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Lonely Colonist Seeks Wife: The Forgotten History of America’s
First Mail Order Brides
MARCIA ZUG*
As Catherine looks out across the water, she wonders what her life will be like when
she reaches Virginia. She knows that conditions will be hard, but life in England was also
hard. At least in the colony, there is the possibility of improvement. The Virginia
Company has assured her and the other women that they will have their choice of
marriage partners. They have promised that the men are wealthy, or at least will be
wealthy with the women’s help. Moreover, in Virginia, as a married woman she has the
right to share in her husband’s wealth. Catherine knows it is a risk, but she has been
assured she can always return home if she changes her mind. Regardless, Catherine
expects to stay. There is little for her back in England. She will marry a colonist and help
found a nation.
The first American mail order brides were independent, powerful and
respected; they are never described as “mail order brides.” The term “mail order
bride” is most often reserved for women perceived as victims.
1
Colonial mail
order brides, by contrast, have other names: “Jamestown brides,” “King’s
daughters,” and “Casket girls.” Nonetheless, the label “mail order bride” is just
as appropriate. Sources describing colonial mail order brides demonstrate that
these women immigrated to America for many of the same reasons as their
modern counterparts, but the colonial mail order brides received a level of
respect and acceptance that typically eludes contemporary mail order brides.
2
Distancing today’s mail order brides from these lauded forbearers obscures their
similarities and perpetuates the one-dimensional treatment of modern mail order
brides.
3
Re-examining the feminist underpinnings of the first mail order brides
* Associate Professor of Law at The University of South Carolina School of Law. I would like to
thank Mark Graber, Martha Ertman, David Schleicher, Robin Wilson, Jana Singer, and Michael
Greenberger for their helpful suggestions and insights with this piece.
1. See, e.g., Christine Chun, The Mail-Order Bride Industry: The Perpetuation of Transnational
Economic Inequalities and Stereotypes, 17 U.
PA. J. INT’L ECON. L. 1155 (1996); Donna Lee, Mail Fantasy:
Global Sexual Exploitation in the Mail Order Bride Industry and Proposed Legal Solutions, 5 A
SIAN L.J. 139,
139 (1998); Eddy Meng, Mail-Order Brides: Gilded Prostitution and the Legal Response, 28
U. MICH. J. OF L.
REF. 197, 197 (1994); Vanessa Vergara, Abusive Mail Order Bride Marriage and the Thirteenth Amendment,
94 N
W. U. L. REV. 1547, 1547 (2000).
2. See Daniel Epstein, Romance is Dead: Mail Order Brides as Surrogate Corpses, 17
BUFF. J. GENDER
L. & SOC. POL’Y 61, 66 (2009) (likening mail order marriages to necrophilia).
3. See, e.g., Chun, supra note 1, at 1156 (contrasting the original mail order brides who Chun
describes as a “necessity based on specific historical and cultural conditions” with the modern “mail-
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86 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
calls into question the widespread perception of modern mail order brides as
simply unwitting victims.
Colonial mail order brides were considered heroes. Marriage has long been
touted as a civic virtue,
4
but in the early American colonies, marriage was
particularly important. The entire colonial endeavor hinged on marriage.
5
Without marriage there could be no stable family units, no children and no
future. The colonies needed women to come to America to marry, and to remain
as wives and mothers. The problem, however, was that most women found the
idea of immigrating to the struggling colonies unattractive.
6
Mail order brides
were the solution. These women came to the colonies when other women would
not. The colonial mail order brides made marriage possible and helped ensure
the survival and success of the colony.
I.
THE JAMESTOWN WOMEN
The first American mail order marriages occurred shortly after Britain and
France established their colonial settlements in the early 1600s.
7
Both countries
actively encouraged immigration to America but soon realized that immigration
alone could not achieve the population increase needed for colonial expansion
and success. Few families immigrated to the Southern colonies of the United
States or the colonies of New France.
8
Unlike the northern settlements of the
order bride industry [which] nurtures structures of subordination based on race, sex, and class within
countries, among nations and between individuals”).
4. See, e.g., Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 376 (1971) (stating that “[m]arriage involves
interests of basic importance in our society”); see also Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 496 (1965)
(Goldberg, J., concurring) (describing the traditional family relationship as “a relation as old and as
fundamental as our entire civilization”); see generally H.R.
REP. NO. 104-664, pt. 5, at 12 (1996)
(explaining the importance of marriage to a civilized society); Rachel F. Moran, How Second-Wave
Feminism Forgot the Single Woman, 33 H
OFSTRA L. REV. 223, 225 (2004) (stating that in the colonial
period “[w]hite women’s civic virtue was largely defined by early marriage . . . .”).
5. See J
ULIA CHERRY SPRUILL, WOMEN’S LIFE AND WORK IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES 3 (1972)
(explaining that “mothers and housewives were indispensable” to the success of the colonies and
were needed to increase population and make the male colonists “more comfortable”).
6. Cf. Peter N. Moogk, Reluctant Exiles; Emigrants from France in Canada Before 1760, 46 W
M &
MARY Q. 436, 465, 475 (July 1989) (purporting the idea that any woman would immigrate voluntarily
was considered so unlikely that when, in 1659, a group of forty women (twelve wives, some single
women and a few nuns) left La Fleche, France for Canada, the townspeople “tried to prevent their
departure because no one could believe the women were going voluntarily”).
7. M
ICHAEL L. COOPER, JAMESTOWN, 1607, at 1 (2007) (noting that the Jamestown Colony was
founded in 1607); Gwenael Cartier, City of Quebec 1608–2008: 400 Years of Censuses, Canadian Social
Trends, June 3, 2008, at 62, available at http://www.narea.org/2008meeting/City%20of%20Quebec%
201608-2008.pdf (noting that Quebec City was founded one year later, in 1608).
8. S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 3–5 (explaining that, although women came to the southern colonies,
they did so in much smaller numbers). Moreover, even fewer came with children and some families
like that of Sir Thomas gates, sent his daughters back to England after his wife died on the voyage
over. Id. at 4. Recruitment was also not helped by the stories of the incredible hardships faced by the
early colonists, especially the women. Id. at 4–5. There were frightening stories about disease and
famine including the tale of one colonist who “slue his wife as she slept in his bosome, cut her in
pieces, powedered her & fedd upon her till he had clean devoured all her parts saveinge her heade.”
Id. at 5; see also Robert Charles Anderson, About the Great Migration, A
SURVEY OF NEW ENGLAND:
1620–1640 (Sept. 10, 2012), http://www.greatmigration.org/new_englands_great_migration.html
(stating that the Southern colonies were populated primarily with single men); Moogk, supra note 7,
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 87
United States, which were populated by family groups
9
fleeing religious
persecution,
10
the southern and French colonies were established by individual
speculators and fortune hunters.
11
Colonists in the southern and French
settlements sought to profit from America’s abundant land and natural
resources, but they did not bring families and they did not intend to stay.
12
Consequently, because few families immigrated to the American South and New
France, those colonies’ populations were almost exclusively male and transient.
13
To solve this gender imbalance and entice the male colonists to remain, the
colonial governments actively sought to increase the number of marriageable
women in the colony.
14
On at least three separate occasions, single European
women were recruited to immigrate to the colonies and marry the surplus
bachelors.
15
The first request for brides was made by the Jamestown settlement in
Virginia.
16
The founding colonists of the 1607 Jamestown colony were
exclusively male.
17
Shortly thereafter, the Virginia Company began to
specifically solicit female as well as male immigrants,
18
but only small numbers
of women responded.
19
The failure to attract women devastated the colony’s
prospects. By 1614, a mere seven years after the establishment of Jamestown by
the Virginia Company of London, it was clear that the fledgling colony was
at 482–84 (explaining that France also had difficulties attracting large numbers of immigrant women
and actually had a policy of discouraging family migration). A French official in 1669 explained that
such immigration was “‘a bad practice’ since ‘one hundred persons, composing twenty-five families,
will cost as much to the king as one hundred bachelors,’ who, presumably, would all be productive
workers.” Id. at 483. France hoped that marriage after emancipation from indentured servitude,
which was the case for many immigrants to New France, would “convert migrant workers into
settlers.” See id. at 484.
9. Anderson, supra note 8 (explaining that the proportion of New England immigrants who
traveled in family groups was the highest in American immigration history).
10. See id. Between 1629–1640, over 20,000 men, women, and children emigrated from England
in order to form a religious community. Unlike colonists who settled in other parts of the United
States, the Puritan colonists came seeking spiritual rather than economic rewards. See id.
11. See id. (stating that colonists seeking economic betterment were unlikely to settle in New
England and instead settled elsewhere).
12. See id. (explaining that colonists seeking economic betterment did not settle in New England
because there was no cash crop there); see also S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 8 (explaining that unmarried
men planned to return to England after making their fortunes).
13. Anderson, supra note 8 (stating that the Southern colonies consisted largely of single males);
see also S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 8 (purporting that unmarried men did not intend to settle down in the
colonies but rather return to England).
14. See S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 3 (stating that the Virginia Company began to recruit and offer
incentives for unmarried women to immigrate to the colonies).
15. Id.
16. See id. at 4 (stating that the “Great Supply” shipment to Jamestown brought about one
hundred women).
17. See id. at 3 (stating that there was no mention of women among the first people to arrive at
Jamestown).
18. See id.
at 4 (noting that according to the 1609 broadside (poster), both men and women were
solicited for “the better strengthening of the colony”).
19. See id. (stating that women continued to come to the colonies but in smaller numbers than
men).
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88 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
beginning to falter.
20
The dearth of women threatened the permanence of the
colony.
21
The male colonists could not marry and start families. Without
families, these men were unable to establish the roots necessary to sustain an
enduring colony. As historian Julia Cherry Spruill writes, “these unmarried men
were not interested in building permanent homes in Virginia or in cultivating
lands to be enjoyed by future generations.”
22
Instead, the colonists simply
“planned to make their fortunes and then return to England.”
23
Responding to the concern caused by the lack of female colonists, Lord
Bacon, a founding member of the Virginia Company, stated “it is time to plant
with women as well as with men; that the plantation may spread into
generations, and not ever be pieced from without.”
24
Bacon recognized that in
order to achieve a self-sustaining colonial population, a significant number of
women needed to be convinced to immigrate to the colony.
25
Consequently, the
Virginia Company, which not only founded but also governed Jamestown, began
to actively recruit and provide incentives for women to come to America.
26
The Virginia Company first attempted to stabilize the population by
increasing the efforts to recruit families rather than single colonists. In 1614, the
Company’s lawyer, Richard Martin, spoke before the House of Lords and
declared that Virginia’s greatest need was “for honest laborers, with wives and
children . . . .”
27
Martin requested the appointment of a committee to consider
means of enticing families.
28
However, Martin, who was lawyer but not a
member of Parliament, was seen as forgetting his station when he demanded
action by the House. His speech was described as “the most unfitting that was
ever spoken in the house” and as a result, his demands were ignored.
29
When
the Company tried to increase the population again a few years later, it decided
to pursue a different strategy.
30
In 1619, the Virginia Company’s treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys, took control
of the Company and proposed a novel idea to save the colony (as well as his own
investment).
31
He recommended sending women as wives to make “the men
more setled [and] lesse moveable” and decrease the number of men who,
20. See id. at 8 (explaining that instability in Jamestown could arise and lead to the dissolution of
the plantations if men continued to be unsettled and without families or wives).
21. See id. (explaining that there were many more men than women in Jamestown and that
bachelors were not interested in residing permanently in the colonies).
22. Id.
23. Id.
24. Id. at 3.
25. See id. (noting that Bacon’s words described the function of women in the colonies).
26. See id. (“The founders of the colonies . . . made special appeals to young and marriageable
females, offering them not only generous land grants but also advantageous matrimonial matches.”).
They were also taken care of upon arrival. After landing in the colony, the women were placed in
homes of married householders and provided with food until they were married.
27. Id. at 8.
28. Id.
29. E
DWARD NEILL, HISTORY FOR THE VIRGINIA COMPANY: WITH LETTERS TO AND FROM THE FIRST
COLONY 70 (1869).
30. See id. at 72 (explaining that in 1619 the London Company sought to bring even more women
to the colonies to avoid instability).
31. T
HOMAS A. FOSTER, NEW MEN: MANLINESS IN EARLY AMERICA 9 (2011).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 89
because of the dearth of women, “stay [in the colony] but to gett something and
then return to England.”
32
Sandys also predicted that if not remedied quickly,
the gender imbalance would soon “breed a dissolucon, and so an overthrow of
the Plantation.”
33
The Company followed Sandys’s advice and in the Spring of 1620, ninety
marriageable women arrived in Jamestown.
34
The next year Sandys requested
the funds to recruit an additional 100 women.
35
By that time, the Company no
longer had the money to fund the women’s passage, but because of Sandys’s
insistence that more women were absolutely essential, the Company agreed to
raise the money by subscription and through the assistance of the Earl of
Southampton and others.
36
Through these efforts, the Company managed to pay
for the passage of another fifty brides.
37
By the time the initiative ended, the
Virginia Company had provided passage for 140 mail order brides.
38
Sandys’s impassioned plea and ominous warning demonstrate that the first
American mail order brides were viewed as essential to the success of the
American colonies. The Jamestown colony needed these women. By marrying
the colonists, the Jamestown brides helped discourage the men from returning to
England and, just as importantly, helped prevent the colonists who settled
permanently from entering into marriages with native women.
John Rolfe, who famously married Pocahontas, was not the only colonist to
take an Indian bride.
39
In 1608, when disease and starvation wiped out nearly a
third of the original Jamestown colonists, including many of the first female
settlers, a number of the male survivors married Indian women.
40
The number of
these marriages increased rapidly and by 1612, the Spanish ambassador to
England reported to Madrid that “between 40 to 50 Englishman were living in
Pohawaten’s [Pocahontas’s father] villages and had married Indian women.”
41
Shortly thereafter, the colonial government decided that such intermarriages
needed to be stopped.
42
Intermarriage was considered just as threatening to the future of the colony
as reverse immigration back to England.
43
Often, once a male colonist married
32. SPRUILL, supra note 5, at 8.
33. Id.
34. Id.
35. Id.
36. See id. at 8–9 (explaining that the Earl of Southhampton and other gentlemen sent over
women because they realized “that the plantation [could] never flourish” until families settled there).
37. Id. at 9.
38. See id. (stating that the company had sent ninety maids in 1620 and fifty maids in 1621 and
1622).
39. See R
OGER THOMPSON, WOMEN IN STUART ENGLAND AND AMERICA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
43 (1974) (noting that the marriage between Rolfe and Pocahontas was not an “isolated incident” and
other colonial men married Indian women as well).
40. J
ANA VOELKE STUDELSKA, WOMEN OF COLONIAL AMERICA 6 (2007).
41. A
LFRED A. CAVE, LETHAL ENCOUNTERS: ENGLISHMEN AND INDIANS IN COLONIAL VIRGINIA 75
(2011).
42. See infra note 48 (discussing Virginia’s interracial marriage bans).
43. See H.C. PORTER, T
HE INCONSTANT SAVAGE; ENGLAND AND THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN
1500–1660, at 110–11 (1979) (explaining that intermarriage with the Indians was a transgression
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an Indian woman, he abandoned the colony completely.”
44
In addition, even
marriages in which the Indian bride moved to Jamestown were viewed with
concern. The colonial government believed that Indian women would never
truly be committed to the colony and viewed marriage with these women as a
significant security threat.
45
In 1705, one commentator noted that the example of
John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, “might well have been followed by other
settlers . . . were it not for fear that the women shou’d conspire with those of their
own Nation, to destroy their husbands.”
