Dear Genie, what do I really need to know about Huguenots?
For a U.S. researcher, it is important to know that the Huguenots, French protestants who fled France after the Reformation, settled in many other countries, including approximately 44,000 to North America and the American colonies.

An abbreviated history of the Huguenot religious movement and its persecution, although beginning much earlier, takes flight in October 1685 when King Louis XIV revoked his grandfather’s Edict of Nantes, which had given a limited religious freedom to French protestants. Although French Catholic intolerance had been severe before that date, the revocation guaranteed that French protestants would no longer be welcome in their own land. They would lose their homes, their families, their lands and possessions, and even their lives if they did not agree to abjure the protestant faith and accept Catholicism anew. In addition, Huguenots were not allowed to leave France on pain of death. When the Huguenots escaped from France after the revocation, they were fleeing for their lives. It has been suggested that over 100,000 French protestants died in France around this time.

The subsequent flight from France was an unprecedented diaspora of between 400,000 to 600,000 French citizens, in a time period when the total population of France was between 16 – 19 million. (Perhaps only the Potato Famine of Ireland after 1845 led such a large percentage of a country’s population to leave their homes.) Much of the cream of the merchant class of France left; over 80,000 to England alone, 10,000 to Ireland, the rest split among the German Palatinate, the Swiss states, and both North and South America, Holland, present day Belgium, Russia (which profited from the artistry of Huguenot jewelers Gustav and Peter Carl Fabergé), even Africa. The word refugee entered the English language thanks to the Huguenot réfugíe to England and America.

The economic repercussions to France of such a departure of citizens cannot be truly estimated. It is often noted that Louis’ banning of Huguenots from New France assured France would lose Canada to the English. The intolerance toward protestants in France continued to, and was finally resolved by, the French Revolution.

According to Genealogical Research: Methods and Sources, ed. Kenn Stryker-Rodda, vol. 2, pp. 322-323 as noted in Huguenot Lineage Research – A Bibliography Based on Migration Routes, by Milford S. Dickerson, M.D., “There were two waves of Huguenot immigration into England, the first occurring circa 1560 and the second circa 1680-1695. The first wave, which produced considerable American Huguenot ancestry, was the result of Spanish persecution of Protestants both in the Low Countries and along the constantly-shifting Hispano-French border [of modern Belgium].” England, being such a short distance by water from France received directly (as did Switzerland) many who thought their exile would be a short one. It was only after a few years that most realized they had permanently left France. Huguenots often moved to America only after they had staged a partial recovery in England or Ireland, perhaps masking their true French origins. Many, finding England overcrowded, sought the new lands and relative religious freedom of the North American colonies. Many Huguenots who fled to German states subsequently moved to Pennsylvania, blending in with their German neighbors, further obscuring their French backgrounds.

A genealogist who has identified an American Huguenot ancestor will not often be able to trace him or her immediately to a home in France. Often they must study more than one American colony, and multiple locations within Europe before being able to research in France. Conversely, many first-generation Huguenot immigrants were very careful to record their place of origin. The pastor of their new (usually Huguenot) church in America was likely to record the immigrant’s place of birth and parentage. Huguenots, as did many other ethnic groups, tended to be clannish, and sought out their countrymen in a new land. So finding a group of Huguenots can lead to a specific family, hence the importance of knowing where the group settled.

It’s interesting to note that Huguenots first immigrated to the North American continent in 1540. Already suffering persecution from Catholic leaders, the Huguenots searched for a refuge large enough to allow all French Protestants to live together. An attempt was made then to start a settlement near present-day Quebec, at Cap Rouge. Famine, sickness and Indian hostility brought an end to that first effort. Elsewhere, the Huguenot settlement in 1564 at Fort Caroline (now Jacksonville), Florida predated Spain’s Saint Augustine, whose claim to antiquity is that it is the longest continuous European settlement, not the first European one. This first Huguenot American settlement was decimated by the Spanish a year later, in 1565, and the few remaining survivors returned to France.

Acadia, present day Nova Scotia, was host to a group of Huguenot settlers who wintered there in 1604, settling in Port Royal in 1605. This French settlement was finally ceded to England in 1713. Huguenots settled in Pennsylvania in 1623, on the South Delaware River, four miles below Philadelphia. Other Huguenots settled on the American continent before the Revocation, some in Virginia as early as 1625. The Dutch West India Company brought Walloon and Huguenot settlers to Manhattan Island by 1628, to create New Amsterdam, later New York after the English took it. Maryland was home, in Calvert County, to some Huguenot families in the late 17th century.

