THE LAST LORD OF PARADISE: NEW FRANCE

NORTH AMERICA IN 1750

Land claims arising out of exploration and occupancy.

Britain pink

France blue

Spain yellow
Unexplored white

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For more than one hundred sixty years our American midwest lived under the King of France. New France as it was called, stretched from Canada's Atlantic coast, west into Michigan and Wisconsin, and south to the Gulf of Mexico. First explored by fur trappers and Jesuit priests in the early 1600s, this vast territory was sparsely populated by French settlers called habitants. They survived by nothing but their own hard work, clinging to their farms, their language, their Catholic faith, and the Seigneurial form of government--a peasant-lord relationship used in France.

New France was surrendered to Great Britain in 1763 after the French and Indian War, but in 1803 this same land became part of the United States, under President Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. The descendants of these habitants remain today in places like Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans.

Vivian LeMay

THE LAST LORD OF PARADISE––GENERATION ONE JEANNE & ANTON

I remembered that autumn day when a party from the Compagnie Franche de la Marine visited our village in France. They came to recruit men for the war in New France and Papa allowed them into our orchard. I was only sixteen, enchanted by the handsome young marines in their blue uniforms...

It was the sparkle of energy in his blue eyes that caught me, and I smiled. His gaze was so intense I thought he'd pierced my soul and as he bowed to kiss my hand, his very presence dominated me. Anton had that affect on everyone he met.

We wed quickly and weeks later Anton was called to war. It was now nine years since I saw my husband. There were a few letters from him during the war, before France surrendered her lands in North America to the British--after the surrender, nothing. Our troops came home, but not Anton. I fought off the bitterness, and tried to hope, but there had been no word at all for the last five years.

Then last winter Monsieur Lavelle arrived at our chateau with a letter from Anton. His letter invited me to join him in the wilderness of Canada at his own secret settlement called Paradis. Anton sent Monsieur Lavelle for me, because he was clearing land, planting crops and building a home for me. It said nothing about where Anton was for all those years, but my husband was alive. He still loved me and wanted me with him. I thought only of Anton and the future as I packed my trunk that very day.

The Marquise Jeanne Reneau, 1766 on the shore of the Detroit River

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