It was the first of the Cistercian daughter-houses, established north of the head of navigation of the Marne at Saint-Dizier by Bernard of Clairvaux in 1118, though it never figured among the "Elder Daughters" of Cîteaux—Clairvaux, Pontigny, La Ferté and Morimond— that dominated the hierarchic network of the Order. The abbey was very active in its first century or so in the settlement of daughter houses: The chronicler Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, who covered the years 1227 to 1241, was a monk in the abbey.