Filles du Roi: Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier
Les Filles du Roi
In an earlier post, The French Side: Marie Catherine Levesque, I mentioned several Filles du Roi (King's Daughters) in the direct paternal and maternal family lines of my 2nd great-grandmother, Marie Catherine Levesque (see also Levesque and Michaud on blog page The French Side).
Filles du Roi were the more than 700 courageous female pioneers who, between the years of 1663 and 1673, left everything and everyone they knew in France to cross a vast ocean during a war with Britain and settle in a dangerous new French colony.
But these fearless women did it, and became the progenitors of a vast number of Canadians possessing French heritage.
VIDEO: Family Line Founder - Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier (1645-1716)
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| Figure 1: Lineage of Jeanne Chevalier to Marie Catherine Levesque |
My grandmother Catherine and I are descended through François Robert Levesque, the first child of Jeanne and her second husband Robert Levesque (a carpenter and habitant).
Fun fact: Although I have not confirmed it through my own research, it was interesting when Lisa noted that François Robert Levesque was an ancestor of former Québec premier Réné Levesque. My family's lore had always said we were related to the former premier, but until hearing that in her video, I had never actually thought it might be true.
Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier and her husband Robert Levesque settled in Rivière-Ouelle in the Kamouraska region about 150 km northeast of Québec City, on the south shore of Québec's St. Lawrence River (see Map 1 below).
The Levesques in my direct family line lived there for nearly 200 years until the 1890s, when my grandmother Catherine's father (my 3rd great-grandfather, Joseph Nazaire Levesque) moved the family first to Montréal and then to New Brunswick.
After her marriage to my 2nd great-grandfather Louis Napoléon Despins, Catherine and her young family moved west from New Brunswick in about 1905 to farm land 200 km northeast of Edmonton, in the small town of Saint Paul, Alberta, Canada.
Click on the link to view Lisa Elvin-Staltari's well-researched video on my 8th great-grandmother - and my family's Canadian Levesque founder - Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier: VIDEO Have Roots, Will Travel: Les Filles du Roi Episode 35 Jeanne Chevalier.
Please enjoy!
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| Map 1: Location of Rivière-Ouelle in Québec, Canada |
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Sources
Map credit: Snip from a Google Maps search for Rivière-Ouelle.
Research and sources attached to my public tree, Brant-LeComte Family Tree, on Ancestry.ca.
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