McCanna family's potential place within the broader Donaghmoyne Network.
Part of the Storyline Genealogy series: Documentary Biographies From Research to Story