Book Review- A Must Have

The Brides of La Baleine

The latest book by Randall Ladnier is a must have for those of Gulf Coast first settler lineages. He spent many years researching this one of a kind book celebrating the lives of the brave women who volunteered to travel across an ocean to a wild new world with the hopes of marriage and a new life. The list of names of these women were lost for 266 years and was found in the French archives in 1987. As Randal states, these women of "the Baleine’s genetic contribution to America approaches that of the the MAYFLOWER, which had arrived 100 years earlier. Thus, Biloxi became the equivalent of “Plymouth Rock” for the French colony of Louisiana. On September 6th, 1620, twenty-nine Pilgrim women had set sail from England on the Mayflower, in order to escape religious persecution.Fifteen of those women died within six months of their arrival in America.

Governor Bienville apparently received at least 72 young women of child-bearing age, desperate to escape social and moral persecution in France. These French women eventually formed the genetic foundation on which Gulf Coast societies have been built."

I am a proud descendant of one of the Baleine Brides, many times over.  

Randall's book can be purchased here The Brides of La Baleine

Purchase a soft cover book  for $25.00 or PDF for $15.00