The Pelican Girls |
The Pelican Girls arrive at Colonial Mobile
In early 1704, Bienville wrote to the French Crown (King Louis XIV) asking for girls of marriageable age to be sent to the colony at Mobile (Dauphine Island) to marry the single French settlers living there. In his letter to the French government Bienville made the following statement:
"If 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 arrival".
After receiving this same request annually from Bienville since the beginning of the first settlement in 1699 at Biloxi, King Louis XIV finally approved the plan in 1704, agreeing it was not beneficial for his colonist to be alone at the Mobile colony and the recruitment plan for brides was set into motion.
Due to France being at war at the time, the French Ministry asked the Catholic Church to make the selections. Twenty three respectable girls of good families were carefully chosen from the convents in France to be sent to the colonies by the Church for the French Government. The girls were chosen by Monsignor Vallier, the Bishop of Quebec, who had just established the Catholic Church at Mobile as a part of the Diocese of Quebec. Father Henry LaVente was appointed pastor of the Mobile parish by Monsignor Vallier, and was to sail on the Le Pelican with the chosen girls to the Mobile colony.
An excerpt from a letter written to Sieur de Bienville (Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville) by Louis Phelypeaux de Pontchrtrain, the Chancellor of France, pertaining to the Pelican girls:
"His majesty sends by that ship 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 know 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".
Of the girls chosen, some were as young as 14 years old and the oldest around 19 years. Marie Gabrielle (Savarit) Savary had just turned 19 before the Pelican sailed from the port of Rochefort to the French port of Rochelle. In October of 1703 the chosen girls and their escorts left Paris in wagons on a long and tedious three hundred mile journey to the seaport town of Rochefort, on the Atlantic coast of France. After a short stay in Rochefort they were scheduled to board the ship bringing them to Mobile and the Louisiana Colony.
The war in Europe had caused a delay of the Pelican and its two escort ships, the Charente and Iberville's ship the Renomme. The two escort ships were scheduled to sail from Rochefort in a special convoy to help protect the Pelican from British War Ships. During this delay, the girls heard stories from the sailors of the hardships, savages, Canadian barbarians, poverty, murder and disease in the colony. This did not sound like the life promised them by the Bishop of Quebec. Some of the girls requested to return to Paris after hearing the stories, but were finally appeased by gifts and generous allowances and agreed to continue.
The group after months of delays, finally, departed the Port of Rochefort, France for the Port of La Rochelle, France. From the port of La Rochelle, after several weeks of additional delays, the Pelican departed on April 19th 1704 for the colonies without its two escort ships after taking on additional supplies. They were accompanied on board the ship by Jean-Baptiste de LaCroix de Chevrieres de Saint-Vallier, the Bishop of Quebec, Father Henry LaVentre, three additional priests, and four nuns from the religious order, Sisters of Charity, who looked after them on their voyage to the colonies. Also on board were 75 soldiers, laborers and four laborers' families.
Before arriving at Cap Haitian, Haiti, about 30 miles away, the Pelican encountered a violent storm in which the ship almost capsized, this terrified Father LaVente, who would later remark that "we almost perished in the storm". Surviving the violent storm the the Pelican arrived at its first port of call in Cap Haitian, Haiti on June 8th 1704. From here they sailed on June 17th 1704 for Havana, Cuba, arriving there on July 7th 1704 to the great relief of the girls who had been on the sea for almost three months. Upon their arrival at Havana, they were personally received by the Bishop of Cuba, Diego Evelino de Compostela, who saw that they were comfortably housed and their needs cared for. They also were entertained and taken on tours of the sights of Havana during their stay. The continuing problems of mosquitoes were the main discomfort for them while there. On July 14th the Pelican set sail for Pensacola where it was to take on fresh water and supplies. The Spanish government of Pensacola would not allow the Pelican into port, so they anchored off shore, where they were re-supplied by the Spanish. After a little over a week, the Pelican then pulled anchor and set sail from Pensacola for Mobile and the French Colony. The Pelican finally arrived a week later and dropped anchor at Dauphin Island, the deep water Port of the colony, where the passengers and crew disembarked and awaited the arrival of two shallow bottom boats to transfer them to Mobile and Fort Louis along with supplies for the fort. On July 28th they set sail in the two overfilled boats for Mobile and Fort Louis.
