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Please attach the profiles of French Huguenots who were born in Lorraine. If possible, also add their names into the text below, according to their country of emigration.
- All welcome to join & contribute (Map: Coertzen, Pieter. 1988. Die Hugenote Van Suid Afrika 1688-1988: Cape Town, Tafelberg.)
Background History of Lorraine at the time of the Huguenot Diaspora
In the east, the acquisition of Alsace had given France a Rhine frontier, although Mulhouse remained a part of the Swiss confederation. Lorraine and the Barrois were separate dukedoms…So far as the territories under French control are concerned, administration by generalities was largely in process of evolution…. Flanders and Artois were united in 1691 and Lorraine and the Barrois were fully incorporated into the French administrative system in the following century Lorraine and the Barrois were fully incorporated into the French administrative system in the following century. ..Other important cities west of the Rhine and the Spanish Netherlands were ... Nancy in Lorraine..
Only the large church of the Calaisis and the small congregations of the Boulonnais formed part of the reformed church organization of France through the Picardy colloquy of the synodal province for the north-east. Of the other churches, that of the principality of Sedan with its four temples enjoyed the closest relations with the French church through its famous academy. It was at this seat of learning, closed in 1681, that Pierre Bayle from the county of Foix held the chair of philosophy. He retired to the United Provinces and the scepticism and wide tolerance he displayed in his later writings were to exert an enormous influence on radical thought in the following century...
The town and principality of Sedan, with its dependencies, enjoyed special privileges which predated the French annexation of 1642 and the Calvinists there were slow to surrender their freedom of religion, despite the warning of the Catholic clergy in 1682, delivered to them by Jean Dez, rector of the Jesuit college. Louvois therefore sent in the Champagne regiment in early November 1685. The threats of the soldiery and the burning of property brought about the desired conversions within a week, leaving the army to turn its attention to recalcitrant Saint-Quentin. The Sedan pastors Jacques Alpee de Saint-Maurice and Jacques Gantois from the town church took refuge in the United Provinces. Saint-Maurice, who was also a professor of theology at the Sedan academy, asked particularly to remain in Maastricht in October 1685, since “une grande partie de son troupau (sic) s’est arreste ici, et qu’ils souhaitent passionement (sic) d’etre encor' instruis et edifies par .. . leur pasteur”.
Military conquest, economic distress and religious persecution may perhaps have driven from home as many as 60% of the Calvinists from the region discussed in this chapter between 1675 and the end of the century. This could mean that about 3 000 emigrated from the Calaisis and the Boulonnais, perhaps as many as 11 000 from Sedan and Metz, and some 2 000 more from the scattered Protestant communities of north-eastern France and the southern Netherlands, a total of perhaps 16 000 in all. It would appear that this region provided the largest contingent of settlers of French speech at the Cape in this period, comprising about 30% of the total. Between a third and a half of them were attached to the Guines congregation in the Calaisis.
• M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Cape settlers V: from Flanders to Alsace on the turbulent frontier p 245-6, 276
Countries of Dispersal
South Africa
From Sedan came Marie Buisset, daughter of a merchant and long a midwife in Table Valley, who reached the Cape in the early years of the eighteenth century as the new wife of the surgeon Jean Prieur du Plessis. Her father’s name is not known, although there was an Etienne Buisset in Amsterdam in 1690. Marie Buisset and Jean Prieur du Plessis were married in the Nieuwe Kerk of Amsterdam in August 1700. Her second husband, Dirk Snith, was also a surgeon.... Marie Buisset has not been traced at Sedan, but among those whose goods were seized after the revocation on the frontiers of Champagne was a widow Sara Buisset.
• M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Cape settlers V: from Flanders to Alsace on the turbulent frontier pp 257-8
- Marie Buisset bap February 5, 1679 , Sedan, France Death: c 1751 Cape of Good Hope. Daughter of Christophe Buisset and Anne Guiri Wife of Dr Jean Prieur du Plessis, SV/PROG and Dietrich Schnitt / Dirk Smit