46
Given these concerns,
47
it is not surprising that in 1691, Virginia became the
first colony to prohibit white-Indian marriages.
48
However, before such
marriages could be effectively prevented, significant numbers of marriageable
white women had to be available. The Jamestown brides provided the settlers
with alternatives to Indian women and thus made the discouragement and
subsequent outlawing of white-Indian relationships possible.
The Jamestown brides were considered vital to the future of the colony and
therefore the type of woman recruited was an issue addressed with care. The
colony was not simply looking for any woman willing to immigrate; they were
looking for “founding mothers.” The Virginia Company’s letters indicate that
significant attention was exercised in choosing the women. The recruits were all
women who “had been received . . . upon good recommendation.”
49
They were
not prostitutes, criminals, or beggars, and although many of the intended brides
were poor, they were not desperate.
50
Moreover, these women, unlike the female colonists who followed
husbands or fathers, chose to immigrate. This choice was considered essential,
and the government actively protected women from the possibility of forced
requiring confession to God).
44. See id. at 109–11 (explaining that the colonists viewed intermarriage between colonists and
Indians as against the beliefs in the Bible); C
AVE, supra note 41, at 75–76 (noting that the Jamestown
colony considered “desertion to the Indians as the most extreme indictment of the colony”).
45. See, e.g., R
ICHARD GODBEER, SEXUAL REVOLUTION IN EARLY AMERICA 163 (2002) (noting that
“Indian’s used their sexual charms to ‘entice’ Englishmen into traps”); M
ARILYN YALOM, A HISTORY
OF THE
WIFE 144 (2001) (explaining that settlers feared that Indian women would turn against their
English husbands and thus did not engage in intermarriage to the degree that they could have).
46. See Y
ALOM, supra note 45, at 144; see also THOMPSON, supra note 39, at 43 (noting that white-
Indian intermarriage during the early years of the colony was common).
47. The irony attached to these concerns is that although there appear to have been no instances
where an Indian wife betrayed her husband, there are numerous instances in which Indian husbands
betrayed their wives. See Bethany Berger, After Pocahontas: Indian Women and the Law 1830–1934, 21
A
M. IND. L. REV. 1, 35–37 (1997) (discussing numerous instances in which Indian wives were betrayed
or abandoned by their white husbands).
48. H
EIDI HUTNER, COLONIAL WOMEN: RACE AND CULTURE IN STUART DRAMA 13 (2001)
(explaining that the law expanded an earlier 1662 law which made fornication between the races
illegal). The 1691 statute stated: “Whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall
intermarry with a negroe, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months
after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever.” Id.
49. S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 8.
50. See P
HILLIP BRUCE, SOCIAL LIFE OF VIRGINIA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 233 (1907)
(explaining that although many young maids brought to the colonies belonged to the lower orders in
England, they “were chosen especially for their previous good character”).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 91
immigration.
51
When a fortune hunter named Owen Smith pretended to have
received a royal commission authorizing him to force single women onto ships
bound for Virginia, he was quickly arrested.
52
Because the Jamestown brides were not forced to immigrate, the Virginia
Company and the Jamestown colonists needed to provide the women with
significant incentives to leave England. The men also needed to guarantee the
women substantial privileges once they arrived in the colony. A number of these
incentives were monetary.
53
Each woman was given petticoats, caps, an apron,
two pairs of shoes and six pairs of sheets.
54
They were provided free transport to
the colony and upon arrival were given food and shelter until they married.
55
The recruiters assured the women that they would not be forced “to marry
against their will” and promised them wealthy husbands.
56
The women were
told that they would be married to freemen, not servants, and that any eligible
man would possess enough wealth to maintain a household comfortably.
57
The
Company secured this promise by requiring any colonist who married one of the
women to pay the Company 120 pounds (later increased to 150) of the best leaf
tobacco as reimbursement for the woman’s transport costs.
58
In addition, the
Company promised the women a certain level of status and ensured this promise
by granting married households the first servants.
59
The monetary and social prospects undoubtedly appealed to the women,
some of whom were orphans or widows
60
and nearly all of whom came from
51. JOHN MILLER, THE FIRST FRONTIER: LIFE IN COLONIAL AMERICA 27 (1986) (explaining that this
proposition stands in stark contrast to Sandys’ earlier plan to force orphan children to immigrate the
colony as apprentices; the Company sent 100 orphan children to the colony, including many who
vehemently opposed immigrating and were forcible placed upon the ships).
52. See id. (explaining that it appears that some women who arrived in Virginia may have been
sold at auction; however, it was stipulated in their contract that they were not to be married to
servants, but to “independent land owners of good reputation”); see also B
RANDON MARIE MILLER,
G
OOD WOMEN OF A WELL-BLESSED LAND 21 [hereinafter GOOD WOMEN] (explaining that a popular
song during this period was “The Woman Outwitted or the Weaver’s wife” which told the tale of a
wife “cunningly catch’d in a [t]rap, by her husband, who sold her for ten [p]ounds, and sent her to
Virginny”).
53. See B
RUCE, supra note 50, at 234–235 (stating that if a young woman came to the colonies and
did not find any of her choices for marriage suitable, she could become a domestic servant or
agricultural labor and earn more than what it cost to transport her to the colonies).
54. G
OOD WOMEN, supra note 52, at 23.
55. See B
RUCE, supra note 50, at 234 (stating that members of the Company paid for the maid’s
transport from England to the colonies and the Company gave orders to care for the young women
until they were married); see also S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 9 (stating that Virginia authorities placed
the young women in “homes of married householders,” which provided them food until they were
wed).
56. S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 9 (explaining that women would not be married to servants but to
freemen “with the means of maintaining them”).
57. Id.
58. Id. This money was paid as reimbursement for travel costs but is often misinterpreted as
“buying” the women. See, e.g., R
OSALIND MILES, WHO COOKED THE LAST SUPPER?: THE WOMEN’S
HISTORY OF THE WORLD 196 (2001) (describing the women as “merchandise” that was “sold” to the
male colonists).
59. Id. (stating that the Company promised to provide married couples with the first servants
sent over in order to “preserve families and proper married men before single persons”).
60. See G
OOD WOMEN, supra note 52, at 22 (noting that eleven of the women were orphaned,
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modest backgrounds.
61
However, these were not the only incentives used to
attract brides to the colony. In Virginia, men outnumbered women six to one in
the early decades of the seventeenth century and three to one as late as the
1680s.
62
During the same period in England, there were approximately nine
males for every ten females.
63
This disparity resulted in the high valuation of
and greater rights and opportunities for women in the colony. The leaders of
Virginia and its neighboring colonies recognized that many single women would
find this ratio attractive and actively used it as a recruitment tool. For example,
a 1666 advertisement for mail order brides placed by the South Carolina colony
promised,
If any Maid or single Woman have a desire to go over, they will
think themselves in the Golden Age, when Men paid a Dowry
for their Wives; for if they be but civil and under 50 years of Age,
some honest Man or other will purchase them for their Wives.
64
As this advertisement demonstrates, their scarcity made colonial women
valuable; therefore, colonial women were likely to marry and marry well.
Scarcity also meant that the women enjoyed an increased legal and social
position relative to their non-colonial sisters. Early colonial case law confirms
that American women occupied a powerful position in the marriage market. A
1623 breach of promise case from Virginia provides one telling example.
65
Breach of promise cases are suits for damages caused when one party
breaks off an engagement and the jilted party believes that he or she has been
unfairly treated and seriously harmed by the loss of the marriage.
66
The Virginia
case involved a young colonial widow name Cicely Jordan whose husband had
recently died.
67
A few days after her husband’s death, she accepted the proposal
of Reverend Greville Pooley.
68
However, given the speed of the engagement,
Jordan asked Pooley to keep it a secret to avoid the implications of indecency
surrounding an engagement arranged so soon after her husband’s death.
69
Nonetheless, Pooley quickly began bragging about his engagement to Jordan.
70
His behavior so incensed Jordan that she called off the engagement and accepted
the proposal of another suitor, William Farrar.
71
Pooley then sued her for breach
another eleven had lost their fathers, and three were widows).
61. See B
RUCE, supra note 50, at 233 (noting that many young women brought from England
were from lower orders of English society but were chosen for their good character).
62. Y
ALOM, supra note 46, at 141.
63. Id.
64. Id.
65. T
HOMPSON, supra note 40, at 36.
66. See S
ASKIA LETTMAIER, BROKEN ENGAGEMENTS: THE ACTION FOR BREACH OF PROMISE OF
MARRIAGE AND THE FEMININE IDEAL, 1800–1940, at 22 (2010) (explaining that there were remedies for
breach of present promises to marry and breach of future promises to marry).
67. Id.
68. Id.
69. Id.
70. Id. at 37.
71. See A
LEXANDER BROWN, THE FIRST REPUBLIC IN AMERICA: AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF
THIS
NATION 564 (1898).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 93
of promise.
72
According to Pooley, he and Jordan entered into a marriage contract by
using “such words or speech tending to a contract of marriage at one time as
might entangle or breed scruples in their consciences.”
73
Pooley also produced a
witness to the contract, a Captain Madison, who testified that he heard Jordan
agree to marry Pooley and heard Pooley speak the words of the marriage
contract for himself and for Jordan.
74
Two other witnesses also testified that they
had heard Jordan state that Pooley “might have fared the better had he not
revealed [the engagement].”
75
Nevertheless, despite such persuasive evidence,
the Virginia Council, the governing body which heard the case,
76
refused to issue
a decision.
77
The Council explained that it could not determine “so nice a
difference.”
78
Instead, the Virginia Council referred the case to the Virginia
Company in London.
79
Like the Council, the Virginia Company shied away from
issuing an official decision in the case.
80
Eventually, the decision was delayed so
long that Pooley was forced to withdraw his suit. Because there was no verdict
in his favor, Pooley was ordered to post a £500 bond ensuring that he would
never have any claim to Jordan or her property.
81
The Jordan breach of promise case demonstrates the powerful position
occupied by women in colonial Virginia, particularly in contrast to the position
of women in Great Britain. The fact that this case was initiated by Pooley
indicates that he was the one most harmed by the lack of marriage. In Great
Britain at this time it was increasingly rare for men to initiate these suits. Most
British breach of promise suit were brought by women because they were the
72. Id.
73. V
IRGINIA GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HOUSE OF DELEGATES, JOURNAL OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
OF THE
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA [DOC. 1] 24 (1919), available at
http://books.google.com/books/download/Journal_of_the_House_of_Delegates_of_the.pdf?id=TS
MSAAAAYAAJ&output=pdf&sig=ACfU3U38QwtirpMBmBvpilJoG_1KeFnYtQ (last visited Dec.,
2012).
74. B
ROWN, supra note 71, at 564 (demonstrating that Captain Madison could not state whether
he heard her consent to those words).
75. Id.
76. Id. (explaining that the case was presented to the Virginia Council, which consisted of the
leaders of the Virginia colony). The charter of 1606 established the colony and set out that it was to be
governed by a council of thirteen men, although only seven were specifically named. 1 A
LEXANDER
BROWN, THE GENESIS OF THE UNITED STATES: A NARRATIVE OF THE MOVEMENT IN ENGLAND, 1605–
1616, at 64–75 (Houghton Mifflin, 1897). They were to choose their own successors and elect their
president. Id. They were under the control of the council of thirteen, which was a group appointed by
the King to look after the crown’s interest in Virginia. Id. The Virginia Council had many powers
including the right to act as a court. Id.
77. B
ROWN, supra note 71, at 564.
78. Id.; see Fadzilah Amin, Words and Phrases Subject To Fashionable Change, T
HE STAR ONLINE,
(April 24, 2012), available at http://thestar.com.my/english/story.asp?file=/2012/4/24/
lifefocus/11149264&sec=lifefocus (explaining that, in the seventeenth century, the word “nice” was
commonly used to describe something as a “fine or subtle” distinction).
79. B
ROWN, supra note 76, at 564.
80. Pathway: A Family History, Cicely Reynolds Baley Jordon—Records of the Virginia Company,
available at http://biographiks.com/pleasant/cecely.htm (last visited Dec. 1, 2012).
81. Id.
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94 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
group typically harmed by a failed engagement.
82
However, the ease with which
Jordan found another fiancé also supports the idea that in the colonies, it was the
man, rather than the woman, who was most harmed by a failed engagement.
Pooley’s initiation of this breach of promise case was unusual, but it is even
more surprising that he lost. In Britain at the time, a present declaration of a
future intent to be married was enough to form a binding contract.
83
The fact
that neither the Virginia Council nor the Virginia Company were willing to issue
such a finding indicates that colonial women’s marriage choices received an
astounding level of respect and deference. Had the case occurred in Britain, it is
likely that Jordan would have been held to her engagement or forced to pay
damages.
84
The ruling is especially telling because the Virginia Council clearly believed
there had been an engagement.
85
In fact, the colonial government was so
troubled by the Jordan case that shortly after the breach of promise suit was
resolved, the Council passed a law demonstrating its disapproval of Jordan’s
actions to ensure that such a case would never happen again.
86
Specifically, the
Council enacted the law to deter subsequent women from breaking their
engagements and to guarantee that those women who did break their
engagements would not be treated as leniently as Jordan.
87
The new law stated
that:
Whereas, to the great contempt of the . . . majesty of God and ill
example to others . . . certain women within this colony
82. LEAH LENEMAN, PROMISES, PROMISES: MARRIAGE LITIGATION IN SCOTLAND 1698–1830, at 9
(2003). For example, in her study of declaratory actions filed in Scotland between 1700 and 1829,
historian Leah Leneman found that of the 417 cases, 371 were raised by women and only forty-six by
men. Id. Earlier periods seem to have had similar ratios. In a study of marriage suits before the
marriage courts in Basel between 1550–1592, eight-two percent were initiated by women. In fact,
historian Susanna Burghartz found the number of suits initiated by women increased during this
time period seventy-eight percent of suits were raised by women during 1585–1589, which increased
to eighty-five percent between 1645–1649. It remained high, at seventy-one percent through 1685–
1689. J
OEL FRANCIS HARRINGTON, THE UNWANTED CHILD: THE FATE OF FOUNDLINGS, ORPHANS AND
JUVENILE CRIMINALS 327 n.72 (2009).
83. See L
ENEMAN, supra note 82, at 25 (explaining that the court found a promise for future
marriage to be a binding promise of marriage where a Scottish man had sexual relations with a
young woman and promised her father that he would marry her in the future).
84. See L
ETTMAIER, supra note 66, at 27. For example, in five breach-of-promise cases that were
studied, three of the plaintiffs were men and all three men were awarded substantial damages. Id.
85. See infra note 86 (citing that fact that “certain women” within the colony had contracted
themselves to two men at once). Contemporaries understood this as a clear reference to the
Jordan/Pooley engagement. See B
ROWN, supra note 71, at 564–65.
86. See E
DWARD D. NEILL, THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN VIRGINIA DURING THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY 10 (1867) (quoting an order that punished flirting and referring to “Poor Pooley”).
87. See Harrison v. Cage & Wife, 1 Ld. Raym. 387 (1698) (awarding the male plaintiff Harrison
400L as a result of the lady’s change of heart). The Pooley case is even more telling given the fact that
there are examples from England during this period in which women are severely fined for breach of
promise. What is particularly interesting about the Harrison case is the fact that on appeal to the
Kings Bench for excessive damages, the argument that was the most persuasive, though ultimately
failed, was that a man is not advanced by marriage. Clearly, this was not the case in the Jamestown
colony and all the more reason why it is significant that Pooley’s suit failed. See also L
ETTMAIER, supra
note 66, at 24 (describing the contractual rationale for awarding monetary redress for breach-of-
promise).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 95
have, . . . contracted them[selves] . . . to two several men at one
time . . . whereby much trouble doth grow between . . . parties,
and the Governor and Council of . . . State much disquieted. T’o
prevent the like offense to others hereafter, it is by the . . .