They finally arrived at Mobile and Fort Louis on August 1st, 1704, aboard the smaller boats brought to Dauphine Island to transfer them to the settlement; henceforth, they were referred to as “the Pelican Girls”. These were the first "brides" that came to Mobile and the Louisiana colony to marry the french settlers. They were quite well behaved, and they had little trouble in finding husbands. The ship also brought another passenger, Yellow Fever, from Havana, Cuba. A number of the ships crew became sick with high fevers after leaving Havana. Upon their arrival at Dauphine Island about half of the ship’s crew fell sick with Yellow Fever and many died and were hastily buried on Dauphine Island by the Priests. A number of the girls from the ship also fell ill with the fever and died, along with numerous settlers and soldiers of Mobile. Mosquitoes and Yellow Fever continued to be a problem for the settlers in Mobile due to the humid climate and standing stagnant water in the marsh areas.
The Pelican girls, as they are generally known, were called by some “The Casket Girls” because of the casket like box given to each one before they departed France for the Colonies and Mobile. This box contained items given each to help in their new lives, much as was done for the Les Fills Du Roi who were sent to Quebec earlier to marry the single Frenchmen there. Several years after the Pelican Girls arrived at Mobile another group was sent to New Orleans to marry the French settlers there and this group was called "The Casket Girls". Arrangements for the marriage of the Pelican girls were not left entirely to chance. The Canadian soldiers and settlers knew nothing beforehand of their prospective brides-to-be. The girls had already learned a good deal about their prospective husbands. They had been well informed about the background and present situations of each bachelor. From a group of fifty or sixty eligible men, only about forty would be seriously considered, and perhaps twenty five regarded as good prospects for marriage. As for the group known as “les Canadians”, there were no affluent men, but some were better established than others in the colony. Jean Baptiste Saucier was considered as being one of the better than average established settlers of Mobile and had a home and land.
Among the twenty three or so girls seeking husbands, there were some, quite naturally, who were considered much more desirable as wives, by standards of backgrounds, having been reared in delicate and refined circumstances. Our ancestor Marie Gabrielle Savary was one of the more desirable prospective brides due to her background and prior education in the Convents of the Church. Many of the girls felt superior to the majority of soldiers and settlers of Mobile, who seemed to regard them as “pieces of merchandise” for having thrown themselves blindly into a chosen exile and marriage to men in the colonies they had no prior contact with.
It is said that later all of the Pelican Girls rebelled at the living conditions they encountered in the colony, which was not what they were promised, at eating Indian corn, and perhaps corn bread, and for a while this petticoat insurrection greatly taxed Bienville's patience and ingenuity, especially when many of them demanded the “lives” they had been promised by the Bishop of Quebec when recruited to journey to the colony. Some decided to leave the colony and tried to board boats headed to France and were refused passage. They discovered their only recourse was to remain in the colony, as they would not be allowed to leave. The Pelican girls had been treated appallingly, yet, Bienville and the colonial government considered their complaints as frivolous. Bienville would never accept the fact or even acknowledge the seriousness of their grievances about conditions in the colony. After a time, Bienville was able to finally appease the women and the marriage arrangements commenced. The treatment of the Pelican Girls and the deplorable conditions in the Mobile colony reached France and it caused problems for a period of time for Bienville and the French government in the recruitment of additional brides willing to volunteer to go to the colony and marry the young Frenchmen there.
Even with the deplorable conditions encountered at Mobile, the girls could not forget the dismal life they endured in the Convents of France and felt they would now have a better chance of finding a husband than they would have had in France. In France they faced a possible arranged marriage, against their will by their families, or the likely possibility that they would become a servant in an affluent French home. None of the girls relished the idea of becoming a servant. They now at least had a choice of whom they wanted to marry, after a short courtship. Engagements were followed by small celebrations, feasting and dancing into the early morning hours. Marriages were performed on a daily basis during the month of August 1704 by Father LaVente and his assistant Father Albert Davion.
These young girls, the first to be brought to the Louisiana colonies, were all married within a month or so, except one, Francoise du Boisrenaud, who unfortunately, would never marry any of the Frenchmen of the settlement. Francoise du Boisrenaud and the King's lieutenant, thirty year old Pierre Boisbriant, the cousin of Bienville, wanted to marry and he had proposed marriage to her, but, for some unknown reason Bienville forbade the two to marry. It is said that Bienville later tried to force her to marry another Frenchman of the colony, and she refused to do so, which greatly angered him. Bienville then wrote to Pontchartrain asking that she be forced to marry the Frenchman he had chosen for her. This request to force her into the marriage was denied by Pontchartrain. Francoise du Boisrenaud then remained in the colony and never married.