After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, American Huguenot settlement increased. Huguenots settled at Oyster Point, South Carolina in April 1680. In 1685, Rev. Elie Prioleau became pastor of the first Huguenot church in North America in Charlestown, South Carolina. The French Protestant (Huguenot) Church of Charleston, which remains independent, is the oldest continuously active Huguenot congregation in the United States today. Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox” who so successfully harried the English forces in South Carolina in the Revolutionary War was the grandson of two French Huguenot couples, Benjamin & Judith (neé Baluet) Marion and Anthony and Esther (neé Baluet) Cordes. According to Huguenot Lineage Research – A Bibliography Based on Migration Routes, by Milford S. Dickerson, M.D., “In no American colony did the Huguenots play a more conspicuous role than in South Carolina, even though their settlement was later than in New York and Virginia. …There were five important Huguenot settlements in South Carolina…” A small group of 40-50 Huguenot families settled in Rhode Island in the autumn of 1686 at Narragansett, others at Newport and Providence. In Massachusetts, Huguenots built towns in 1685, and settled in Oxford in 1686 and at Salem in 1670. Few Americans know that Paul Revere, the patriot famous for his midnight ride across Massachusetts, was the son of a Huguenot silversmith, Apollos Riviere and his English wife Deborah Hitchbourn. The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a descendant of Huguenot families through Roosevelt's mother Sara Ann Delano, and her ancestors Antoine Crispell and Phillippe de la Noye who arrived in Massachusetts in 1621. Seven other U.S. presidents have documented Huguenot ancestors: George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford and Lyndon Johnson. Another twelve have unproven Huguenot ties.

Connecticut received its share of Huguenot settlers before the close of the 17th century, at Milford on Long Island Sound. Hartford, Connecticut accepted Huguenot settlers from 1721-1727. A notable Southern settlement of less than 500 Huguenots occurred in 1700, at Manakin Towne, 20 miles above present day Richmond, Virginia on the site of an abandoned Monacan Indian settlement.

Huguenot families blended into the American quilt so successfully that for many, their heritage has been obscured. After research, some of our “English and German” ancestors may prove to have been French instead.

Resources
Holdings at the Texas State Library (from which most of this article is drawn) include:
Dickerson, Milford S., M.D. Huguenot Lineage Research – A Bibliography Based on Migration Routes. Austin, Texas: 1996.
Finnell, Arthur Louis, Registrar General, compiler. Register of Qualified Huguenot Ancestors of the National Huguenot Society 4th Edition. 1995.
Gilman, C. Malcolm B., M.D. The Huguenot Migration in Europe and America. Bridgeport, Pennsylvania: 1962.
Brock, R. A., editor and compiler for the Virginia Historical Society. Huguenot Migration to Virginia. 1886. Reprint, Baltimore, Maryland: 1962.

Libraries devoted to Huguenot Studies include:
The Library of the National Huguenot Society in Bloomington, Minnesota
The Library of the Huguenot Society of the Founders of Manakin in the Colony of Virginia in Midlothian, Virginia
The Library of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina
The Library of the Huguenot Society of America in New York, New York
The Huguenot Society of London in London, England

Websites:
145 sites appear in the Huguenot listing on Cyndi’s List:
www.cyndislist.com/huguenot.htm

Publications dealing with Huguenot populations outside North America include:
The Huguenot Society of London, Publications, vols. 48. (Parish registers of England and Ireland.)
Gimlette, Thomas. Huguenot Settlers in Ireland.
Lee, Grace Lawless. The Huguenot Settlements in Ireland. Dublin: Trinity College, 1936.

Many resources exist for the individual American colonies where Huguenots settled. Here is a small sample for each colony:

New York – Registers of the Births, Marriages, and Deaths of the Eglise Francoise a la Nouvelle York, from 1688 to 1804, 1886. Reprint, The Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1994.

New Jersey – Koehler, Albert F. The Huguenots or the Early French in New Jersey. Reprint, The Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1992.

Connecticut – “Why so few Huguenots chose Connecticut?” Published in Huguenot Refugees in the Settling of Colonial America by The Huguenot Society of America, 2nd ed. Chapter VIII, pp 359-361.

Maine – Fosdick , Lucian J. The French Blood in America. 1906. Reprint, Clearfield Co.: 1996.

Rhode Island – Potter, Elisha R. French Settlement and French Settlers in the Colony of Rhode Island. The Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1968.

Massachusetts – Haywood, Elizabeth, and Jane Liddell. Challenges in Salem, Boston, New Oxford and Narrogansett. pp 102-123.

Pennsylvania and Delaware – Memorials of the Huguenots in America with Special Reference to their Emigration to Pennsylvania. Reprint,The Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1989.

Maryland – Goodbar, Richard L. The Huguenots, their History and Legacy, Biographies of Ancestors of Members of the Huguenot Society of Maryland. The Huguenot Society: 1993.

Virginia – Cabelle, Priscilla Harriss. Turff and Twigg, The French Lands, vol 1. 1988.

South Carolina – “Transactions”, publication of The Huguenot Society of South Carolina. 96 volumes.
Hirsch, Arthur Henry. The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina. 1928. Reprint, The Genealogical Publishing Co.: 1991.

A suggested reading list can be found in the periodical “The Cross of Languedoc.” The National Huguenot Society. February 1997, p. 7.

To submit a question to Dear Genie, please email it to tommyingram@grandecom.net or place it in the submission box at the monthly AGS meeting. Please be as specific as possible about the geographical area, time period and problem you are having. Although not able to do your genealogical research, Genie will try to provide some new and interesting resources and directions for your research.