Governor and Council ordered in Court that . . . every minister
give notice in his church, to . . . his parishioners, that what man
or woman . . . soever shall use any words or speech tend[ing] . . .
to the contract of marriage, though . . . not right and legal, yet so
may entangle . . . and breed struggle in their consciences . . . shall
for the third offense undergo . . . perhaps corporal punishment,
or other punishment by fine or otherwise according to the guilt
of the person . . . so offending.
88
The law demonstrated the Council’s disapproval but had little practical effect on
colonial women, as it did not apply until the “third offense.”
89
Shortly after the
law’s passage another colonial woman, Eleanor Spragg, contracted herself to two
men at one time.
90
Her actions clearly violated the newly-enacted law yet her
punishment consisted solely of a public apology.
91
Clearly, the prohibition of
dual engagements (entering into a new engagement without release from the
first) had no teeth and was easily ignored by colonial women.
After Spragg’s offense, the Virginia Council passed a stronger version of the
law, which stated that any person who enters a contract “of marriage to several
persons, shall be whipped or fined according to the quality of the persons
offending.”
92
However, this change also had little effect. One telling example
involved a colonist named Sarah Harrison Blair who, despite this law,
repudiated her written contract promising to marry William Roscoe, and also
dictated the terms of her subsequent marriage to James Blair.
93
When the
clergyman marrying her to Blair asked for her promise to obey she answered “no
obey.”
94
When the question was repeated she replied “no obey” again.
95
In the
end, the reverend acquiesced to her demands and performed the ceremony with
no mention of the promise to obey.
96
This example demonstrates colonial
women’s power and choice in the marriage market and how they used their
power to rewrite the traditional rules of marriage and courtship.
Conversely, at the time of the Jamestown colony’s founding, married British
women had few individual rights.
97
England operated under the system of feme
covert, which means “covered woman” and which furthered the idea that upon
88. NEILL, supra note 86, at 10.
89. See id.
90. S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 151.
91. See id. (explaining that Spragg was required to stand before the congregation in church and,
acknowledging her offense, “ask God’s and the Congregation’s forgiveness”).
92. Id.
93. See id. at 152 (explaining how Sarah Harrison Blair responded in opposition to the
clergyman’s proffered vows, refusing to state that she would “obey” her husband).
94. Id.
95. Id.
96. Id.
97. See id. at 340 (noting that in England, all women “were without political rights, and generally
wives were legal nonentities”).
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96 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
marriage, a woman’s independent legal identity gets subsumed or “covered” by
her husband’s legal identity.
98
Due to the doctrine of coverture, married women
in England could not hold property in their own name, alter or dispose of
property without their husband’s consent (even if such property was their own
inheritance), or make wills or appoint executors without their husband’s
agreement, and all their moveable property became their husband’s with
marriage.
99
The system was vastly different in the colonies.
Colonial women enjoyed greater rights and privileges than their
contemporaries living in Britain.
100
Beginning with the Jamestown colony, the
traditional rules of coverture were relaxed.
101
Many of the early colonies,
particularly those with the greatest scarcity of women, afforded married women
rights on par with husband’s’ rights.
102
For instance, when the Virginia lands
were first distributed, the members of the Virginia House of Burgesses asked the
Virginia Company, in a petition of July 31, 1619, that parcels of land be allotted
for both the male colonists and their wives.
103
The men explained their request
by stating that “[i]n a newe plantation it is not knowen whether man or woman
be the most necessary.”
104
The Company clearly agreed, and granted the wives
property shares equal to those given to their husbands.
105
The equal distribution of property exemplifies the greater property rights
possessed by colonial women, as well as the greater equality that existed
between the sexes,
106
but that example is far from the only one. In his seminal
work, historian Richard Morris argues that colonial women in general “were
attaining a measure of individuality and independence in excess of that of their
98. Id. at 341 (noting that a married could have “no will or property of her own”); see generally 1
W
ILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES *442 (“By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in
law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is . . . incorporated and consolidated into
that of the husband; under whose wing, protection and cover, she performs every thing.”) (internal
citation omitted).
99. SPRUILL, supra note 5, at 356 (noting that a husband had “absolute possession of all his wife’s
personal property”).
100. See infra notes 106–08 and accompanying text (describing historian Richard Morris’s work on
the greater rights of colonial women and the debate surrounding his work).
101. See infra notes 103–12.
102. Id.
103. 1 J
OURNALS OF THE HOUSE OF BURGESSES OF VIRGINIA, 1619–1658/59, REPORT OF THE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1619, at 6–7 (The Colonial Press, H.R. McIlwaine ed.,
1905); 1 R
ECORDS OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY 566 (1619).
104. Id. at 7.
105. Id.; see also S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 9. This was the same year the colonists requested the first
shipment of women. See S
PRUILL, supra note 5, at 8. In addition, a parcel of land, called Maid’s Town
was also set aside for the unmarried women to use until their marriages. B
ENJAMIN TRUMBILL, A
GENERAL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 67 (1810).
106. See A
NN JONES, WOMEN WHO KILL 58 (2009) (stating that “[m]any colonies offered outright
grants of land to women—married or single . . . [and] [f]rom the beginning Virginia offered [women]
equal pay for equal work in the skilled trades such as weaving”). It should be noted however, that
there is significant debate among historians regarding whether colonial women’s property rights
were truly more expansive than contemporaneous English laws. See, e.g., Marylynn Salmon, The Legal
Status of Women in Early America: A Reappraisal, 1 L.
& HISTORY REV. 129, 131 (1983) (arguing that this
idea of greater freedom and status enjoyed by colonial women has been exaggerated and is based too
heavily on what she sees as the questionable work of historian Richard Morris).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 97
English sisters.”
107
Not all historians agree that colonial women in general
experienced greater rights,
108
but most concede that women in the Chesapeake
area colonies—Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, the states with the fewest
women—granted women more dower and inheritance rights,
109
as well as
greater legal powers. For example, in seventeenth century Virginia, wives were
often executrixes of their late husband’s estates and were frequently provided
with more than the one-third share of the estate required under dower law.
110
In
addition, “through the legal principle of tacit consent . . . married women
obtained the status of feme-sole trader, [which] gave them the right to sue, conduct
business, be sued, enter into contracts, sell real property and have the power of
attorney in the absence of their husbands.”
111
Moreover, even when colonial
legislatures tried to limit these greater rights, they often failed. In one telling
example, the 1634 Maryland legislature was unable to pass a bill requiring that
any “female inheriting land must marry (or remarry) within seven years of
possession or forfeit her claim.”
112
Colonial mail order brides were the beneficiaries of these greater rights.
Most colonial mail order brides immigrated to the Chesapeake colonies, the
colonies with the greatest scarcity of women and the colonies most willing to
bestow rights on their female immigrants. Consequently, by immigrating,
colonial mail order brides received significant monetary benefits, power and
independence. Nevertheless, their arrival in America is often depicted as one of
victimization rather than choice. In her 2008 book Eve to Dawn, feminist Marilyn
French describes the story of the Jamestown brides as one of abuse and
exploitation. She writes:
[T]he government decided to shanghai a hundred or so “young
and uncorrupt” girls, force them aboard a ship, and sell them as
wives to Virginia men for the cost of their passage. Ninety girls
were impressed in 1620, fifty more in 1621–22; all were soon
married, but men clamored for more, insisting they needed
women to wash their clothes and nurse them. Through
terrorism and rape, the sex ratio became three men to every
woman.
113
By describing the Jamestown brides as hapless victims, French’s portrayal
ignores the fact that colonial mail order brides made a reasonable choice to
107. RICHARD B. MORRIS, STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LAW: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE IN
THE
SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 129 (1930).
108. See Norma Basch, Invisible Women: The Legal Fiction of Marital Utility in Nineteenth-Century
America, 5 F
EMINIST STUD. 346, 348 (1979) (stating that married women’s property acts failed to alter a
woman’s position in society). However, even more skeptical historians, such as Norma Basch,
concede that, at the very least, colonial women benefited from a “lenient application of some common
law principles.” Id.
109. See J
OAN HOFF, LAW, GENDER AND INJUSTICE: A LEGAL HISTORY OF U.S. WOMEN 83–84 (1994)
(stating that “the very earliest American settlements tended to be ‘more lenient toward women with
respect to a limited number of assorted economic functions and inheritance or dower rights’”).
110. Id. at 85.
111. Id. at 87.
112. E
LIZABETH FROST, WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE IN AMERICA 2 (2005).
113. 2 M
ARILYN FRENCH, FROM EVE TO DAWN, A HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE WORLD 267 (2008).
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98 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
control their marriages and better their lives.
114
Such inaccurate portrayals are
not harmless; they perpetuate inaccurate and harmful beliefs regarding modern
mail order marriages.
Articles on the modern mail order bride industry describe it as “gilded
prostitution” and “human trafficking,” and argue that the “traffic” in mail order
brides must be stopped.
115
Moreover, even when these articles acknowledge that
modern mail order brides frequently view themselves as women taking control
of their lives, scholars and feminist advocates frequently dismiss these
explanations as either “rationalization[s]” by “desperate women,”
116
or describe
mail order marriages as simply another avenue for potential female
victimization. Such critics acknowledge that these independent women “do not
fit the stereotype of the docile wife, willing to submit to the control of an
American husband.”
117
However, rather than viewing the inapplicability of the
stereotype as an indication that mail order marriage can be a reasonable choice
for independent women, these scholars view women’s independence as a fact
likely to increase their risk of physical abuse.
118
Re-examining the history of mail order marriages can help identify the
origins of these modern misconceptions and rediscover the feminist origins of
many of the current marriages. In particular, the history of another group of
colonial mail order brides, women commonly referred to as the “filles du roi,” or
the “King’s daughters,” is illustrative. The descriptions of the filles du roi
demonstrate both the extent to which they were valued by their contemporaries
and how their experiences nevertheless quickly become subjected to rumor and
disparagement.
II.
THE FILLES DU ROI
The filles du roi were a group of nearly 800 French women who immigrated
to New France as potential brides for the male colonists.
119
Like the Jamestown
colony, New France faced significant difficulty recruiting immigrants and
increasing its population.
120
The filles du roi, like the Jamestown brides, helped
ensure the colony’s survival at a time when female immigration to New France
was virtually non-existent.
121
The French perceived Canada as remote and
114. See, e.g., MIMI ABROMOWITZ, REGULATING THE LIVES OF WOMEN 46 (1996). French’s portrayal
is far from unique. It is quite common for descriptions of these women to focus on their “sale,”
describing the Jamestown brides as part of a scheme devised by an English sea captain to “sell ‘wives’
for 120 pounds of leaf tobacco – or about $80.” Id. Moreover in the next sentence Abramovitz
discusses kidnapping other women and bringing them to the colonies, clearly inviting a comparison
between the two groups. Id. at 46–47.
115. See e.g., Chun, supra note 1; Meng, supra note 1; Vergara, supra note 1; Epstein, supra note 2..
116. See Vergara, supra note 1, at 1557 (dismissing the statements of a Filipina mail order bride
who stated “[w]e have our freedom and we choose for ourselves. There is nothing that can be done
to stop us from giving our names to pen pal companies. I don’t think of this as a dirty business . . .
We’re not being forced. This is what we want.”).
117. Chun, supra note 1, at 1186.
118. Id. at 1155, 1186.
119. See A
LLAN GREER, THE PEOPLE OF NEW FRANCE 17 (1997).
120. See infra notes 160–63 and accompany text.
121. See H
UBERT CHARBONNEAU ET AL., THE FIRST FRENCH CANADIANS, PIONEERS IN THE ST.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 99
dangerous,
122
and French women were particularly unwilling to immigrate.
123
Consequently, by the mid-seventeenth century, decades after the founding of the
first French settlement, the population in New France was still almost entirely
male and growing at such a slow rate that it resembled more of an outpost than a
colony.
124
This slow growth was particularly concerning because by that time,
the neighboring English colonies had begun to flourish.
125
The problems plaguing New France resembled those experienced a
generation earlier in Jamestown. The lack of marriageable women meant that
most French colonists viewed their time in New France as temporary.
126
Nearly
three quarters of the colonists returned to France within a few years.
127
This
population loss was further compounded by the fact that many of the male
colonists married native women and left the colony to live with their new bride’s
tribe.
128
By the time the French government began to recruit the filles du roi, white-
Indian relationships were being treated as a significant problem. However, in
the early 1600s there had been discussions of encouraging white-Indian
marriages as a means of fostering assimilation.
129
The colony initially hoped the
native population would convert to Christianity and become French citizens.
130
Therefore, the French government provided incentives for Indian people to
convert. The 1627 New France charter specifically stated that
savages who will be led to the faith and to profess it will be
considered natural Frenchmen, and . . . will be able to come and
live in France when they wish to, and there acquire property,
LAWRENCE VALLEY 23, 27 (describing the factors that prevented many French from immigrating and
the “weakness of female immigration”); Moogk, supra note 6, at 463 (describing the extreme
reluctance of the French to immigrate).
122. See Moogk, supra note 6, at 465 (describing the Atlantic passage as “costly and dangerous”).
123. See id. at 475 (describing the particular rarity of female immigration).
124. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL, supra note 121, at 36 (noting that there were twice as many men than
women in the colonies).
125. E
NCYCLOPEDIA OF CANADA’S PEOPLES 540 (Paul R. Magocsi, ed. 1999) (noting Canada’s desire
to “hem in the English colonies to the south” as well as Canada’s almost complete reliance on
population growth due to births rather than immigration).
126. See id. at 79 (noting that in Canada, women were scarce and that “settling down is a function
of finding a wife”).
127. Id. at 198.
128. See S
ARAH MELTZER, COLONIZER OR COLONIZED: THE HIDDEN STORIES OF EARLY MODERN
FRENCH CULTURE 116 (2012) (noting the growing fear that intermarriages caused French men “to
become barbarians and make themselves similar to [the Indians]”); The Coureurs du Bois, T
HE
CHRONICLES OF AMERICA, available at http://www.chroniclesofamerica.com/french/coureur_de_
bois.htm. There was even a French term for these men: “coureurs du bois,” which meant “man of the
woods” and referred to French men who traded with the Indians and adopted their lifestyle,
frequently married Indian women, and lived as part of an Indian village. Id.
129. See G
REER, supra note 119, at 17 (stating that there was talk in the early seventeenth century of
marrying French men and Native women but the idea petered out in the 1660s); see also Guillaume
Aubert, “The Blood of France”: Race and Purity of Blood in the French Atlantic World, 61 W
M. & MARY Q.
439, 451–52 (2004) (stating that “colonial policymakers deployed ambitious plans of assimilation
through intermarriage”).
130. See Aubert, supra note 129, at 451–52 (stating that the French intended to convert the Natives
to Christians).
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100 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
with rights of inheritance and bequest, just as if they had been
born Frenchmen, without being required to make any
declaration or to become naturalized.
131
French officials also hoped that intermarriage would encourage assimilation; the
government even established a fund of several thousand livres to provide
dowries for prospective Christian Indian brides.
132
However, these efforts to
foster assimilation through intermarriage failed. Few native women converted
and the dowry fund was never used.
133
Once the French government decided that the assimilation of native women
was untenable,
134
it became increasingly concerned about the temptation these
women posed to colonial men. They worried that instead of the male colonists
convincing native women to adopt French lifestyles and customs, Indian women
were attracting French men away from the colony.
135
Moreover, when male
colonists did desert,
136
such desertions reinforced the government’s fear that
uncontrolled sexual relations between French men and Indian women impeded
the successful establishment of the colony.