Gabrielle (Savarit) Savary, now twenty years old, was one of the last Pelican Girls to marry, having accepted twenty-nine year old Jean Baptiste Saucier’s marriage proposal in late August of 1704. They were married in Mobile at Fort Louis on September 17th 1704. It is supposed that she held out longer in making her decision of which available bachelor to marry, trying to make a better marriage contract for herself, as Jean Baptiste was one of the wealthier and better connected of the French soldiers at the settlement. Gabrielle was one of only three Pelican girls to "marry well" and to better established husbands. The rest had to accept what they considered as inferior marriage proposals.
Everything did not go smoothly for the Pelican girls, some lost their new husbands to the fever, some of them did not survive the fever themselves and some were abandoned by their new husbands and they all endured the harsh poverty of the new colony at Mobile.
Regardless of their status or ethnic background, the women of colonial Louisiana endured difficult lives as they dealt with the dangers of the frontier; scarce supplies, hostile environment, and the hard physical labor that came with transforming the vast wilderness into a home. Even the most robust women succumbed to the diseases that flourished in the Louisiana Territory's climate. However, the women who eventually came to Louisiana influenced the colony not only in terms of their impact on population growth, but in their contributions to the new developing society and their ability to assimilate and transfer cultural patterns that are still evident today along the Gulf Coast.
Today, along the Gulf Coast area from Florida to the state of Texas there are many families that are descendants of the numerous Pelican Girls that were sent to the early colony to marry one of the single Frenchmen at Mobile in the early 1700's and at New Orleans in 1728. These early marriages of the Pelican Girls from France set the stage for the many descendants that in later years populated the Southern Gulf Coast, leaving it with a rich French Heritage that still endures today. Many of these descendants reside heavily in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
When you look through the local area telephone directories you can't help but recognize these early pioneer family names, descendants of the early settlers of the Colonial Louisiana Territory.
"If 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 arrival".
After receiving this same request annually from Bienville since the beginning of the first settlement in 1699 at Biloxi, King Louis XIV finally approved the plan in 1704, agreeing it was not beneficial for his colonist to be alone at the Mobile colony and the recruitment plan for brides was set into motion.
Due to France being at war at the time, the French Ministry asked the Catholic Church to make the selections. Twenty three respectable girls of good families were carefully chosen from the convents in France to be sent to the colonies by the Church for the French Government. The girls were chosen by Monsignor Vallier, the Bishop of Quebec, who had just established the Catholic Church at Mobile as a part of the Diocese of Quebec. Father Henry LaVente was appointed pastor of the Mobile parish by Monsignor Vallier, and was to sail on the Le Pelican with the chosen girls to the Mobile colony.
An excerpt from a letter written to Sieur de Bienville (Jean Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville) by Louis Phelypeaux de Pontchrtrain, the Chancellor of France, pertaining to the Pelican girls:
"His majesty sends by that ship 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 know 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".
Of the girls chosen, some were as young as 14 years old and the oldest around 19 years. Marie Gabrielle (Savarit) Savary had just turned 19 before the Pelican sailed from the port of Rochefort to the French port of Rochelle. In October of 1703 the chosen girls and their escorts left Paris in wagons on a long and tedious three hundred mile journey to the seaport town of Rochefort, on the Atlantic coast of France. After a short stay in Rochefort they were scheduled to board the ship bringing them to Mobile and the Louisiana Colony.
The war in Europe had caused a delay of the Pelican and its two escort ships, the Charente and Iberville's ship the Renomme. The two escort ships were scheduled to sail from Rochefort in a special convoy to help protect the Pelican from British War Ships. During this delay, the girls heard stories from the sailors of the hardships, savages, Canadian barbarians, poverty, murder and disease in the colony. This did not sound like the life promised them by the Bishop of Quebec. Some of the girls requested to return to Paris after hearing the stories, but were finally appeased by gifts and generous allowances and agreed to continue.
The group after months of delays, finally, departed the Port of Rochefort, France for the Port of La Rochelle, France. From the port of La Rochelle, after several weeks of additional delays, the Pelican departed on April 19th 1704 for the colonies without its two escort ships after taking on additional supplies. They were accompanied on board the ship by Jean-Baptiste de LaCroix de Chevrieres de Saint-Vallier, the Bishop of Quebec, Father Henry LaVentre, three additional priests, and four nuns from the religious order, Sisters of Charity, who looked after them on their voyage to the colonies. Also on board were 75 soldiers, laborers and four laborers' families.
