While I have spent the last several years researching the history of Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier, my eighth great grandmother, there is at least one other Jeanne whose story should be included in this blog. That’s Jeanne Savonnet. The life of this second Jeanne is more well-known than the life of Jeanne Marguerite, but there are several parallels between the two. [⇒]
I am sure that Jeanne’s spirit surrounded us that day, the 15th of September, 2017. We were not a large group but we filled the Canadian chapel of St. Jacques church in Dieppe, France, one of the parishes where Jeanne had lived.
Finally, the story of Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier is available in French! Thanks to a wonderful team of translators and editors, I am very happy to announce the publication of the book: Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi : Son histoire.
The book is available as a paperback and e-book on the Internet at www.amazon.fr, at www.amazon.ca and at www.amazon.com .
It is also available at Le Plumier, 22 24 Rue Saint-Jacques in Dieppe, France.
I hope you will find her story as captivating as I did! Please feel free to email me your comments!
In 2002, 5 years before the release of the movie “The Bucket List,” I composed a list of things I wanted to do before leaving this world. Near the top of the list were: Write a book about my ancestor Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi; learn French; and live for at least six months in France. Well, 15 years later, [⇒]
The first time I heard the name of Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier was over twenty years ago. A book about her life started to take shape in my head roughly eight years later, in 2002. Preliminary research followed. The drive to learn more about Jeanne and write her story, however, only became an obsession one cold February day in 2011 when I stood in St. Nicolas church in Coutances where she was baptized on June 8, 1643. And now, finally, I am happy to announce the publication of this first version of the history of her life, just one day before the 300th anniversary of her death.
Jeanne Chevalier, Fille du Roi: Her Story is now available at http://www.harvard.com for purchase in the United States and Canada. 
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After months of silence, I am back writing for my blog and along the way, have run into some problems. I would like to apologize for any strange announcements that you might have received from my blog. I hope that we have resolved them and there won’t be any new “glitches.”
Silence has not meant absence of progress, rest assured. [⇒]
In June, 1671, 28-year-old Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier boarded a ship in Dieppe harbor. She was leaving France forever and was headed for Quebec. Although single and orphaned, she was not alone on the ship since there were one hundred other women also bound for Quebec that year. In fact, over the course of ten years beginning in 1663, 770 women would have left France, most of them, like Jeanne, never to return. [⇒]
The question came up again over beers at the Tête des Allumettes brasserie and brewery, on the St. Lawrence River, just north of Kamouraska in eastern Quebec. I got into a conversation with my neighbors at the table next to me on the patio overlooking the river, and they asked, “Why are you doing this?” [⇒]
Three weeks after four-year-old Louis XIV was crowned King of France and 35 years after the founding of Quebec, Jeanne Marguerite Chevalier was baptized on June 8, 1643 in the small cathedral town of Coutances, 330 kilometers west of Paris and the new king and 75 kilometers northeast of Mont St. Michel. Other than a one-line entry registering her baptism and listing Guillemette LeBreton as her godmother, I know little else about Jeanne’s life in France. The actual facts about Jeanne’s life are not resumed until her name is found as a Fille du Roi on ships’ rosters that left Dieppe in June, 1671. And since the rosters are still being researched, there is nothing really official about Jeanne until her name appeared on a marriage contract in Quebec City on October 11, 1671. [⇒]
To fully understand Jeanne’s life and its challenges, it’s important to get a feel for the times in which she was born and spent the first 28 years of her life. So I have pulled out the world history books I saved from graduate school in the late 1960’s to provide a backdrop to Jeanne’s story. [⇒]