137
In addition, there was the possibility that these relationships could pose
physical danger to the colony.
138
A French-Indian relationship almost destroyed
an early French colony in Brazil. In his 1609 description of colonial endeavors,
New France chronicler Marc Lescarbot discussed the short-lived French colonial
endeavor in Brazil and described how a French interpreter who had “married a
savage woman, [and led] the most filthy and Epicurean manner of life” had
conspired to destroy the colony “in order to live after [his] desires.”
139
His plan
to murder the leaders of the colony was only prevented by one of his co-
131. Id.
132. Id. at 453.
133. Id. In fact, it was specifically abandoned at the same time that the filles du roi began arriving.
See G
REER, supra note 119, at 16 (noting that the filles du roi arrived between 1663 and 1673).
134. Aubert, supra note 129, at 453. Marie de l’Incarnation, the Ursuline Mother Superior in charge
of converting many of these women, noted that “[i]t [was] a very difficult thing, not to say impossible
to Frenchify or civilize [Indian girls]. We have more experience in this than anyone else, and we have
observed that out of a hundred who have passed through our hands we have scarcely civilized one.”
Id.
135. Id. at 455. The officials of New France feared the “ensauvagement” of the male colonists who
would trade with the Indian tribes and then decide to live and take sexual partners among them. Id.;
see also The Coureurs du Bois, supra note 132 (discussing the coureurs du bois).
136. See E
RIC J. DOLIN, FUR, FORTUNE AND EMPIRE: THE EPIC HISTORY OF THE FUR TRADE IN
AMERICA 97 (2011) (noting that contemporaries were appalled by the frequency with which these
men would “go native,” living with the Indians, taking Indian wives and refusing to settle down
“and contribute to the growth, permanence and social fabric of the colony”); H
AROLD INNIS, THE FUR
TRADE IN CANADA: AN INTRODUCTION TO CANADIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY 63 (1930).
137. See Aubert, supra note 129, at 451–52 (noting that this fear was expressed as early as 1609).
138. See T
HOMAS INGERSOLL, TO INTERMIX WITH OUR WHITE BROTHERS; MIXED BLOODS IN THE
UNITED STATES 280 (noting that there was little question that there were Frenchmen who intermarried
with Iroquois women and that the English attempted to use their influence with the tribe to prevent
such relationships from benefitting France, by encouraging the tribes to prevent intermarrying
French and their children from fraternizing with the French colony).
139. Aubert, supra note 129, at 451 (citing M
ARC LESCARBOT, HISTORY OF NEW FRANCE 159–60
(1612)).
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conspirator’s last minute change of heart.
140
In light of this earlier occurrence and the numerous French desertions to
Indian tribes, French policy changed from encouragement to prevention of
intermarriage.
141
However, before the government could realistically hope to
prohibit such relationships, there had to be a viable alternative. The filles du roi
were the solution.
The filles du roi represented a changed view about the type of women who
should help populate New France.
142
The filles du roi were recruited to save the
colony: it was hoped they would entice the French men away from native
women, help the men establish roots, and enable the colony to grow and
flourish.
143
Native women were no longer acceptable wives, the Indian dowry
program was abandoned, and all governmental efforts focused on the filles du
roi.
144
The filles du roi program was ultimately successful in creating a stable,
thriving colony. However, the immigration of mail order brides was not the
initial solution proposed to solve this problem. Like the Jamestown colony, the
idea of mail order brides only arose after more traditional immigration proposals
failed. The colonial government initially sought to solve the population problem
by increasing general immigration to New France, but this proposal was firmly
rejected by the King. The King’s minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert explained that
“[i]t would not be prudent [for the King] to depopulate his Kingdom as would be
necessary in order to populate Canada . . . the Country will become populated
gradually, and, with the passing of a reasonable amount of time, will become
quite considerable.”
145
After this rejection, Jean Talon, the Intendant of Quebec
City, proposed a more targeted immigration plan involving only young,
marriageable women.
146
The filles de roi program represented a compromise
between the King and the colonial government. France agreed to this proposal
and in 1663, began a matchmaking program that would eventually entice more
than 700 French women to leave France and move to Canada.
147
These women represented the future of the French colony. Because of their
importance, the French government was involved in nearly every aspect of the
140. LESCARBOT, supra note 139, at 160.
141. See Aubert, supra note 129, at 455 (explaining that French officials saw intermarriage as a
threat to the colony as intermarriage undermined their efforts to establish an orderly colony).
142. G
REER, supra note 119, at 17 (purporting that the “’king’s daughters’ program represented a
racial reorientation as much as a developmentalist agenda”). Thus, although the Indian dowry policy
was technically in place until 1683, the actions of the government of New France strongly
demonstrate that request for king’s daughters was in part a change in the view of intermarriage. See
Aubert, supra note 129, at 453 (explaining that none of the money that was to be used for Indian
dowries was used and by 1683, it was spent to support the marriage of French girls).
143. See infra notes 147–50.
144. Aubert, supra note 129, at 453 (explaining that it was during the period of the king’s
daughters that French officials began to restrict the fur trading activities of colonists and entice them
to “settle down and cultivate the land”; by 1676, the fur trading expeditions of these men were
officially prohibited).,
145. G
REER, supra note 119, at 24.
146. Id. at 28.
147. E
LIZABETH ABBOTT, A HISTORY OF MARRIAGE 10 (2010).
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102 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
immigration program.
148
In France, governmental authorities managed the
recruitment and immigration of the women, and the King paid for their transport
to the colony.
149
Upon arrival, the women were greeted and settled by the
Intendant.
150
And when the women married, the French government provided
them with a significant dowry.
151
In addition, the budget spent on this project was substantial. Every bride
received at least fifty livres,
152
many received as much as 100, and at least two
women were given 600 livres.
153
For each woman, the cost of recruitment,
transportation, and dowry is estimated to have been between “12,570 livres and
possibly more than 33,000 livres.”
154
Between 1665 and 1669, the total cost of the
program exceeded 410,000 livres.
155
Given the significant resources the
government spent on this program, it is not surprising that, like the Jamestown
brides, the filles du roi were selected with care.
Initially, the women simply had to be young, between the ages of twelve
and twenty-five,
156
and healthy.
157
In his first letter delineating the selection
criteria, Talon requests that the women be of “ages suitable for procreation, and
most of all that they be very healthy.”
158
After the first group of women arrived
and were married, the number of requirements increased. Attractiveness was
added to the list of requirements, as well as an increased focus on household
skills.
159
In a letter to Colbert, France’s minister of finance, Talon outlined these
requirements, stating:
All the king’s daughters sent to New France last year are
married, and almost all are pregnant or have had children, a
testament to the fertility of this country. I strongly recommend
that those who are destined for this country [next year] be in no
way unattractive or have anything repugnant in their
appearance, that they be healthy and strong, for the work of the
country, or at least have some skill in household chores . . . It is
good to have them accompanied by a certificate from their
148. See CHARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 27 (“[T]he Crown took on the responsibility of
recruiting and transporting female immigrants who were baptized “‘Filles du roi.’”).
149. See id. at 28 (noting that the King’s Daughters “crossed over to Canada at the King’s
expense”).
150. Id. (explaining that the Intendant was the government official who controlled the colony’s
entire civil administration).
151. See id. (stating that the filles du roi “received upon marriage the King’s gift of 50 livres for
commoners and 100 livres for young ladies”).
152. A
BBOTT, supra note 147, at 10.
153. Aubert, supra note 129, at 454; A livre was the French unit of currency. “A family could
probably have lived decently on 25 livres a month,” but an unskilled worker might earn as little as 10
livres a month. A
NDREW TROUT, CITY ON THE SEINE: PARIS IN THE TIME OF REICHLEIU AND LOUIS XIV xi
(1996). Trout further estimates that one livre was worth about the same as $40 (USD) in 1990. Id.
154. Aubert, supra note 129, at 454.
155. Id.
156. Greer, supra note 119, at 17.
157. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121 , at 28.
158. See id. (stating that the women should be free of anything repulsive in their appearance and
at least have some skill for manual labor).
159. A
BBOTT, supra note 147, at 10.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 103
Pastor or a local judge who can vouch for their being free and
marriageable.
160
Nearly all of Talon’s requests were granted.
161
The girls were healthy and
fertile.
162
One of the women, Catherine du Paulo, gave birth to fifteen children.
163
Relatedly, an interesting study on the fertility of the female pioneers indicates
that the conditions in Canada actually increased the pioneers’ fertility beyond the
fertility of the women from their regions of origin.
164
As a result, these few
hundred women
165
became the foremothers of millions of French-speaking
Canadians.
166
The women were also pretty. In fact, the beauty of the filles du roi is
legendary. Among Canadians, the renowned beauty of Quebec women
supposedly derives from the fact that the boats carrying the King’s daughters
arrived first in Quebec.
167
This gave the Quebec men the first chance to woo and
marry the women, and the men chose the prettiest women.
168
This legend
explains why Quebec women are considered better looking than their sisters
located upstream in Trois-Rivieres and Montreal.
169
Talon’s request for “country” women was less successful. Although more
than two hundred of the filles du roi originated from the French countryside, the
vast majority came from cities.
170
Talon believed that women raised in the
country would be better prepared for the harsh conditions of frontier life.
171
160. Id.
161. See id. at 11–12 (stating that “les filles” were as healthy and capable as Talon and French
officials intended, and so prolific that millions of today’s French Canadians are descended directly
from them).
162. See id. at 10 (noting that almost all of the filles du roi had become pregnant or born children).
163. See id. at 11 (describing two “typical” filles du roi, Catherine Paulo, who married at nineteen
and had fifteen children, and Mathurine Thibault, who married at twenty-nine and had six children).
164. See C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 138 (purporting that “the Canadian environment
in fact led to an increase in fecundability and a reduction in fetal mortality”).
165. Aubert, supra note 129, at 454 n.32 (estimating that the number of women transported to
New France at the king’s expense was between 774 and 1200.).
166. See C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 205 (describing the king’s daughters as
representing “the reproductive capabilities of the human race: that scarcely one thousand women,
who married within half a century, could end up fifty years later with fifty thousand
decedents . . . today these same women represent, along with their husbands, approximately two
thirds of the genetic make-up of six million French Canadians”).
167. See, e.g., Les Filles du Roi (The King’s Daughters),
RICHARDNELSON.ORG,
http://richardnelson.org/Parent-Frost%20Website/Filles%20du%20Roi%20master.htm (last visited
Dec. 1, 2012).
168. Id.
169. See id.
170. Y
VES LANDRY, LES FILLES DU ROI AU XVIIE SIÈCLE: ORPHELINES EN FRANCE, PIONNIÈRES AU
CANADA; SUIVI D’UN RÉPERTOIRE BIOGRAPHIQUE DES FILLES DU ROI [THE DAUGHTERS OF THE KING IN
THE
17TH CENTURY: ORPHANED IN FRANCE, THE CANADA PIONEERS; FOLLOWED BY A BIOGRAPHICAL
DIRECTORY OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE
KING] 54 (1992). According to Landry’s study of 770 women,
486 were from cities, 215 were from the countryside, and sixty-nine were of indeterminate origin. Id.
171. M
ARIE-FLORINE BRUNEAU, WOMEN MYSTICS CONFRONT THE MODERN WORLD: MARIE DE
L
’INCARNATION (1599–1672) AND MADAM GUYON (1648–1717) 93 (1998). He was not alone in this
belief. In her correspondence to her son, Marie de l’Incarnation writes: “We no longer want to ask for
anyone but village girls suitable for work like men. Experience makes one see that those who have
not been raised in this way are not right for here, where they find themselves in a state of inescapable
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104 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
Although he was likely correct in thinking that city women were less suited for
life on the frontier, they were also those most in need of the opportunity to
change their circumstances. Cities are simply more likely to house more people
who are in difficult situations, and many of the filles du roi were poor or
orphaned.
172
City women were also those most likely to hear about the
program.
173
As a result, when these “unsuitable” citywomen heard about the
program, hundreds of them seized the opportunity.
Even noblewomen found the prospect of being a fille du roi appealing and
by 1670 there were more noblewomen interested in immigrating than there were
suitable husbands available.
174
At one point, Talon asked Colbert to send three
or four aristocratic girls for some of the single officers and Colbert responded by
sending fifteen demoiselles.
175
Talon was not pleased by the surplus and informed
Colbert that “it is not expedient to send more demoiselles. I have had this year
fifteen of them, instead of the four I asked for.”
176
Talon had more noblewomen seeking the opportunity than he could
accommodate, and in some cases, even married women were interested.
177
The
last line of Talon’s letter, in which he requests proof of marriageability, alludes to
an earlier scandal that occurred when it was revealed that some of the earliest
brides had husbands back in France.
178
This fact clearly indicates that being filles
du roi gave women an unparalleled opportunity to escape their lives in France
and pursue new lives through immigration.
179
Like the Jamestown brides, the filles du roi came to New France voluntarily
and had good reasons for making this choice.
180
Although the majority of the
need.” Id.
172. Aimie Kathleen Runyan, Daughters of the King and Founders of a Nation: Les Filles du Roi
in New France 15 (May 2010) (unpublished MA thesis, University of North Texas), available at
http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc28470/m2/1/high_res_d/thesis.pdf (noting,
“[e]specially in the cities we find a greater concentration of people ill-suited to their environment,
thus more likely to emigrate, and where communication offering the hope of a better life is more
accessible” (quoting L
ANDRY, supra note 170, at 62–63)).
173. See id. at 28 (explaining that the King favored city girls from Paris).
174. See id. at 61 (noting that there were filles du roi from the nobility).
175. 1 F
RANCIS PARKMAN, FRANCE AND ENGLAND IN NORTH AMERICA: PIONEERS OF FRANCE IN THE
NEW WORLD, THE JESUITS IN NORTH AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, LA SALLE AND THE
DISCOVERY OF THE GREAT WEST, THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA 1258 (1983).
176. Id.
177. F
RANCIS PARKMAN, THE OLD REGIME IN CANADA 284 (1875) [hereinafter THE OLD REGIME]; see
P
ARKMAN, supra note 175, at 1258 (explaining that in a letter from 1667, Talon wrote “[t]hey send us
eighty-four girls from Dieppe and twenty-five from Rochelle; among them are fifteen or twenty of
pretty good birth; several of them are really demoiselles, and tolerably well brought up”).
178. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 284.
179. See generally P
ETER GAGNE, BEFORE THE KING’S DAUGHTERS: THE FILLES À MARIER, 1634–1662,
at 13 (2002). In fact, even without all the incentives offered by the government, an earlier group of
women known as the Filles du Marier (marriageable girls) had made the same journey to the colony
to seek husbands and a better life. Id.
180. See id. (containing a letter to the Archbishop of Rouen stating that “fifty or sixty girls might
be found who would be very glad to go to Canada to be married, I beg you to employ your credit and
authority with the curés of thirty or forty of these parishes, to try to find in each of them one or two
girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of a settlement in life”).
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 105
women were poor,
181
and many were orphans,
182
these women were not
uneducated.
183
It is inaccurate to portray them as duped or coerced. Most of
these women were actually more educated than their French contemporaries
184
and more literate than the men they would marry.
185
In addition, the women
used their education to their advantage when they immigrated. More than
eighty-two percent of the women required their husbands to sign a premarital
contract stipulating the material terms of the marriage before they would
proceed,
186
and many of these contracts contained terms, particularly with regard
to property, that were highly favorable for the soon-to-be wife.
187
The women were not rushed into marriage, nor were they directed toward a
predetermined partner. The filles du roi had the right to refuse any suitor, as well
as the power to choose whom to marry.
