History

•  Louis XIV was the longest reigning French monarch.
•  He waged expensive and misguided wars with neighboring countries.
•  He revoked the Edict of Nantes, thereby renewing violent conflict   between French Catholics and Protestants.
•  He depleted the French treasury by building the Palace of Versailles.
•  In 1650, at Paris, he created the Hospital General de La Salpetriere for female inmates, and Bicetre prison for males.
•  He was motivated, in part, by the belief that God was punishing France for its high level of public immorality and “sin”.
•  In 1684, he ordered that “debauched women” would be arrested and incarcerated at La Salpetriere General Hospital in Paris. He issued an edict that any female prostitute caught with his soldiers, within a five mile radius of Versailles, would have her nose and her ears cut off.

(These were the King’s mistresses who were debauchees and adulteresses)

• Catherine-Henriette Bellier.
• Marie Angelique de Scorailles
• Catherine Charlotte de Gramont
• Bonne de Pons d’Heudicourt
• Isabelle de Ludres
• Louise de La Valliere
• Anna Maria Mancini
• Francoise-Athenais de Rochechouart
• Claude de Vin des Oeillets
• Anne de Rohan-Chabot
• Olympia Mancini

• In France, parents or other relatives could file a claim with the court regarding the misbehavior of a family member (rebellion, sexual activity, stealing, rejection of religion, taking God’s name in vain, etc.) and the lieutenant general de police would ordinarily issue a Lettre de Cachet which was similar to an arrest warrant.
• The targeted person (usually a daughter) would be arrested and incarcerated. The family members could choose to leave her at La Salpetriere and pay a fee for her board, or they could request that their relative be deported to Louisiana, from whence there would be no return to France.
• There was not any legal mechanism for appeal against a lettre de cachet.

1. La Maison de St. Louis – The section for orphans and young children.
2. La Maison de Correction – The section for “debauched women” deemed capable of reforming their lives.
3. Le Commun – Section for prostitutes awaiting their court decision.
4. La Maison de Force – Section for incorrigible, incurable criminals with life sentences.

• Vagabonds
• Prostitutes
• Beggars
• Homosexuals
• Salt smugglers
• Tobacco smugglers
• Debauched women and girls
• Heretics and blasphemers
• Poisoners
• Deserters
• The mentally ill

• The galleys operated from April to October, out of a large base at Marseilles, France.
• 30% of galley slaves had been convicted of smuggling salt or tobacco.
• Sentences were from three to nine years.
• Each convict was branded on his back with GAL.
• Each man was chained by an ankle to a wooden rowing bench – 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
• There were as many as 250 oarsmen on a galley – each one occupied 25 inches on his wooden bench.
• There were five oarsmen to an oar, which was 39 feet long and weighed 286 lbs.
• Half of the convicts died before completing their sentence. Christian Ladner was saved from this fate due to an oversupply of convicts in 1719.

• King Louis XIV died in 1715. In May, 1720, a royal edict prohibited the sending of any more criminals to Louisiana.
• The government in Paris, however, still wanted to grant Governor Bienville’s request for marriageable women in Louisiana.
• Officials at La Salpetriere drew up a list of women and girls selected from La Maison de St. Louis, and La Maison de Corrections. The list included no known prostitutes.
• Cardinal Louis-Antoine de Noailles, Archbishop of Paris and spiritual advisor to La Salpetriere, approved the list of eighty-eight women and girls, the youngest of whom were twelve years old.
• In June of 1720, the group was entrusted to the constabulary guards (local police) for transportation to Paimboeuf for embarkation to “Mississippi”.
• The list of eighty-eight women and girls was lost until 1987, when it was discovered in the French archives and published by Bruce Ardoin.

“We, the undersigned Constabulary guards, acknowledge that the girls named on this document have been entrusted to our care, to be conducted to Paimboeuf, where we will deliver them to the Captain of the flute La Baleine, on which the girls will be embarked, and we are to present to the Company of the Indies evidence of our delivery, along with the acknowledgement by the Captain that the said girls have been received by him.”

Done at Paris, 12 June 1720

Signed: DELAGE, and BETOUZET

• The risk of Scurvy was great and resulted in many deaths on ships bound from France to the colony of Louisiana.
• The La Baleine also carried more than 200 other passengers to Biloxi.
• It is likely that some of the brides chose their husband from the crewmen of the La Baleine.
• Cargo ships for the Company of the Indies routinely stopped at Cap Francais, St. Domingue, to load drinking water, wood, and livestock.
• The girls would have been required to sleep on straw in the bottom of La Baleine, along with any cattle taken onboard.
• Sister Gertrude actually pointed loaded pistols at French pirates who boarded La Baleine to stop them from menacing the brides.
• The flute itself was only about eighty feet in length and did not carry cannons, but was usually accompanied by a French Warship.

The original list of eighty-eight girls on the La Baleine included these two founding mothers of Mississippi Gulf Coast families:

Marie Angelique Girard (age 22) married Andre Miot.
She is the ancestor of all descendants of the Nicaise and Gollott families in Mississippi. She is also the ancestor of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, including surnames such as Ladner, Ladnier, Cuevas, Saucier, Moran, Bosarge, Dubuisson, Shaw, Seymour, Favre, Dedeaux, Gill, Krohn, Tiblier, Fayard, Martin, Guice, Lizana, La Fontaine, Scarborough, Quave, Cassibry, Greenwell, Swetman, Perez, and countless others.

Marie-Anne Foucault (age 17) married Jean-Claude Dupont.

She is the ancestor of many Jackson County residents, including surnames like Dupont, Krebs, Demouy, Holley, Leflau, Jennings, Hague, and Gautier.

1. Create a Mississippi non-profit corporation for the purpose of raising money to build a permanent structure in Ocean Springs or Biloxi, which will house a museum/tourist attraction that will open by January of 2021.
2. Elect a board of directors from the pool of direct descendants of the Baleine Brides.
3. Publish and sell copies of a book containing the genealogies of those brides who founded large families in Mississippi, Illinois, and Louisiana.
4. Maintain access to the family genealogies on a central computer database in the museum.        
5. Create a short film, which tells the story of the Baleine Brides, to be shown once every hour in the auditorium of the museum.
6. Display tableaux in the museum which will illustrate significant places and events in the story, including early maps of Mississippi.
7. Display a one-fifth scale model of the flute La Baleine with a cross-sectional view of the ship.
8. Display historical artifacts from the period when Biloxi was the capitol of Louisiana.
9. Staff a souvenir and gift shop to sell items bearing the copyrighted La Baleine logo.
10. Provide a logo pin and certificate of membership to eligible descendants for a fee.
11. Organize an annual convention for certified descendants to be held in Biloxi or Ocean Springs, Mississippi.