Before arriving at Cap Haitian, Haiti, about 30 miles away, the Pelican encountered a violent storm in which the ship almost capsized, this terrified Father LaVente, who would later remark that "we almost perished in the storm". Surviving the violent storm the the Pelican arrived at its first port of call in Cap Haitian, Haiti on June 8th 1704. From here they sailed on June 17th 1704 for Havana, Cuba, arriving there on July 7th 1704 to the great relief of the girls who had been on the sea for almost three months. Upon their arrival at Havana, they were personally received by the Bishop of Cuba, Diego Evelino de Compostela, who saw that they were comfortably housed and their needs cared for. They also were entertained and taken on tours of the sights of Havana during their stay. The continuing problems of mosquitoes were the main discomfort for them while there. On July 14th the Pelican set sail for Pensacola where it was to take on fresh water and supplies. The Spanish government of Pensacola would not allow the Pelican into port, so they anchored off shore, where they were re-supplied by the Spanish. After a little over a week, the Pelican then pulled anchor and set sail from Pensacola for Mobile and the French Colony. The Pelican finally arrived a week later and dropped anchor at Dauphin Island, the deep water Port of the colony, where the passengers and crew disembarked and awaited the arrival of two shallow bottom boats to transfer them to Mobile and Fort Louis along with supplies for the fort. On July 28th they set sail in the two overfilled boats for Mobile and Fort Louis.
They finally arrived at Mobile and Fort Louis on August 1st, 1704, aboard the smaller boats brought to Dauphine Island to transfer them to the settlement; henceforth, they were referred to as “the Pelican Girls”. These were the first "brides" that came to Mobile and the Louisiana colony to marry the french settlers. They were quite well behaved, and they had little trouble in finding husbands. The ship also brought another passenger, Yellow Fever, from Havana, Cuba. A number of the ships crew became sick with high fevers after leaving Havana. Upon their arrival at Dauphine Island about half of the ship’s crew fell sick with Yellow Fever and many died and were hastily buried on Dauphine Island by the Priests. A number of the girls from the ship also fell ill with the fever and died, along with numerous settlers and soldiers of Mobile. Mosquitoes and Yellow Fever continued to be a problem for the settlers in Mobile due to the humid climate and standing stagnant water in the marsh areas.
The Pelican girls, as they are generally known, were called by some “The Casket Girls” because of the casket like box given to each one before they departed France for the Colonies and Mobile. This box contained items given each to help in their new lives, much as was done for the Les Fills Du Roi who were sent to Quebec earlier to marry the single Frenchmen there. Several years after the Pelican Girls arrived at Mobile another group was sent to New Orleans to marry the French settlers there and this group was called "The Casket Girls". Arrangements for the marriage of the Pelican girls were not left entirely to chance. The Canadian soldiers and settlers knew nothing beforehand of their prospective brides-to-be. The girls had already learned a good deal about their prospective husbands. They had been well informed about the background and present situations of each bachelor. From a group of fifty or sixty eligible men, only about forty would be seriously considered, and perhaps twenty five regarded as good prospects for marriage. As for the group known as “les Canadians”, there were no affluent men, but some were better established than others in the colony. Jean Baptiste Saucier was considered as being one of the better than average established settlers of Mobile and had a home and land.
Among the twenty three or so girls seeking husbands, there were some, quite naturally, who were considered much more desirable as wives, by standards of backgrounds, having been reared in delicate and refined circumstances. Our ancestor Marie Gabrielle Savary was one of the more desirable prospective brides due to her background and prior education in the Convents of the Church. Many of the girls felt superior to the majority of soldiers and settlers of Mobile, who seemed to regard them as “pieces of merchandise” for having thrown themselves blindly into a chosen exile and marriage to men in the colonies they had no prior contact with.
It is said that later all of the Pelican Girls rebelled at the living conditions they encountered in the colony, which was not what they were promised, at eating Indian corn, and perhaps corn bread, and for a while this petticoat insurrection greatly taxed Bienville's patience and ingenuity, especially when many of them demanded the “lives” they had been promised by the Bishop of Quebec when recruited to journey to the colony. Some decided to leave the colony and tried to board boats headed to France and were refused passage. They discovered their only recourse was to remain in the colony, as they would not be allowed to leave. The Pelican girls had been treated appallingly, yet, Bienville and the colonial government considered their complaints as frivolous. Bienville would never accept the fact or even acknowledge the seriousness of their grievances about conditions in the colony. After a time, Bienville was able to finally appease the women and the marriage arrangements commenced. The treatment of the Pelican Girls and the deplorable conditions in the Mobile colony reached France and it caused problems for a period of time for Bienville and the French government in the recruitment of additional brides willing to volunteer to go to the colony and marry the young Frenchmen there.