188
On average, the women married
approximately five months after arrival.
189
Given the strong impetus to marry,
this should be viewed as relatively slow. The fact that women did not marry
immediately indicates that it was the women who had the power in this marriage
market. They were able to take the time to choose the best husband and they had
both the time and freedom to change their minds about their impending
marriage.
190
In fact, a number of the filles du roi changed their minds more than once. For
example, one fille du roi, Catherine Gateau, first signed a marriage contract with
181. See CHARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 128 (noting that one study on the fertility of the
King’s daughters suggests that their poverty stricken backgrounds and the poor dietary conditions
and hygiene they endured at the Hospital General de Paris increased their likelihood of sterility).
182. L
ANDRY, supra note 170, at 15. According to the “declarations of their marriage certificates
and contracts . . . close to 65% of them had lost their fathers before they reached adulthood.” Id.; see
also Magdalena Paluszkiewicz-Misiaczek, From Strength to Weakness—Changing Position of Women in
Societies of New France and British North America, in P
LACE AND MEMORY IN CANADA: GLOBAL
PERSPECTIVES THIRD CONGRESS OF POLISH ASSOCIATION FOR CANADIAN STUDIES AND THIRD
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CENTRAL EUROPEAN CANADIANISTS 377, 381 (2004), available at
http://www.ptbk.org.pl/userfiles/file/paluszkiewicz_misiaczek04.pdf (explaining that even those
with living parents still lacked the economic resources they needed to secure good marriages).
183. See C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 199 (stating that “the pioneers were . . . slightly
more educated than their French contemporaries”).
184. See id.
185. See C
ORNELIUS J. JAENEN, THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN NEW FRANCE 19 (1985), available at
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/008004/f2/H-40_en.pdf (claiming that the greater
proportion of brides who could sign their marriage registers indicates this greater literacy rate).
186. See N
EW FRANCE, H 17 available at http://kilby.sac.on.ca/faculty/nMcNair/
7%20HIS%20Documents/His7_Unit1.pdf. For example, the marriage contract between Isabelle
Hubert and Louis Bolduc stated that the two promised to marry in a Catholic church as soon as
possible, that all possessions they brought into the marriage would become joint property, and that
Isabelle would bring a dowry of 400 livres into the marriage. In addition, the contract stated that in
the event the marriage broke up, Isabelle would take property worth 500 livres with her and that in
the case of death, the other spouse would inherit that person’s property. Id.
187. See infra pp. 110–111 (discussing the terms of marital contracts).
188. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 286 (noting that although most of these women were
fairly poor, they were not uneducated or naïve). Apparently, the first question most of the women
asked their potential suitors was whether they had a house and a farm. Id.
189. B
ETTINA BRADBURY, CANADIAN FAMILY HISTORY: SELECTED READINGS 18 (1992).
190. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 90.
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106 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
Abraham Albert in October 1671.
191
One month later she annulled her contract
with Albert and signed a martial contract with Vivien Jean.
192
She then annulled
that one as well but two weeks later changed her mind again, revalidated the
martial contract with Jean, and married him.
193
Another fille du roi named
Catherine Le Roux signed and then annulled her first marital contract and then
married that man’s brother.
194
Such changes of heart were common and at least
ten percent of the filles du roi signed a marriage contract with a man other than
the one they would eventually marry.
195
In addition, approximately four percent
of the women chose never to marry at all.
196
Contemporary accounts also confirm that the women were not rushed into
marriage. Marie de L’Incarnation, the Ursuline nun who supervised many of the
filles du roi, notes that the men were eager to woo the women and wrote that
“[n]o sooner . . . have the vessels arrived than the young men go to get wives.”
197
However, she also notes that the women were much more restrained and took
their time to carefully evaluate the men and make sure the men would be
adequate providers for them.
198
In sum, the filles du roi made the deliberate and thoughtful choice to
immigrate based on the reasonable belief that immigration would provide them
with greater prospects for success. Unlike their male counterparts who viewed
Canada as a temporary situation, very few of the French women who
immigrated returned to France.
199
These women came to Canada with the intent
to remain.
200
As the Virginia Company predicted with regard to the Jamestown
brides, female colonists were more committed to the long-term success and
permanence of the colony than the male colonists, and the women’s presence
was a stabilizing force.
201
In addition, the women had good reasons to want to remain. Although life
in New France was difficult, it also provided many unique opportunities. The
filles du roi received both free passage to the colony and significant dowry.
202
This financial help immediately put them in a privileged position compared to
the average immigrant to New France who arrived “alone, without any
191. PATRICIA KENNEDY GEYH, FRENCH CANADIAN SOURCE GUIDE FOR GENEALOGISTS 187 (2002).
192. Id.
193. Id.
194. Id.
195. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 90.
196. B
RADBURY, supra note 190, at 18.
197. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 288.
198.
ABBOTT, supra note 147, at 90. L’Incarnation noted approvingly that the women’s first concern
was whether the men had somewhere to live “because those men who were not established suffered
a great deal before they could lead a comfortable life.” Id.
199. See Moogk, supra note 6, at 482 (explaining that the filles du roi came to Canada to “wed an
established colonist and to stay”).
200. See id.
201. Id. at 484 (explaining that emigrants with families almost always stayed in Canada).
202. See id. at 482 (explaining that the filles du roi could have more honorable marriages in
Canada than they would have been able to have in France); see also Paluszkiewicz-Misiaczek, supra
note 182, at 381.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 107
government assistance.”
203
In addition, in the colony, land ownership was easier
to attain than in France, and a higher social status was easier to achieve.
204
There
were new government positions to fill and new businesses to start, and the filles
du roi were in the perfect position to take advantage of these opportunities
through their choice of marriage partners.
205
By far, the women’s greatest
advantage was their scarcity throughout the colony.
At the arrival of the filles du roi, single men outnumbered women six to
one.
206
The filles du roi accounted for approximately two-thirds of all female
immigration into New France during the seventeenth century.
207
These women
entered a society eager for their presence and determined to accommodate them.
A 1667 letter from Talon clearly expresses this sentiment. In this letter, Talon
reveals great concern upon learning that some of the women, particularly the
higher class women, were complaining about the neglect and hardships they had
suffered on the voyage over.
208
He worries that if he cannot “soothe their
discontent” the women will convey their grievances to people back in France and
such complaints will hinder the immigration of additional brides.
209
The government’s commitment to the filles du roi program and the scarcity
of women in New France meant that women in the colony exerted power and
control over the terms of their marriage and their lives. In short, if the women
were willing to marry, the government was willing to accommodate them.
Women who immigrated as indentured servants were often permitted to break
their contracts in order to marry.
210
Moreover, the traditional waiting period for widows to remarry was
ignored. Colonial widows remarried at extremely high rates.
211
Records show
that four out of ten widows remarried before the prescribed nine months.
212
A
widow “knelt a second time at the marriage altar even before her first husband
was buried.”
213
As these remarriage rates demonstrate, the social approbation
typically wielded against women who did not conform to a rigid view of
women’s virtue was not as severe in the colony.
In addition, not only did colonial widows remarry quickly and often, but
203. Id. at 380.
204. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 199.
205. Id.
206. G
REER, supra note 119, at 16.
207. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 35–37, 40 (explaining that, in fact, only an additional
201 women arrived after the last group of king’s daughters). However, the end of the bride shipments
was not an end to the gender imbalance in Canada. In 1681, the younger population was beginning
to reach equilibrium but amongst the over thirty population, there were still two men for every
woman. Id. at 40.
208. P
ARKMAN, supra note 175, at 1258.
209. Id.
210. See M
ARILYN BARBER, IMMIGRANT DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN CANADA 12 (1991), available at
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/008004/f2/E-16_en.pdf (explaining that the Army “chose
to concentrate” on immigrant domestics because they assisted in immigration).
211. C
HARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 111.
212. Id. at 201.
213. Canada and its Provinces: A History of the Canadian People and their Institutions by One Hundred
Associates (Adam Shortt & Arthur G. Doughty eds., 1914), available at
http://www.archive.org/stream/canadaitsprovinc15shoruoft/canadaitsprovinc15shoruoft_djvu.txt.
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108 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
they also frequently engaged in non-marital sex, as indicated by the high rate of
premarital pregnancy.
214
In France, such transgressions would not have been so
easily ignored. These widows would have risked chivaree, the French custom of
humiliating couples who did not follow social mores, such as waiting the proper
amount of time before remarriage.
215
However, colonial widows were not
subjected to chivaree despite the fact that the general custom was imported into
Canada.
216
This lenient treatment is particularly interesting given that chivaree
was widespread in France and persisted despite its prohibition by the Council of
Tours and the disapproval of the French parliament.
217
The case of the infamous fille du roi Catherine Guichelin also demonstrates
that colonial women were less constrained by conventional morality.
218
Guichelin blatantly engaged in prostitution, had multiple children out of
wedlock, and gave two of her legitimate children up for adoption.
219
Guichelin’s
actions were considered scandalous. Nevertheless, when she wished to marry
she had no trouble finding a husband.
220
In fact, she would eventually marry
three times.
221
Moreover, her notorious past does not appear to have hurt her
children’s future success; a number of her descendants became some of Canada’s
leading citizens.
222
Despite the arrival of the filles du roi, not all male colonists were interested in
214. CHARBONNEAU ET AL., supra note 121, at 128–30 (stating that pre-marital pregnancy
demonstrate the “greater freedom enjoyed by older women and . . . by widows”; records show that
widows conceived almost four times as frequently as single women, indicating the significant
freedom they enjoyed in the French colony).
215. W.
PETER WARD, COURTSHIP, LOVE AND MARRIAGE IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH
CANADA 114–15 (1990). Typically, the Chivaree involved a raucous group of people engaging in a
noisy uproar in front of the couple’s new home and demanding money or whiskey. Id. at 112.
However, such groups could quickly become frightening mobs and cause significant property
destruction and even injury or rarely death. William Bell, a Presbyterian Minister in Upper Canada
described an 1845 Chivaree of a neighbor in which the mob broke down the groom’s door and
became so rowdy that he had to call the magistrates for protection. Id. at 113. Other witness, recount
Chivarees that lasted up to two weeks and many noted instances where the bridegroom shot or even
killed some of their assailants. Id.
216. See W
ILLIAM S. WALSH, CURIOSITIES OF POPULAR CUSTOMS AND OF RITES AND CEREMONIES,
OBSERVANCES AND MISCELLANEOUS ANTIQUITIES 209 (1925) (explaining that Chivaree existed in
Canada).
217. See id. at 211 (“The French parliament also thundered against ‘the tumults known as
charivaris practi[c]ed before the houses of those who remarried.’”).
218. See A
BBOTT, supra note 147, at 11 (discussing Catherine Guichelin who led “a scandalous life
and was once charged with prostitution”).
219. See id. (explaining that although Guichelin led a scandalous life, was charged with
prostitution, gave birth to illegitimate children, and adopted them out to other families, she had no
trouble finding suitors, as she annulled two marriage contracts and subsequently married a third
time).
220. Id.
221. See id. (noting that the fact that she also annulled two marital contracts indicates that she had
suitors).
222. See generally King’s Daughters: Notable Descendants of the King’s Daughters, W
IKIPEDIA, available
at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King’s_Daughters (last visited Nov. 29, 2012). Louis Coutlée, who
descended from Marie Vacher, one of Guichelin’s illegitimate children, “became a founding father of
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada’s capital . . . . He was the first sheriff of Ottawa (after serving in the lower
Canadian Militia during the Anglo-American War of 1812 . . .).” Id.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 109
marriage.
223
Nevertheless, the women’s arrival transformed marriage into a civic
duty. Once marriage was possible, all men were encouraged to marry and they
were encouraged to marry early.
224
In a 1668 letter to Talon, Colbert states:
I pray you . . . to commend it to the consideration of the whole
people, that their prosperity, their subsistence, and all that is
dear to them depend on a general resolution, never to be
departed from, to marry youths at eighteen or nineteen years
and girls at fourteen or fifteen; since abundance can never come
to them except through the abundance of men.
225
This urging was also accompanied by rewards for marrying. According to the
King’s decree, a youth who married at or before the age of twenty was entitled to
a gift of twenty livres, called “the King’s gift.”
226
Even greater sums were
promised to noblemen and officers who married.
227
In one case, a Captain de la
Mothe (Motte), received sixteen hundred livres for marrying and settling in New
France,
228
and it is estimated that between 1665 and 1668, six thousand livres
were spent to enable “four captains, three lieutenants, five ensigns, and a few
minor officers to settle and marry.”
229
Childbearing was also viewed as a civic virtue and significant rewards were
available to encourage large families. Canadians with ten living children were
entitled to a pension of three hundred livres annually, and those with twelve
living children received four hundred livres.
230
The arrival of the filles du roi created an environment that extolled marriage
and family, while those who chose not to marry were treated like criminals.
231
Regarding these bachelors, Colbert suggested that “[t]hose who may seem to
have absolutely renounced marriage should be made to bear additional burdens,
and be excluded from all honors; it would be well even to add some mark of
infamy.”
232
Talon agreed with Colbert and instituted a number of penalties for
not marrying, the most severe of which was the loss of hunting and trading
privileges.
233
Specifically, Talon issued an order forbidding male colonists to
hunt with the Indians or go into the woods if they did not marry fifteen days
223. See infra note 253 and accompanying text.
224. See T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 286 (explaining that “[b]ounties were offered for early
marriages”; specifically, ”[t]wenty livres were given to each youth who married before the age of
twenty, and to each girl who married before the age of sixteen”).
225. Id. at 286–87.
226. Id. at 286.
227. T
HOMAS CHAPAIS, THE GREAT INTENDANT: A CHRONICLE OF JEAN TALON IN CANADA (1665–
1672) 56 (1914).
228. Id. at 56–57.
229. Id. at 57.
230. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 289 (explaining that bounties were also offered on
children; a family with ten children would be granted 300 livres per year, and a family with twelve
children would be granted 400 livres per year from the King); see also “Canada: A Celebration of our
Heritage,” http://www.canadianheritage.ca/books/canada3.htm (last visited Sept. 13, 2012).
231. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 286 (explaining that an unmarried man was forbidden
from hunting without being married first).
232. Id.
233. Id.
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110 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
after the arrival of the ships from France.
234
Court records reveal that this was not an idle threat. In one case, an
unmarried Montreal man named Francois Lenoir had traded with the Indians
and was charged with violating Talon’s order.
235
Lenoir pleaded guilty, and
promised to marry after the next arrival of ships, or failing that, to give one
hundred and fifty livres to the church of Montreal and a similar amount to the
hospital.
236
Not surprisingly, Lenoir married within the year.
237
Moreover, had Lenoir’s father lived in the colony, he would have been
punished as well.
238
After the arrival of the filles du roi, failure-to-marry
punishments were extended to the bachelors’ fathers.
239
Fathers who had not
married off their sons at twenty and their daughters at sixteen were fined every
six months until the children were married.
240
The above laws elevated marriage and family and created an environment
in early Canada that was unusually favorable to women. The French legal
system, known as the Coutume du Paris, was used to further protect women’s
rights.
241
Thus, when the Coutume du Paris was imported to New France, it
already contained laws that were protective of women’s property rights.
242
Most
notably, the Coutume du Paris explicitly stated that in the absence of a contract,
“all of a married couple’s assets, earnings, and debt were held jointly.”
243
The conditions of the colony further increased the protections available to
women under this property regime. Marital contracts in New France could
include a provision in which the woman reserved some or all of her dowry as her
personal property, granting women even greater property rights than those they
received under the Coutume du Paris.
244
The King provided the filles du roi with a
substantial dowry and marital contracts indicate that many of the filles du roi
preserved their dowries as separate property through contract.
