David Juhan

Additional Curator's Notes:

"The story told 150 years later by Emma Juliette Juhan Breaker centered around the young child Francois St. Jean being smuggled to San Domingo after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by two aunts in nun's garb and raised by a Spanish don of Swiss extraction, and later marrying the beautiful Jewess heiress Marguerite de Bonneville, and his grandchild fleeing the slave uprising in 1778 to settle in Charleston. This was not exactly the way it happened."*

Daniel Juhan is as far back as I have been able to trace the Juhan line. His lineage does not quite match the charming tale of rescue and true love.

Emma's family came from Switzerland to the New World, settling first in Nova Scotia and later moving to the southern part of the American colonies.

As for escaping a slave revolt on San Domingo in 1778, her ancestors were in the process of moving from Canada to South Carolina. Her grandmother Marie Payzant, eventually settled in Haiti (not San Domingo) and died there. Much of her family lived for a time in Charleston or other parts of South Carolina.

There are several women of note with the name Marguerite de Bonneville, but I cannot tie any of them to the legend of being a Jewish heiress marrying into Emma's family.

While variations of the name Payzant/Paisant and Bourdeaux appear on the list of Huguenot names, I am unable to find any variation of Juhan on the approved list. David's descendants may not have come to the New World to escape persecution after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In fact, his grandson, Jean Jacques Juhan, first of the family in the New World, was a practicing Catholic, with records in the parish church in Yverdon.

 * http://www.glenncourt.com/genealogy/fam_juhan.php

-- Maria Edmonds-Zediker, Volunteer Curator, August 10, 2017

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