{"id":15539,"date":"2014-02-12T09:09:38","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T14:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/?p=15539"},"modified":"2014-10-03T13:11:53","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T17:11:53","slug":"etiennette-alton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/etiennette-alton\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00c9tiennette Alton: A Marriageable Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Business people, merchants and the church recruited 262 French woman who agreed to travel to New France and set up families with strangers before Louis IV decided to set up his \u201c<\/span>filles du Roi\u201d<\/i> (daughters of the King) project in 1663. <\/span><\/h3>\n

My ancestor \u00c9tiennette Alton was among these women, who are now collectively\u00a0<\/span>known as \u201c<\/span>les filles a marier\u201d\u00a0<\/i>(marriageable daughters).<\/span> \u00c9tiennette was a 20 year-old orphan<\/span>[1]<\/a> living in France\u2019s Loire Valley when she was recruited by Claude Robutel, the 39-year-old Sieur de Saint Andre and one of 95 surviving members of the \u201cCompany of 100 Associates\u201d. Three years earlier he had sailed to Quebec as part of the <\/span>Grande Recrue<\/i> and settled in Ville Marie to protect it from Iroquois attack.<\/span> Robutel returned to France in February 1659 to marry Suzanne Gabriel and search for potential spouses for the other soldiers. \u00c9tiennette and others agreed to marry, have children, and ensure the future viability of the settlement of Ville Marie. In return, the company paid the cost of her journey and provided her with a small dowry to set up a household. \u00c9tiennette joined Robutel and his wife for an ocean voyage to New France. The Saint-Andr\u00e9<\/i> left La Rochelle on July 2, 1659 and arrived in Quebec on September 7. It took another 22 days to get to Ville Marie via a small boat known as a \u201cchaloupe.\u201d [2]<\/a> \u00c9tiennette Alton wed Marin Hurtubese in Notre Dame Basilica on January 7, 1660. Claude and Suzanne were among their witnesses. Ten months later, their first son Pierre was born. Over the following twelve years, the couple had three more boys, including my direct ancestor Louis, and two girls. Marin died either on Valentine\u2019s Day or on May 12, 1672. On June 13 that same year, she wed Berthelemy Vinet dit La Reinte and moved to the fief de Verdun outside of Ville Marie on the \u00cele de Montr\u00e9al. Vinet worked for Jean-Baptiste Migeon, an activist who went to jail for accusing the Governor of Montreal of breaking fur-trading laws and then was himself accused of breaking the same laws. Vinet died on November 18, 1687 and \u00c9tiennette was alone again, but only for a little longer than a year. She signed a contract to marry Claude Garigue, a man 13 years her junior on December 13, 1688. By the following April, she tried to enter a convent but ended up getting married anyway on October 18, 1689. The couple legally separated three years later after \u00c9tiennette testified in court about regular spousal abuse. \u201cMy husband hit me with sticks, his fists and his feet; he threw me to the ground, and wanted to butcher me by trampling me with his feet.\u201d[3]<\/a> She ran from this particular incident to the home of her children. Garigue died a year later, four days before Christmas 1693. \u00c9tiennette lived for another 29 years. She died just before Christmas in Notre Dame Hospital at 84 years old.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a>\u00a0Gagn\u00e9, Peter J., Before the King’s Daughters: The Filles a Marier, 1634-1663 (Pawtucket, RI: Quintin Publications, 2002,) p 318 Includes a translation of the bride and groom’s marriage contract by B\u00e9nigne Basset a clerk in Ville-Marie. In it, Etiennette Alton’s parents, Francois Alton and \u00c9tiennette Barillay, are described as “late.” \u00a0 *Note that a previous version of this story did not include this source.<\/div>\n
[2]<\/a> The dates of \u00c9tiennette Alton\u2019s journey to Quebec and Montreal and the ship she sailed on come from a report prepared for my grandmother by genealogiste Paul-Andr\u00e9 Langelier in 1996. The report also says she was an employee of Claude Robutel. The report also includes\u00a0the fact that\u00a0Etiennette was baptised on Saturday November 13, 1638 at the Saint-Thomas a La Fl\u00e8che church and that six other brothers and sisters were baptised in the same location. Two sisters are apparently buried there.<\/div>\n
[3]<\/a> A court case to consider their separation took place on January 14, 1692.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business people, merchants and the church recruited 262 French woman who agreed to travel to New France and set up families with strangers before Louis IV decided to set up his \u201cfilles du Roi\u201d (daughters of the King) project in 1663. My ancestor \u00c9tiennette Alton was among these women, who are now collectively\u00a0known as \u201cles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_wp_convertkit_post_meta":{"form":"-1","landing_page":"0","tag":"0","restrict_content":"0"},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[103],"tags":[149,154,150,152,151,153],"class_list":["post-15539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history-writing","tag-etiennette-alton","tag-families","tag-filles-a-marier","tag-france","tag-marriageable-daughters","tag-new-france","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2buQs-42D","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17726,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/etiennette-altons-verdun-years\/","url_meta":{"origin":15539,"position":0},"title":"Etiennette Alton\u2019s Verdun Years","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"November 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Imagine my surprise to discover that my ancestors lived in my neighbourhood more than three hundred years ago. At that time, Verdun's Crawford Park was a very different place than it is today. Today, the neighbourhood encompasses about 1000 people in about 20 city blocks between the St. Lawrence River\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Genealogy Ensemble"","block_context":{"text":"Genealogy Ensemble","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/history-worth-remembering\/genealogy-ensemble-history-worth-remembering\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/CrawfordPark1600s.bmp","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/CrawfordPark1600s.bmp 1x, https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/CrawfordPark1600s.bmp 1.5x, https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/CrawfordPark1600s.bmp 2x, https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/CrawfordPark1600s.bmp 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18910,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/the-kings-daughters\/","url_meta":{"origin":15539,"position":1},"title":"The Kings’ Daughters: They came to populate New France*","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"November 21, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"As she boarded the great ship Pho\u00e9nix de Flessingue in May 1663, Catherine Barr\u00e9 knew she would never return to her hometown of La Rochelle, France. Did she worry about the ship sinking? Would pirates attack during the six-week journey overseas? 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Their voyage from France to our city would last five months and require two departures. They faced captivity, an epidemic and enough starvation and illness\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Genealogy Ensemble"","block_context":{"text":"Genealogy Ensemble","link":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/category\/history-worth-remembering\/genealogy-ensemble-history-worth-remembering\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Grand Recrue","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1024px-La_Grande_Recrue_de_1653.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1024px-La_Grande_Recrue_de_1653.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1024px-La_Grande_Recrue_de_1653.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1024px-La_Grande_Recrue_de_1653.jpg?fit=900%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":16564,"url":"https:\/\/traceyarial.com\/blog\/en\/a-rich-kings-daughter\/","url_meta":{"origin":15539,"position":4},"title":"A rich Kings\u2019 daughter","author":"Tracey Arial","date":"June 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Kings\u2019 daughters (Filles du Roi) who came to Canada between 1663 and 1673 under are often described as poor, orphaned or prostitutes. 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