245
For example,
the marriage contract between Jean Beaudet and Marie Grandin specifically
234. Id. at 288 (explaining that orders were issued that all men arriving from France should marry
within a fortnight); see also W
ILL FERGUSON, CANADIAN HISTORY FOR DUMMIES 81 (2005) (explaining
that this requirement was enacted to encourage the men to marry but does not appear to have been
used to pressure the women since the records demonstrate that many of the women waited much
longer than 15 days to marry). Ironically, Talon never married. Id.
235. C
HAPAIS, supra note 227, at 56.
236. Id.
237. Id.
238. See T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 287 (explaining that fathers who failed to marry off
their sons at age twenty and their daughters at age sixteen were fined, and were required to report to
the authorities every six months to explain the delay).
239. Id.
240. Id.
241. See Gillian Hamilton, Property Rights and Transaction Costs in Marriage: Evidence from
Prenuptial Contracts, 59 J.
ECON. HISTORY 68–69 (1999).
242. See id.
243. Id. at 69. French law protected women’s rights in a number of other ways as well. For
example, French law guaranteed that husbands did not have the power to alienate the property that
wives brought with them into the marriage. See Paluszkiewicz-Misiaczek, supra note 182, at 380.
244. Suzanne Boivin Sommerville, Kessinnimek-Roots-Racines, http://www.kateritekakwitha.org/
roots/suzanne4-7.htm#_edn9 (last visited Dec. 3, 2012).
245. Id.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 111
states that:
The future husband [spouse] gives to his future wife [spouse]
the sum of three hundred livres tournois to be taken first [before
any debts of the marital community are paid] from their assets
available at his death. With this in mind he mortgages [or
guarantees] his assets. In addition, he takes [the future wife] as
his spouse with all of her rights and all of the assets she
presently possesses and those which she might obtain in the
future through inheritance or otherwise. He also recognizes that
his future spouse possesses three hundred livres tournois, which
she adds to their legal possessions [leurs avoirs]. Of this sum, one
hundred and fifty livres will belong to them in common and one
hundred and fifty livres will always be the property of the future
bride and of those who inherit from her, as will the fifty livres
that the King gave to her to incite her to get married.
246
Thus, the contract protects Grandin’s dowry as her personal property.
247
According to Canadian economist Gillian Hamilton, contracts favorable to
women, such as the contract between Beaudet and Grandin, are common in
communities where women are both scarce and valued.
248
In her study on
annuity provisions in premarital contracts, Hamilton states that for an average
woman in France at that time, “a community arrangement would have been
optimal” and the annuity (a fixed amount she would receive upon her husband’s
death) she could expect to receive would be close to zero.
249
However, Hamilton
argues that where women are rare and highly valued, one would expect to see
particularly high numbers of marital contracts that include significant
annuities.
250
Thus, according to Hamilton’s hypothesis, the nearly universal use
of premarital contracts by the filles du roi indicates that they took advantage of
their powerful bargaining position and the female-friendly environment of New
France to use the already favorable marital property laws to further improve the
terms of their marriages.
251
The acceptance of religious women also demonstrates the better treatment
women received in the New France colony.
252
Throughout the sixteenth and
246. Id.
247. Id.
248. See Hamilton, supra note 241, at 80 (explaining, in general, the characteristics of couples in
Quebec creating premarital contracts).
249. See id.
250. Id.
251. See J
ANINE LANZA, FROM WIVES TO WIDOWS IN EARLY MODERN PARIS 45 (2007) (“Only clauses
that explicitly flouted established bedrocks of marital custom, such as the requirement that a husband
provide his widow a dower, could not be abridged. However, most other elements of customary law
could be, and were, altered in contracts. This flexibility allowed families to exert greater control over
wealth and to plan explicitly for the eventuality of death rather than allowing the law to determine
the distribution of assets.”).
252. See id. at 74 (explaining that widows often joined religious orders). Part of religious women’s
eagerness to immigrate was a desire to serve as missionaries and convert the native people. However,
religious women in Canada were also given much more freedom and this undoubtedly also held
significant appeal. The history of Marie L’Incarnation is one such example. L’Incarnation was the first
Superior of the Ursulines of Quebec but is best known for her autobiography, which was published at
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112 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
seventeenth centuries, middle- and upper-class women joined the religious
Counter-Reformation movement that swept across Europe.
253
During this time,
numerous communities of women founded or reformed organizations devoted
to practicing the contemplative or active life, and many new lay associations
encouraged female piety and charity.
254
However, the increase in religious
authority for women coincided with dramatic increases in misogyny.
255
Witch
burnings and exorcisms were the most extreme examples, but there were also
many less extreme examples of misogynistic practices, such as the growing
practice of cloistering of religious women.
256
Although religious women were
persecuted throughout France, the religious women in New France escaped this
fate and were received into the colony with approval.
257
Witch trials and exorcisms were entirely absent from Canada.
258
Cloistering
was initially required for certain female religious participants, but the practice
was far less rigid than in Europe and by the end of the seventeenth century, non-
cloistered communities received recognition.
259
In addition, women’s right to
catechize, which was questioned in France until the late seventeenth century,
was taken for granted as soon as missionary women appeared in the colony.
260
These differences demonstrate the better treatment of religious women in New
France, and the better treatment of colonial women in general.
For a colony seeking to encourage marriage and procreation, promoting
religious women’s immigration might seem counter intuitive.
261
However, the
fact that religious women were eager to immigrate to New France and were
treated with respect and power undoubtedly influenced non-religious women’s
perception of the colony. Moreover, the presence of religious women could also
provide tangible benefits to non-religious women. One such example is the fact
that the women missionaries, like the Ursulines, made education available to all
women, not just to the daughters of the elite.
262
a time when the writings of nuns were not permitted to be published or read outside of their order.
Consequently, her writings demonstrate Canadian religious women’s significant power and
independence. In her writings she is not afraid to question her male superior or demonstrate anger
over his decisions. B
RUNEAU, supra note 171, at 80–82. This is particularly illuminating given the fact
that although “[n]uns were certainly allowed to write chronicles of their order and hagiographies of
their religious sisters, . . . these pious works were not read outside the convents and addressed mostly
the restricted history of a particular order.” Id.
253. Leslie Choquette, “Ces Amazones du Grand Dieu”: Women and Mission in Seventeenth-Century
Canada, 17 F
RENCH HIST. STUD. 627, 630 (1992).
254. Id.
255. Id.
256. Id.
257. Id.
258. Id. at 632.
259. Id. (noting that such recognition enabled these women to be fully recognized as religious
women without sacrificing their freedom of movement).
260. Id. at 654.
261. In fact, the King made this point explicitly when he placed limits on the numbers of nuns
permitted in each foundation stating, “it was not advisable for a colony to have so many people shut
away in religion; it was more advisable to facilitate marriages.” Id. at 629.
262. J
AENEN, supra note 185, at 19–20. In fact, in 1657, Marguerite Bourgeoys opened a school for
girls in Montreal. Id. at 20. However not everyone approved of general female education. According
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The female-friendly environment of New France presented an attractive
option for motivated women seeking better opportunities, independence, and
greater respect. However, such independence has historically been viewed with
suspicion and the filles du roi quickly fell victim to charges of immorality.
263
To
this day, it is common for mail order brides to be unfairly characterized as
prostitutes or criminals, and the filles du roi did not escape this classification.
Historians accused the women of having loose morals and sometimes depicted
them as outright prostitutes.
264
These slanderous remarks began early. In 1703, the French writer La
Hontan, who was not present during any of the following events, provided a
description of the arrival of the fille du roi:
After the regiment of Carrigan was disbanded, ships were sent
out freighted with girls of indifferent virtue, under the direction
of a few pious old duennas, who divided them into three classes.
These vestals, were, so to speak, piled one on the other in three
different halls where the bridegrooms chose their brides as a
butcher chooses his sheep out of the midst of the flock. There
was wherewith to content the most fantastical in these three
harems; for here were to been seen the tall and the short, the
blond and the brown, the plump and the lean; everybody, in
short, found a shoe to fit him.
265
La Hontan’s description is inaccurate. Great care was taken to ensure the virtue
of the filles du roi.
266
While prostitutes and criminals populated Paris’s
overcrowded prisons, they were not sent to New France.
267
However, many prostitutes and criminals were sent to the French
Antilles, and they were sent at the same time as the filles du roi immigrated to
Canada. This timing leads a number of scholars to speculate that La Hontan
confused the filles du roi with the Antilles women.
268
Less generous historians
suggest that La Hontan was simply lying.
269
These scholars note the numerous
fabrications in his memoir, such as his “discovery” of a river stretching from the
Mississippi to the Pacific, his descriptions of the crocodile-filled Ohio rivers, and
his purported encounters with the tribe of bearded Indians living on islands in
the Great Lakes.
270
Whether intentional or not, there is little question that La
to one critic, the education of country girls “made them frivolous and lazy like so many of their
contemporaries in the social elite living in the principle towns.” Id. at 19.
263. P
ETER GAGNÉ, KING’S DAUGHTERS AND FOUNDING MOTHERS, THE FILLES DU ROI 1663–1673, at
22 (2001). The filles du roi are sometimes accused of being filles de joie—if not outright prostitutes, at
least women of loose morals. Id.
264. Id.
265. G
ILBERT PARKER & CLAUDE G. BRYAN, OLD QUEBEC: THE FORTRESS OF NEW FRANCE 98 (1904).
266. See infra note 300 and accompany text (describing the great care taken to ensure the virtue of
the filles du roi).
267. G
AGNÉ, supra note 263, at 22. In reality, women convicted of prostitution in France were
exiled to the French islands of the Caribbean – Martinique and Saint-Christophe (present day Saint
Kitts)—but none were sent to Canada, at least knowingly. Id.
268. Runyan, supra note 172, at 30.
269. Id.
270. Interestingly, even this fabrication took nearly a century to be fully exposed. For nearly 100
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114 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
Hontan’s description of the filles du roi is false. The women sent to Canada were
neither prostitutes nor criminals.
271
Not only were such women considered the
wrong sort of woman to serve as founders of the new colony, the likelihood of
their having venereal disease would have rendered their immigration
counterproductive to the government’s desire to increase procreation.
272
In
addition, a 1670 letter from Colbert to France’s archbishop of Rouen
demonstrates that the girls were recruited through the auspices of local cures.
273
In this letter, Colbert requests that the archbishop seek:
In the parishes about Rouen . . . fifty or sixty girls [who] might
be found who would be very glad to go to Canada and be
married. I beg you to employ your credit and authority with the
cures of thirty or forty of these parishes to try to find in each of
them one or two girls disposed to go voluntarily for the sake of
settlement in life.
274
As this letter makes clear, Colbert sought virtuous women who chose to
immigrate rather than prostitutes who could be forced.
The success of this method for recruiting virtuous women is clear from
court records of the period. These colonial records demonstrate that out of more
than 700 women, only five faced charges of adultery, prostitution or
debauchery.
275
Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming evidence that these
women were of good character,
276
accusations that the women were thieves and
harlots continue to tarnish their reputations.
277
Even today, a quick Google
search reveals numerous sources that still refer to the filles du roi as prostitutes.
278
years after his memoir was published maps of America continued to contain “The Long River.” 1 THE
UNITED STATES SERVICE MAGAZINE 359 (Henry Coopee ed., 1864).
271. G
AGNÉ, supra note 263, at 22.
272. Id. Since the aim of the program was to send fertile women to the colony to marry and
reproduce, the idea of sending filles de joie was “completely contrary to the King’s design.”
273. T
HE OLD REGIME, supra note 177, at 283.
274. Id. at 283.
275. See J
AN G. COOMBS, OUR TANGLED FRENCH CANADIAN ROOTS: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE
WHO WERE PART OF OUR GREGOIRE, ADAM, MARTEL AND BEAUDRY LINES 48 (2009) (“Very few of the
King’s Daughters created problems in their communities. Only five appeared in court on charges of
adultery, prostitution, or debauchery, and one was executed, along with her son-in-law, for a serious
crime, the nature of which is unknown because their court records were lost.”).
276. See id.
277. One of the most interesting prosecutions of a filles du roi involves Marie Riviere. Marie’s
husband, Jean Ratier dit Dubuisson, was sentenced to hang after he killed a woman in a brawl
involving half a dozen townsmen. However, before he could be executed, the executioner died and
Jean was given the choice of being executed or becoming the executioner. Not surprisingly he chose
the latter. However this meant that when his wife was later convicted of selling stolen goods and
sentenced to a public lashing, he was the one who was required to conduct the punishment. Luckily
for both for both of them, her sentence was commuted and he simply had to place her in the stocks.
See 2 P
ETER J. GAGNE, KING’S DAUGHTERS AND FOUNDING MOTHERS: THE FILLES DU ROI 1663–1673, at
494 (2000).
278. See, e.g., G
USTAVE LANCTOT, LES FILLES DE JOIE OU LES FILLES DU ROI: ETUDE SUR
L’ÉMIGRATION FÉMININE EN NOUVELLE-FRANCE 158 (1952); MORDECAI RICHLER, OH CANADA!, OH
QUEBEC! 102 (1992) (describing the women as “hookers, imported to New France . . . to satisfy the
appetites of . . . mostly functionally illiterate soldiers”); Sarah Gahagan, Les Filles du Roi,
MOÉ PI TOÉ,
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no4/FASWST2003/Gahagan.html (last visited Dec. 1, 2012) (noting
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Canadian historian Alan Greer suggests that such false descriptions were so
easily accepted because the filles du roi broke with contemporary notions of
women as subservient and powerless.
279
Unlike most seventeenth and eighteenth century women, the filles du roi
were independent—they were not subject to parental authority
280
—and they
were powerful. They were the ones with the choice in the marriage market and
thus, according to Greer, “they touched on the edges of sexual disorder” and
were considered “honorary prostitutes.”
281
Greer notes that descriptions of the
women as “merchandise”
282
placed on display for a group of sex-crazed male
“purchasers” were common. However, he also points out that a more accurate
description portrays the women as the shoppers and the men as the objects of
scrutiny.
283
It was the filles du roi, not the male colonists, who were doing the
picking. The filles du roi were the ones with the power in this marriage market.
III.
LOUISIANA’S CASKET GIRLS
Today, the reputations of both the Virginian and Canadian colonial brides
still suffer from inaccurate memories and assumptions. However, it is the
treatment of a third group of women, the Louisiana mail order brides, that is the
most revealing regarding conflicted modern attitudes toward mail order brides.
Unlike the women of Virginia and New France, who immigrated voluntarily,
many of the Louisiana women were subjected to forced or coerced immigration,
and many were prostitutes and criminals.
284
Amidst this unseemly reality, the
legend of the “casket girl” arose. The “casket girls” were a group of mythical
mail order brides who were skilled and virtuous, and who stood in stark contrast
that “many speculate that the King had his agents take prostitutes and social delinquents and send
them out of the country”); Op-ed, Stop Whining, Start Celebrating, M
ONTREAL GAZETTE, Sept. 1, 1999
(describing the original population of New France as “[p]rostitutes, including les filles du roi . . .”).
279. See G
REER, supra note 119, at 17 (“These were, after all, young women who were not subject
to parental authority (though they were chaperoned), nor were they enclosed within a secure
institution; furthermore, they contracted marriage directly rather than through the mediation of
family. Thus, they touched the edges of sexual disorder, and that made them, according to the
dominant view at the time, honorary prostitutes.”).
