Madeleine Després

Abt 1653 - 1712  (~ 59 years)

• Name	Madeleine Després
  Birth	Abt 1653	St-Sauveur, Paris, France   [1, 2]
  Gender	Female
  Death	18 Nov 1712  [2]
  Burial	19 Nov 1712	St-Jean-de-l'Île-d'Orleans, L'Île-d'Orléans, Québec   [2]
  Person ID	I45542	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	18 May 2026

  
  

  Father	François Després
  Mother	Madeleine Legrand
  Marriage	Bef 1653	Paris, France   [1]
  Family ID	F26525	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Nicolas Audet dit Lapointe,   b. Bef 12 Jul 1637   d. 9 Dec 1700 (Age > 63 years)
  Marriage	15 Sep 1670	Ste-Famille, L'Île d'Orléans, Québec   [1, 2]
  Notes	Contract dated 30 Aug 1670.
  Children	+ 1. Marie Audet dit Lapointe,   b. 28 Aug 1682   d. 4 Jan 1775 (Age 92 years)
  Family ID	F26523	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	18 May 2026

  
  

• Notes

  She was a fille du rois, a "daughter of the king." By 1660 or so it had become apparent that the fledgling North American colony of New France was badly short of marriageable women. To ameliorate this, between 1663 and 1673 the French government recruited respectable young women of limited prospects and, after vetting them for suitability, provided each of them with a small dowry, a chest of clothes, and one-way passage to Quebec. The approximately 800 women who made this journey became known as the "filles du roi", the "daughters of the King." Millions of modern French-Canadians can trace their descent from them, quite often from several. Arrived 31 July 1670 on the Nouvelle France. There appears to be some confusion about the dates of her death and burial. Denis Beauregard (citation details below) and thje NBMDS sources cited on genealogiequebec.com have them as 18 and 19 December 1712, respectively. But the PRDH has them as 18 and 19 November 1712, as does the PRDS-linked "original document on GenealogyQuebec.com". And yet the actual linked-to document is not a handwritten record, but instead a typed document. Not a modern one — it looks like the output of an old-fashioned manual typewriter, but certainly not a document from 1712.

  
  

• Sources

  [S38] Genealogy of the French in North America, by Denis Beauregard. Complete version, 2025. [S8920] Le Programme de recherche en démographie historique (The Research Program in Historical Demography) (PRDH) database.