AN ABLE ANCESTOR

There was a huge building in Paris called the Salpetriere which had originally been a gunpowder factory, but King Louis XIV had it converted into a hospice for poor women of Paris as part of the General Hospital of Paris. The main hospice was for women who were learning disabled, mentally ill or epileptic as well a poor in 1657. It was incorporated with the hospice of the Pitie, designed especially for beggars' children and orphans. Between 1663 and 1673, 240 of the women of Pitie-Salpetriere were sent on a mission to populate the Americas and help build New France. During this ten year period there were 768 young women "recruited" and known as the "King's Daughters" who were sent to Quebec and Mobile, although the first few groups shipped to Quebec were really the "daughters" of nobles and upper class. The pool of young women ran low and by the time France wanted to populate the southern part of the colony (Mobile), the colonial company began rounding up women from the Paris prison.  

One of the women who was sent to the New World was my sixth great-grandmother, twenty-nine year old Marie Anne Fourchet,   She was falsely accused by her brothers of seducing the "man of the household" where she worked. She was sent to the Salpetriere even though she tried to defend herself before the Judge but was not believed, having been labeled as a prostitute. She was put aboard the former slave ship, La Mutine, where the women were treated like freight, chained together below deck, barely fed and denied any decent way of taking care of their bodily needs. (picture the situation in order to understand it better)

The ship dropped anchor on Dauphin Island, thirty miles offshore from Mobile where the women were transferred to another ship and taken to Ship Island. They were abandoned on Ship Island with no provisions or shelter on January 8, 1720. The men of Mobile learned of their presence on the island and rowed out to pick them up. Jean LaCasse was one those men and he and Marie Anne were married soon thereafter. I am proud to say that I descend from this strong, courageous woman.

There is so much more to the story but it is too long to write here. There is a book about this written by Joan E Dejean entitled Mutinous Women: How French Convicts became founding Mother of the Gulf Coast.