280. Id. However, they were chaperoned. Id.
281. Id.
282. Id.
283. See id. (“From the seventeenth century down to the present day, their situation has given rise
to lurid fantasies in sexist minds. Contemporary wits loved to refer to them as “‘merchandise”‘ and
declared that they were certainly prostitutes plucked from the streets of Paris and placed on display
before an audience of rough and randy habitants. (Never considered for a moment was the possibility
that the women might have been the ‘“shoppers,’” and the men the objects of scrutiny, in these
matrimonial encounters.)”).
284. J
OAN M. MARTIN, Placage and the Louisiana Gens de Couleur Libre, in CREOLE: THE HISTORY AND
LEGACY OF LOUISIANA’S FREE PEOPLE OF COLOR 61–60 (Sybil Kien ed., 2000) (“White women were not
only few in number, but also were frequently former inmates of asylums and houses of correction in
France who had been brought to the frontier territory by force; they were typically described by
many of the men as ‘ugly, ignorant, irascible, and promiscuous.’ The other white women said to have
been available to European men are the famed ‘casket girls.’ Reputed to be from middle class families
and chosen for their ‘skill in housewifery duties’ and ‘excellence of character,’ they are reported to
have reached New Orleans in 1728, with others arriving in intervals, until 1751.”).
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to the actual female immigrants in Louisiana.
285
Although it is unlikely that these
women ever existed, nearly every prominent Louisiana family claims to be their
descendants.
286
At first, the Louisiana bride program was very similar to the programs of
Virginia and New France. Like the earlier colonies, Louisiana had a severe
gender imbalance between white men and white women and its population was
falling far short of the size and growth of its English colonial neighbors.
287
Numerous male colonists were deserting the colony to live with the Indians
tribes, which further exacerbated the population decline.
288
Like New France,
Louisiana initially encouraged or at least tolerated sexual relationships between
the French settlers and native or African women.
289
However, by the first part of
the eighteenth century, such relationships were actively discouraged. Like the
officials in New France, the colonial officials in Louisiana worried that
relationships with the native women led to the “ensauvagement”
290
of the
French male settlers.
291
By 1706, Governor Jean Baptiste de Bienville was
dismayed by the high number of male colonists who left the settlement to live
among the local Indian tribes.
292
Bienville vowed to “bring back all the
Frenchmen who are among the Indians and forbid them to live there as libertines
simply because they have wives among them.”
293
The government’s opposition
to these intermarriages also began to take on an explicitly racial concern.
Commissary Jean-Baptiste Dubois Duclos concluded that such marriages must
be prevented because of “the adulteration that such marriages will cause to the
whiteness and purity of the children.”
294
Duclos feared that “[i]f no French
women come to Louisiana, the colony would become a colony of mulastres”
(people of mixed race).
295
Once again, the solution proposed to halt these intermarriages was the
285. See id. (noting that they were chosen for their “skill in housewifely duties” and “excellence of
character”).
286. Id.
287. See id. at 62 (noting that “the major cause . . . of white male/black female relationships in the
colony was the gender imbalance, which cut across racial and class lines”).
288. See Aubert, supra note 129, at 467 (noting the “widespread occurrence” of French-Indian
sexual encounters).
289. Id. (“To illustrate their point, Hall and others often insist that the seventeenth-century French
colonial policies that tolerated and sometimes encouraged sexual interactions between French male
settlers and Indian or African women in New France . . . were transplanted and persisted unabated in
eighteenth-century French Louisiana.”).
290. The term “ensauvagement” translates as “return to the wild,” i.e. to become savage.
291. See Aubert, supra note 129, at 442. French colonial discourses of the period also demonstrate
that increasing concern with racial purity had started to pervade the colony. See id.
292. See id. at 467.
293. M
ATHE ALLAIN, NOT WORTH A STRAW: FRENCH COLONIAL POLICY AND THE EARLY YEARS OF
LOUISIANA 78 (1988).
294. Aubert, supra note 129, at 469.
295. Id. at 469. (“Commissary Jean-Baptiste Dubois Duclos forcefully refuted ‘the plan and the
proposal of Mr. De La Vente’ to allow marriages between French men and ‘sufficiently instructed
Sauvagesses.’ Permitting such unions, Duclos argued, ‘would be of no utility for the increase of
families.’”).
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immigration of mail order brides.
296
As early as 1701, Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur d’
Iberville, founder of the Louisiana colony, requested female immigrants. In a
letter to the French government Iberville wrote, “[i]f you want to make
something of this country, it is absolutely necessary to send this year some
families and a few girls . . . who will be married off shortly after their arrival.”
297
Iberville repeated this request every year until 1704,
298
when King Louis XIV
approved the plan because he agreed that it was not beneficial for his colonists to
be alone.
299
The first Louisiana brides resembled those that preceded them in
Jamestown and New France. The women were chosen for their virtue and piety,
and with the hope that they would work hard and contribute to the population
expansion of the colony.
300
In a letter, Pontchartain, the chancellor of France,
informed Bienville of the brides’ departure:
His majesty sends by that ship [Le Pelican] 20 girls to be married
to the Canadians and others who have begun habitations at
Mobile in order that this colony can firmly establish itself. Each
of these girls was raised in virtue and piety and knows how to
work, which will render them useful in the colony by showing
the Indian girls what they can do, for this there being no point in
sending other than of virtue known and without reproach. His
majesty entrusted the Bishop of Quebec to certify them, in order
that they not be suspect of debauch. You will take care to
establish them the best you can and to marry them to men
capable of having them subsist with some degree of comfort.
301
The women arrived in 1704.
302
They had no trouble finding husbands.
303
These
women were similar to those recruited to the earlier colonies and were recruited
for similar reasons. However, it quickly became clear that the Louisiana colony’s
commitment to them was vastly different.
The “Pelican girls” came voluntarily, but the promises that enticed them
were lies. The women were promised a flourishing colony.
304
Life in Louisiana
296. ALLAIN, supra note 293, at 83 (noting that as soon as the colony was established in 1699,
requests for women were sent).
297. Id. at 83.
298. Id.
299. See Publications of the Arkansas Historical Association 335 (John Hughes Reynolds ed., 1908)
(“In 1704, King Louis XIV concluded that it was not well for his colonists to be along, so he sent
twenty girls to Louisiana to be married to them.”).
300. J
ENNIFER M. SPEAR, RACE, SEX, AND SOCIAL ORDER IN EARLY NEW ORLEANS 47 (2008) (“In
January 1704, Ponchartrain sent word to Bienville that the first group of epouseuses – women
specifically sent ‘to be married to the Canadians and others’ – would be arriving aboard Le Pelican
later that year. The had ‘been brought up in virtue and piety and [knew] how to work.’ He promised
that he would send only ‘those of recognized and irreproachable virtue’ and requested Bienville ‘to
marry them off to men capable of supporting them with some sort of comfort.’”).
301. G
AIL ALEXANDER BUZHARDT & MARGARET HAWTHORNE, RENCONTRES SUR LE MISSISSIPI,
1683–1763, at 63 (1993).
302. S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 47.
303. Id. (noting that the women were described as “well behaved” and that “they had no trouble
in finding husbands”).
304. See A
LLAIN, supra note 293, at 86. The Bishop of Quebec described the colony as “well
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118 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
was described as so wonderful that marriage to a colonist seemed like a kind of
prize.
305
The Louisiana brides, like the brides sent to the earlier colonies, were
also promised marriages with established men capable of supporting them in
comfort.
306
Therefore, the women felt tricked and betrayed when they
discovered that the living conditions in Louisiana differed greatly from the
bounty that was promised. They arrived just in time to participate in the
colony’s “starving times.”
307
Outraged by this deception, in 1706, a number of the
women banded together to protest their living conditions.
308
According to
Bienville, the women swore they “would force their way out of the colony on the
first opportunity.”
309
Some of the women did try to leave but the sea captains
refused them passage.
310
At that point, the women seemed more like prisoners
than brides, which in turn led to an incident condescendingly known as the
“petticoat insurrection.”
311
Some accounts of the “petticoat insurrection” make light of the betrayal
these women experienced, and portray the women’s complaints as frivolous
rather than justified. According to one account, the women’s protests arose
primarily from their aversion to corn.
312
Although Bienville notes the women’s
unhappiness in one of his dispatches, he ignores the real cause—their terrible
living conditions—and instead blames the insurrection on the corn.
313
According
to Bienville,
[T]he males in the colony begin through habit, to be reconciled to
corn as an article of nourishment, but the females, who are
mostly Parisians, have for this kind of food a dogged aversion,
which has not yet been subdued. Hence they inveigh bitterly
against his grace, Bishop of Quebec, who they say has enticed
them away from home under the pretext of sending them to
enjoy the milk and honey of the land of promise.
314
provisioned.” Id.
305. See Archive of Historical Data, Books, Maps and other Materials, A
N ARCHIVE OF DAUPHIN
ISLAND, AL, HISTORY, http://www.dauphinislandhistory.org/kennedy/pelican_expand318x228.htm
(last visited Mar. 5, 2012) (noting that marriage opportunities were described as a kind of “contest” or
“Lottery”).
306. S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 47.
307. A
LLAIN, supra note 293, at 86. “Starving times” refers to a famine that gripped the colony
during this time as well as the colony’s severe lack of provisions from France. Id.
308. R
OBERT LOWRY & WILLIAM H. MCCARDLE, A HISTORY OF MISSISSIPPI: FROM THE DISCOVERY OF
THE
GREAT RIVER BY HERNANDO DESOTO INCLUDING THE EARLIEST SETTLEMENT MADE BY THE FRENCH,
UNDER IBERVILLE TO THE DEATH OF JEFFERSON DAVIS 29 (1891) (noting that these new women created
“a revolt against a portion of the food with which they were served”).
309. Id. at 29 (“Indignant at being thus deceived, and determined they would never eat corn,
these girls declared they ‘would force their way out of the colony at the first opportunity.’”).
310. See Mississippi Connection, available at http://splendors-versailles.org/StudentGuide/
FrenchMississippi/index.html.
311. See L
OWRY & MCCARDLE, supra note 308, at 29; 1706: “Petticoat Insurrection” Begins When
Women Detained Against Their Will, M
ISSISSIPPI HISTORY TIMELINE,
http://mdah.state.ms.us/timeline/zone/1699-1762-french-dominion (last visited Mar. 5, 2012).
312. L
OWRY & MCCARDLE, supra note 308, at 29.
313. Id.
314. Id.
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LONELY COLONIST SEEKS WIFE 119
Supposedly, the women were eventually placated when Bienville had his
housekeeper teach them Indian methods for cooking and spicing local dishes.
315
However, despite this charming story, it is clear the women had significant and
legitimate grievances that were based on more than simply a distaste for corn.
316
Perhaps the most egregious violation of the government’s promises to the
Louisiana brides was Bienville’s attempt to marry the women against their
will.
317
Like the earlier colonial mail order brides, the Louisiana women were
promised that there would be no forced marriages.
318
However, after one
woman refused all offers of marriage, Bienville wrote to Pontchartrain asking if
she could be “oblige[d] . . . to do like the others since there [were] several good
suitors who [were] sighting for her.”
319
Pontchartrain denied the request but did
state that she could be forced to return to France.
320
Although Bienville’s request
for a forced marriage was rejected, the request reveals that the Louisiana colony’s
attitude toward women markedly differed from than that of the preceding
colonies.
321
Moreover, Bienville’s request foreshadowed the change in the
Louisiana bridal program from one of consent to one of conscription.
Too few women arrived on the Pelican to satisfy the colony’s need for
women. Consequently, by 1710, the need for brides was just as pressing as
before. Male colonists were leaving Louisiana in droves. Commissaire-
ordonnateur d’Artaguiette’s desperate declaration that the “young men need
wives . . . I know only this way to hold them“ echoed throughout the colony.
322
The problem however, was that women no longer wanted to come to Louisiana.
Word of the terrible conditions in the colony and the terrible treatment of the
Pelican girls had made its way back to France.
323
Without the promise of good
315. NEW ORLEANS CUISINE: FOURTEEN SIGNATURE DISHES AND THEIR HISTORIES 99 (Susan Tucker
ed., 2009) (“The quaint story goes that a group of frustrated housewives banged on pots in front of
Governor Bienville’s home, protesting their bland diet of cornmeal mush and the lack of familiar
ingredients. Bienville reportedly pawned the ladies off to his housekeepers, Madame Langlois, who
knew the way of the Choctaw and taught the French women how to cook rice, crabs, shrimp,
crawfish, and wild game. Langlois also introduced them to file, and supposedly the ladies threw the
aromatic powder into gumbo, a dish that, by then, they’d already learned to cook from African
slaves.”).
316. See L
OWRY & MCCARDLE, supra note 308, at 29.
317. See S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 47.
318. Id.
319. Id. (“Francoise Marie Anne Boisrenaud was still single as late as October 1706, when
Bienville wrote to Pontchartrain asking if it had been his intention that these women ‘should be
obliged to be married when they find a good match.’ He requested permission to make Boisrenaud
marry ‘since there are several good suitors who are sighting for her.’ The king responded that if she
failed to marry, the governor could force her return to France unless it was found that she could be
otherwise ‘useful to the colony.’”).
320. Id.
321. A
LLAIN, supra note 293, at 84–85. For example, the contracts of female indentured servants
reveal that very few of these women received wages and that they could usually expect little more
than maintenance. Id. at 84. “One particularly exploitative contract granted a midwife “the
permission to practice her profession, but she had to give her master two-thirds of her earning.” Id. at
84–85. Such treatment may explain why there were so few French female indentured servants as
compared with female indentured servants in the English colonies.
322. See id. at 84 (noting that he was the commandant at Mobile).
323. See, e.g., M
ICHELENE E. PESANTUBBEE, CHOCTAW WOMEN IN A CHAOTIC WORLD: THE CLASH OF
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120 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
opportunities and fair treatment, only the most desperate women would
immigrate.
In 1713, a group of twelve such women arrived. Contemporary accounts
describe them as “extremely ugly” and “very poor, having neither linen, nor
clothes nor beauty.”
324
Moreover, despite the colony’s desperate need to
encourage female immigration, the women were treated appallingly. During the
voyage, at least one woman was seduced, and vicious rumors described the
captain as having debauched all twelve.
325
Such rumors are almost
unquestionably false but they demonstrate how little care was taken to protect
the women. Moreover, the ill treatment continued after their arrival in
Louisiana. Passengers “spoke ill of [the women] as soon as they landed.”
326
Given such talk, it is not surprising that only three of the girls married.
327
Three
months after their arrival, eight women remained unmarried and “living in
misery.”
328
For potential mail order brides, the treatment of the 1713 women was the
last straw. Unlike the other colonies that gave mail order brides property
incentives, legal protections, and empowerment, the Louisiana colony offered its
mail order brides none of these advantages. Consequently, French women
refused to immigrate and the Louisiana bridal program failed.
329
However,
rather than changing tactics and promising new and stronger incentives for
immigration, French officials decided to force immigration.
330
Officials blamed the 1713 women’s lack of marriage success on their absence
of beauty rather than their desperate circumstances and tarnished reputations.
331
Duclos stated that in the future, more “attention should be directed toward the
girls’ figures than their virtues.”
332
He added that the colonists “are not very
CULTURES IN THE COLONIAL SOUTHEAST 94 (2005) (noting that when a later group of women returned
to France, they “spread the most frightful accounts of Mississippi”) (internal citations omitted).
324. Jennifer M. Spear, “They Need Wives” in S
EX, LOVE, RACE: CROSSING BOUNDARIES IN NORTH
AMERICAN HISTORY 48 (Martha Hodes ed., 1999) (“A later group of women who arrived aboard the
Baron in 1713 were not so well received, as they landed under a cloud of rumor and scandal. . . .
Duclos commented that they were ‘extremely ugly,’ while Cadillac noted, ‘these girls are very poor
having neither linen nor clothes nor beauty.’”).