Even with the deplorable conditions encountered at Mobile, the girls could not forget the dismal life they endured in the Convents of France and felt they would now have a better chance of finding a husband than they would have had in France. In France they faced a possible arranged marriage, against their will by their families, or the likely possibility that they would become a servant in an affluent French home. None of the girls relished the idea of becoming a servant. They now at least had a choice of whom they wanted to marry, after a short courtship. Engagements were followed by small celebrations, feasting and dancing into the early morning hours. Marriages were performed on a daily basis during the month of August 1704 by Father LaVente and his assistant Father Albert Davion.
These young girls, the first to be brought to the Louisiana colonies, were all married within a month or so, except one, Francoise du Boisrenaud, who unfortunately, would never marry any of the Frenchmen of the settlement. Francoise du Boisrenaud and the King's lieutenant, thirty year old Pierre Boisbriant, the cousin of Bienville, wanted to marry and he had proposed marriage to her, but, for some unknown reason Bienville forbade the two to marry. It is said that Bienville later tried to force her to marry another Frenchman of the colony, and she refused to do so, which greatly angered him. Bienville then wrote to Pontchartrain asking that she be forced to marry the Frenchman he had chosen for her. This request to force her into the marriage was denied by Pontchartrain. Francoise du Boisrenaud then remained in the colony and never married.
Gabrielle (Savarit) Savary, now twenty years old, was one of the last Pelican Girls to marry, having accepted twenty-nine year old Jean Baptiste Saucier’s marriage proposal in late August of 1704. They were married in Mobile at Fort Louis on September 17th 1704. It is supposed that she held out longer in making her decision of which available bachelor to marry, trying to make a better marriage contract for herself, as Jean Baptiste was one of the wealthier and better connected of the French soldiers at the settlement. Gabrielle was one of only three Pelican girls to "marry well" and to better established husbands. The rest had to accept what they considered as inferior marriage proposals.
Everything did not go smoothly for the Pelican girls, some lost their new husbands to the fever, some of them did not survive the fever themselves and some were abandoned by their new husbands and they all endured the harsh poverty of the new colony at Mobile.
Regardless of their status or ethnic background, the women of colonial Louisiana endured difficult lives as they dealt with the dangers of the frontier; scarce supplies, hostile environment, and the hard physical labor that came with transforming the vast wilderness into a home. Even the most robust women succumbed to the diseases that flourished in the Louisiana Territory's climate. However, the women who eventually came to Louisiana influenced the colony not only in terms of their impact on population growth, but in their contributions to the new developing society and their ability to assimilate and transfer cultural patterns that are still evident today along the Gulf Coast.
Today, along the Gulf Coast area from Florida to the state of Texas there are many families that are descendants of the numerous Pelican Girls that were sent to the early colony to marry one of the single Frenchmen at Mobile in the early 1700's and at New Orleans in 1728. These early marriages of the Pelican Girls from France set the stage for the many descendants that in later years populated the Southern Gulf Coast, leaving it with a rich French Heritage that still endures today. Many of these descendants reside heavily in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
When you look through the local area telephone directories you can't help but recognize these early pioneer family names, descendants of the early settlers of the Colonial Louisiana Territory.
A full-size authentic replica of the Pelican, photo above, was built at La Malbaie in Quebec. Construction on the ship began in 1987, but the project was beset with problems and it was not completed until 1992 after 7 years at a cost of $15 million dollars. For two years, the Le Pelican remained at the Old Port of Montreal in Canada as a museum. It was purchased and then moved to and moored at New Orleans from 1995 until 2002. It was brought to Donaldsonville, Louisiana in 2002 as a riverside tourist attraction. Sadly the ship sank at is moorings in 2002 and was re-floated, but in 2008 it was hit by a tugboat and has not been raised or repaired. Not much is left of the ship now, only a marker remains as a memorial to the Le Pelican.
The Le Pelican was the ship that brought women from orphanages and convents of France to marry colonists in Mobile in 1704.
The Le Pelican was the ship that brought women from orphanages and convents of France to marry colonists in Mobile in 1704.
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