Should anyone wonder why I know for sure that my seventh great grandmother came to New France on a ship called the Saint-Jean-Baptiste out of Dieppe in 1671, here’s a record of the ship and some of its passengers.
Margeurite De Laplace is # 10 on the list, a fille du Roi, along with 2 carpenters, 2 masons, and 100 men 50 sheep… Also listed are ten donkeys.
The record also mentions that the ship returned to France in October with 10,000 pounds of beaver skins, 400 pounds of moose skins, 12 geese and a fox as gifts to King Louis XIV.
In the first poem in a minute or two/ without remembering, twelve year old Margeurite, orphan, speaks from on board ship. She was from the La Salpêtrière, at that time an orphanage/hospital in Paris.
She and Pierre LeSiege’s eldest daughter Louise would marry François Cottu (Coutu). She and François would become my sixth great grandparents and start the Coutu family and the Coutu name in Quebec and all over the world.
claudia radmore 