325. ALLAIN, supra note 293, at 85.
326. Spear, supra note 324, at 48. (“Some of the Canadians on board the same vessel, ‘being
witnesses of what happened in regard to them, spoke ill of them as soon as they landed.’ As a result,
only two of the twelve women had married by October.”).
327. See id.
328. S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 48. (“Cadillac reported that only three had married and one had
died, leaving eight who were ‘living in misery.’”).
329. Id. (noting that after the failure of the 1713 mail order brides the next women sent over were
forced exiles).
330. Spear, supra note 324, at 49. Cadillac requested women after the Baron ship’s arrival. “Many
of these women did not come voluntarily to Louisiana. In 1719 ninety-five women arrived aboard the
Mutine, ‘sent by the king,’ while thirty-eight ‘exiled women’ arrived aboard the Deux Frères and Duc
de Noailles. Working against voluntary emigration to Louisiana was the fact that the colony suffered
from an unsavory reputation among the common people of France.” Id.
331. Id. at 48 (noting that they would have been able to marry had they been “more attractive”).
332. S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 47 (“In the future, [Duclos] continued, ‘more attention should be
directed toward the girls’ figures than toward their virtues. The Canadians . . . are not very
scrupulous about the girls’ past conduct, before they desire them, and if they had found some more
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scrupulous about the girls’ past conduct before they desire them,” and suggested
that “if they had found some more attractive to their taste, they would have been
able to marry them and get themselves established here which would increase
the colony.”
333
Other officials agreed with Duclos, and the result was the forced
immigration of female prisoners.
334
Many of the other colonial powers experimented with forced immigration
of prisoners.
335
However, Louisiana was the only American colony that sought
to solve its shortage of females with forced migration.
336
Initially, forced
migration was prohibited in Louisiana, but Philippe du Orleans ended the ban in
1717, allowing the imposition of forced immigration of women.
337
These new
“recruits” differed greatly from the earlier mail order brides in Louisiana, as well
as the brides in Virginia and Canada.
338
Many of these women were taken from
the Hospital General du Paris, which housed not only poor women and orphans,
but also prostitutes and criminals. As a result, these women are often referred to
as “corrections girls.”
339
The colony’s experience with the “corrections girls” reveals how essential
marital choice is in the creation of a successful program of marriage immigration.
Many of the correction girls were sick or dangerous women and their forced
immigration was a disaster.
340
Large numbers of these women refused to marry
attractive to their taste, they would have been able to marry them and get themselves established
here, which would increase the colony.”).
333. Id.
334. See id. (noting that many women during this time were “rounded up in the . . . sweeps of city
streets, prisons and hopitaux”).
335. For example, the entire country of Australia was originally founded as a penal colony. See
generally J
OHN HIRST, FREEDOM ON THE FATAL SHORE: AUSTRALIA’S FIRST COLONY (2008) (describing
the history of early Australia and how it changed from a penal colony into a free society).
336. Although Britain also sent convicts, including women, to the American colonies, their
numbers were few and their forced conscription was for punishment and not to solve the female
shortage in the various colonies. In addition, young people, both boys and girls, were sometimes
kidnapped and forced into indentured servitude. See W
ALTER HART BLUMENTHAL, BRIDES FROM
BRIDEWELL: FEMALE FELONS SENT TO COLONIAL AMERICA 65–75 (1962); see generally DANIEL DEFOE,
MOLL FLANDERS (1721) (sending Moll to Virginia as a convict).
337. S
PEAR, supra note 300, at 44, 48.
338. See Spear, supra note 324, at 48 (“Not all the Hospital recruits would have been prostitutes or
other criminals. When Marechal de Villars arrived in 1719, it brought twenty ‘girls from the poor
house of La Rochelle.’ These women were fourteen to twenty-seven years old; the ages at which they
had been left at the poorhouse ranged from birth to fourteen. Penicaut similarly described the girls he
saw arrive in 1721 as fourteen to fifteen years old and having been ‘brought up in this house from
infancy,’ indicating that these girls were probably the orphaned or abandoned children of the women
detained at the Hospital.”).
339. H
ERBERT ASBURY, THE FRENCH QUARTER: AN INFORMAL HISTORY OF THE NEW ORLEANS
UNDERWORLD 12 (1938) (“In Louisiana History, when mentioned at all, these girls are known as
“correction girls,” and they are carefully distinguished from the filles a la cassette, or casket girls, so
called because they had been carefully chosen from among good middle-class families for skill in
housewifely duties and excellence of character. Before the latter left France they were each given by
the Mississippi Company a small chest containing two coats, two shirts and undershirts, six
headdresses, and various other articles of clothing.”).
340. A
LLAIN, supra note 293, at 84 (describing these women as “thieves, prostitutes, and assassins
(one of them was accused of fifteen murders), they were parasites,” and also noting that “exhausted
by long journeys and malnutrition, often in advanced stages of venereal disease, they died off
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and returned to France.
341
Others decided to remain in the colony and resume
their previous criminal ways.
342
Shortly after the arrival of the first group of
corrections girls, there was a rampant increase in the practice of prostitution.
343
A royal edict officially ended the policy of forced migration in March 1720,
but the practice continued well beyond that date. In 1721, eighty-eight girls
arrived, most of who had been inmates of La Salpetriere, the infamous Paris
prison.
344
Bienville wrote:
Since the 4
th
of March, nineteen of them have been married off.
From those who came by the Le Chameau and La Mutine, ten have
died. So that fifty-nine girls are still provided for. This will be
difficult, as these girls were not well selected . . . . Whatever
vigilance exercised upon them, they could not be restrained.
345
As Bienville’s letter makes apparent, these women were clearly forced
immigrants and likely prostitutes; yet, they arrived in Louisiana at the same time
as the casket girls are said to have arrived. The two groups are the same. Time
and myth transformed these “corrections” women into casket girls.
346
The casket girls, or filles a cassette, are commonly described as groups of
modest young French women, so named because of the small chests in which
they carried the “linens, and clothes, caps, chemise, stockings etc.,” that they had
been given for their new life in the colony.
347
The casket girls were the antithesis
of the corrections girls. Descriptions of the casket girls state that they were from
middle class families and were chosen for their homemaking skills and their
unblemished virtue.
348
Moreover, unlike what the earlier immigrants
experienced, this “virtue” was closely guarded throughout their travels.
Accounts of the casket girls describe them as arriving under the supervision of
three nuns and note that after arrival, they were housed with these nuns in a
building protected by armed guards.
349
In addition, the casket girls were
rapidly”).
341. See P
ESANTUBBEE, supra note 323, at 94 (noting that many of these women returned to France
and those that did spread “the most frightful accounts of the Mississippi”); S
PEAR, supra note 300, at
49 (noting that many of the women find the “laws of marriage too severe”).
342. See Spear, supra note 324, at 50 (“[B]y the late 1720s, they found themselves faced with
women who, in the words of la Chaise, ‘are useless and who do nothing but cause disorder.’”). Many
were also described as “women of bad life who are entirely lost.” Id.
343. Id. at 50 (“Perier asked the Ursuline nuns to “‘take care of the girls and women of evil life,’”
illustrating that ‘issues of sexual management’” included control of Frenchwomen as well as of Euro-
Louisianian men and Indian women.”). In colonies such as Virginia, which had a similar surplus of
single men, prostitution was virtually non-existent. T
HOMPSON, supra note 40, at 42 (describing one
English visitor “who searched Williamsburg in vain for a whore” in 1720).
344. A
SBURY, supra note 339, at 11–12.
345. Id. at 12.
346. Id.
347. Id. (“Before the [casket girls] left France they were each given by the Mississippi Company a
small chest containing two coats, two shirts and undershirts, six headdresses, and various other
articles of clothing.”).
348. Id. (“[The casket girls] had been carefully chosen from among good middle-class families for
skill in housewifely duties and excellence of character.”).
349. Id. at 12–13 (“They were under the care of three nuns of the Gray Sisters . . . They were all
lodged together, and during the day the men of the colony were permitted to see them in order that a
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described as highly sought after and had no difficulties finding husbands.
350
In
fact, stories of the casket girls often mention that a duel was nearly fought over
the last one.
351
Nevertheless, despite numerous descriptions of the arrival and marriages of
the casket girls, it is likely they never existed.
352
A large group of women arrived
in 1721, shortly after the practice of forced immigration ended. However,
Bienville’s accounts, in which he describes the women as “not well selected,” and
difficult to “restrain[],” make clear that these women were not “casket girls.”
353
Similarly, contemporary accounts of the duel that was almost fought over the last
“casket girl” describe the woman as more “a guardsman” than “a girl”—a far cry
from the virtuous maiden epitomized by the casket girls.
354
Similar accounts are
provided by La Chaise, the French commissioner sent, in 1727, to check on the
colony.
355
According to La Chaise, the unmarried women were “ruining the
colony.”
356
He stated, these women “are useless and . . . do nothing but cause
disorder,”
357
and recommended that they be returned to France.
358
Two years
earlier, the Council of Louisiana had made a similar suggestion, highlighting the
“necessity of purging the colony of . . . a number of women of bad life who are
entirely lost.”
359
Thus, given these descriptions of the unmarried women
arriving in the colony before 1728, it is clear that none of them fit the casket girl
description.
Given the well-documented “problems” with the pre-1728 female
immigrants, many accounts of the casket girls state that they did not arrive until
choice might be made, but when night fell they were guarded by soldiers.”).
350. 5 M
ICHELE GIRAUD, A HISTORY OF FRENCH LOUISIANA: THE COMPANY OF THE INDIES 1723–
1731,
at 262 (Brian Pearce trans., Louisiana State University Press 1991) (1987).
351. A
LLAIN, supra note 293, at 85. According to Captain Jean François Dumont de Montigny, a
duel was nearly fought over the last girl. However, it should be noted that this is the same man who
claimed to have “captured a frog two feet long and 18 inches thick, weighing 36 pounds.” See R
OBERT
DOWNS, THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN: TALL TALES OF AMERICAN ANIMALS 139 (1964).
352. See B
LUMENTHAL, supra note 336, at 95–96 (“Diligent search for the name of the ship of which
the lauded ‘casket girls’ were supposed to have come in 1728, and for the list of twenty-three
“‘virtuous maidens’” celebrated by all American historians of Louisiana as the precious cargo of the
vessel, revealed the voyage and the flawless contingent as mythical . . . . The ‘correction girls’ and the
‘casket girls’ were one and the same. Review of manuscript authorities seems to prove that the girls
from La Salpêtrière who came in the Baleine in 1721/2 and are variously declared to have numbered
from eighty to ninety-six—were in fact the ‘casket girls.’”).
353. A
SBURY, supra note 339, at 12.
354. Allain, supra note 293, at 85.
355. J
EAN-FRANCOIS-BENJAMIN DUMONT DE MONTIGNY, THE MEMOIR OF LIEUTENANT DUMONT,
1715–1747: A FRENCH SOJOURNER IN THE ATLANTIC 32 (2012) (noting that La Chaise had been sent to
the colony to investigate charges of malfeasance, including smuggling and profiteering, which
eventually resulted in Bienville’s recall to France).
356. See Spear, supra note 324, at 50 (“La Chaise complained in 1725 that ‘there are many other
women . . . who have no husbands and are ruining the colony’; he recommended that all the
immigrants who had been forced to Louisiana, men and women, be returned to France. A few
months later the Council of Louisiana argued for ‘the necessity of purging the colony of . . . a number
of women of bad life who are entirely lost.’ [B]y the late 1720s, they found themselves faced with
women who, in the words of la Chaise, ‘are useless and who do nothing but cause disorder.’”).
357. Id.
358. Id.
359. Id.
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124 DUKE JOURNAL OF GENDER LAW & POLICY Volume 20:85 2012
1728.
360
However, historical records show only one ship with women arriving in
1728, and that ship carried Ursuline nuns.
361
Consequently, the casket girls were
a myth, most likely created by Louisianans who did not like the truth of their
ancestry.
362
Nonetheless, this myth highlights the importance of mail order brides.
Unlike Virginia and New France, the founding mothers of Louisiana were
prisoners and prostitutes. Therefore, instead of securing the future of the colony,
their presence imperiled it.
363
Louisiana’s experience with both mail order brides
and forced female immigration vividly demonstrates the difference between the
two groups of women and the benefits of successful mail order bride programs.
IV.
CONCLUSION
The colonial mail order brides of New France and Jamestown were women
with choice. They chose to immigrate because they believed life in the colonies
offered greater opportunities and a better life. Consequently, when in places like
Louisiana the opportunities were limited, women chose not to come. However,
despite this history demonstrating that mail order marriage could increase
women’s choices, modern mail order brides are generally viewed as women of
few choices more akin to the “corrections girls.”
364
Modern mail order brides are commonly assumed to be victims of force,
kidnap, and prostitution. They are described as desperate women who must be
saved from the dangers of mail order marriage. Missing from these accounts of
mail order brides is the recognition that the decision to seek a mail order
marriage can be both a wise and calculated choice. The history of the early
colonial mail order brides reveals women taking control of their own lives and
destinies.
Moreover, these historical accounts provide valuable insight into how
potential abuses could be lessened if the United States were to welcome the idea
of mail order marriage rather than stigmatizing it. Colonial mail order brides
chose to immigrate and were both rewarded and respected for doing so.
Modern
mail order brides, however, are assumed to be desperate and exploited.
365
The
laws enacted for their protection rely on this assumption,
366
and there are
360. Kelly Burgess, Here Come the Brides?, ANCESTRY MAGAZINE, Nov.-Dec., 2009, at 22, 26.
361. Id.
362. M
ARTIN, supra note 284, at 61 (remarking on the “myth” of the casket girls and noting that “if
myth is correct, they must have been extremely fertile since ‘practically every [white] native family of
Louisiana is able to trace its descent in an unbroken line from one of the filles a la cassette’”).
363. See Spear, supra note 324, at 50. Many were also described as “women of bad life who are
entirely lost.” Id.
364. See A
SBURY, supra note 339, at 12.
365. See e.g., C
HUN, supra note 1, at 1156 (asserting that “[t]he modern industry, in contrast [to the
“original” system, which grew out of necessity]. . . nurtures structures of subordination based on
race, sex, and class within countries, among nations, and between individuals. . . [modern] laws have
often worked to the detriment of foreign women by subjecting them to the control of potentially
abusive consumer-husbands and denying the women of legal options and remedies”).
366. See id; see also Title IV of Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No.
103-322, 108 Stat. 1796 (subtitled Violence Against Women Act) (giving abused immigrant women the
right to self-petition and thus removing their immigration status from their husband’s control); see
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currently no laws that encourage people to enter into mail order marriages.
Nevertheless, the growing number of mail order marriages indicates that despite
gender parity in the United States, there remains a high demand for the
immigration of marriageable women.
367
In the past, this demand empowered
mail order brides and helped to increase the status of women in general.
Consequently, if we celebrate these marriages, rather than merely tolerate them,
modern mail order brides can regain the power wielded by their predecessors.
Illegal Immigrant Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, § 652(e)(1)(A), 110 Stat.
3009 (requiring matchmaking organizations to disseminate information regarding their immigration
status and information about battered spouse waivers); INA § 204(a)(1)(A)(iii)(I) & (II)
(granting two year conditional residency period to promote family reunification and prevent
marriage fraud); Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, Pub. L. No. 106-386, §
107, 114 Stat 1464 (stating that the government will aid in protecting victims of trafficking).
367. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act of 1996 estimated that
approximately 2,000 to 3,500 men marry mail order brides each year. 8 USC 1375 sec. 1375, repealed by
Pub.L. 109-162, 119 Stat. 3077 (2006).
