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Please attach the profiles of French Huguenots who were born in Normandie. 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 Normandie at the time of the Huguenot Diaspora
Important with regard to Huguenot escape routes by sea and the prevention of such evasions, are the seaports of the region. They include Dieppe and Le Havre in Normandy... In terms of the ecclesiastical organization of the Calvinist church with which we are so closely concerned, this part of France in the seven-teenth century included the three synodal provinces of Normandy... With the exception of the flourishing Calvinism of coastal Normandy, members of the reformed church were largely a scattered minority and their temples focal points for small groups of worshippers from communities other-
wise isolated. The church was ..somewhat stronger in the farming areas of Upper Normandy, the Blesois and the Beauce colloquy. Its survival in some localities owed much to the Protestantism of landowners among the lesser nobility; the Beraults,... were of this class. In all, little more than 10% of French Protestants lived in this region. (p105)
109-14 The refugee Gedeon Malherbe was a bachelor of twenty-five when he sailed on the Voorschooten. He was among a group of refugees at Delft who on September 21, 1687 appeared before the celebrated pastor and Huguenot historian Elie Benoist, once minister at Alengon in Normandy, to make public reparation of their fault in abjuring Calvinism before escaping from France. Gedeon Malherbe was named among those who had worshipped at the little church of Laons on the road from Dreux to Brezolles in the Thimerais. This wooded region between the Avre and the Eure came under Norman jurisdiction, although it had more in common with the Perche to the west and like its neighbour was renowned for the breeding of the heavy percheron cart-horse. Its three Protestant churches at Laons, Favieres and La Ferte-Vidame formed an outlying part of the Beauce colloquy of the synodal province for the Ile-de-France and the north-east and were sometimes united under a single pastor in the seventeenth century. The seigneurial church at Favieres was one of the few congregations which did not lose its temple at the revocation. It was converted into a barn. This was Malherbe country indeed and the name is associated with all three congregations in the Thimerais. Malherbes who attended the Favieres temple are to be found in Catholic records after the signing of the Edict of Fontainebleau in October 1685. However in the inventories of the possessions of Calvinist refugees from the Verneuil election of the Alen on generality appears the name of a merchant Gedeon Malherbe, with wife and four children, of Les Ressuintes, near the road from La Ferte-Vidame to Senonches. On September 1, 1684 a daughter Marie-Elisabeth was born to Gedeon Malherbe and Elisabeth Bernier and christened two days later at L’Aigle. The parents came from La Manceliere, perhaps the hamlet of that name near La Ferte- Vidame.43 It was at this period, on the eve of the revocation, that the closing and demolition of temples and the general harassment of Calvinists were causing a movement of peoples within France and a rising tide of emigration.
The names Duthuile and Drouin appear both at La Fontaine-sous Premont and among those compelled to abjure at Dreux. The abjurations include those of Daniel Duthuile and his wife Madeleine Drouin on November 16, 1685 and two days earlier, that of Philippe Drouin. Comparison with names listed in the minutes of the Walloon church at Delft makes it clear that the Philippe Drouin who returned to the reformed communion on December 9, 1693 was also from La Fontaine-sous-Premont. The name was not uncommon in the north-east of France and the Drouins may have come originally from the Calaisis.60 It would seem that the Philippe Drouin mentioned here was the Cape refugee. In his will, proved in September 1702, he names as his heir his true friend Gedeon Malherbe, whom he doubtless knew at Dreux.61 In December 1701 the refugee pastor Henri Rou, formerly at Lorges, sent him a sum of money from the estate of his late father, who had died in France. Philippe Drouin did not live to receive the legacy, however, and it went to Gedeon Malherbe.62 ... In La Fontaine-sous-Premont on April 25, 1658 of Jean, son of Francois Duthuile and Madeleine Pinard. The child was named for his godfather Jean Pinard of Marsauceux.64 Another Duthuile from this region, Claude from Houdan, was in Canterbury, England in 1686.65 There is evidence that some of the Duthuiles of the Drouais were of a certain standing in local society, although many refugees were without means on arrival in exile. A Gedeon Duthuile was assisted from the poor-box of the Walloon church at Delft in December 1684.66 Jacques Pinard’s wife Esther Foucher has not been positively identified with others of that surname, but it may reasonably be assumed that she was related to the Foucher family which travelled out on the Voorschooten. ..
There is no precise information on the birthplaces of Louis le Riche and the Cronier brothers who accompanied Duthuile and Drouin on the Driebergen in 1698. All three made their way to Delft, where assistance was given on August 18, 1697 to Louis (le)Riche “pour aprandre son mestier”.115 He does not appear to have persevered in the trade he intended to follow. The Croniers arrived at about the same time. Etienne made his peace with the reformed church on August 7, 1697 and Pierre on January 22, 1698. Pierre’s delay is accounted for in the minutes of the Delft consistory, which also reveal that the Croniers were Catholics by birth and upbringing. “Pierre Cronier”, we read, “qui avoit embrasse nostre SteReligion depuis quelques anees ayant eu le malheur d’estre arreste envoulant sortir de france et la foiblesse de renoncer a son esperance a faitpubliquement recogce de sa faute et (a) este regeu a la paix de Peglise”.116 Pierre, born about the year 1671, and his brother Etienne considered themselves Normans and may perhaps have come from the Thimerais. The abjuration of a Francois Cronier of La Ferte-Vidame at Leyden in September 1687 provides a possible clue.117 Le Riche was perhaps from the same area.The relationship between the various members of the Le Long family at the Cape cannot yet be fully elucidated. Elisabeth was perhaps the sister of Charles and Jean le Long; Jean had a daughter Marie and it seems not unlikely that the Jacques le Long who died early in 1707 at the hands of a certain Abraham Jacob was Jean’s son.126 Jacques le Long is presumably the Jacobus le Long whose name is encountered among the Drakenstein burgher infantry shortly before that date.127 J.Hoge’s researches have established that Charles le Long came to the United Provinces from the Palatinate,128 while more recently A.M.Hugo has suggested that Elisabeth might have been the daughter of a Blois attorney Louis le Long and his wife Marie Baignoulx, born in 1653.129 This possibility is reinforced by Paul de Felice’s assertion that a Pierre Baignoulx preached a sermon at the Cape towards the end of the seventeenth century.130 On the other hand, the Elisabeth le Long at the Cape would seem to have been a much younger woman. The Le Long emigration is associated with the sailing of the Suijdbeveland from Zeeland on April 22, 1688, the vessel which brought to the Cape the pastor Simond, to be discussed in a later chapter, his wife Anne de Berault and her brother Louis. As the Beraults came from the L’Aigle district in Normandy, perhaps the Le Longs hailed from the same town. The name is known there.131 However the ship also carried refugees from Dieppe, where a Calvinist servant Jean le Long was living in 1686.132The Berault family of L'Aigle in the Pays d’Ouche was of considerable antiquity and distinction, numbering among its members the jurist and author Josias Berault (1563-1633), who abjured Calvinism and married a Catholic, Renee Marchand, widow of Jacques Alexandre of Paris.133 His niece Marie de Berault became the wife of Jean de la Maugere de Saint-Jacques of La Barre-en-Ouche and it is to this branch that Anne de Berault and her brother Louis belonged.134 The Beraults played an active part in the life of the Protestant congregation which assembled at the temple in the Pont-de-Pierre suburb of L'Aigle. In 1669 and 1670 Marie’s brother Simeon de Berault, Sieur du Mesnil et du Boisbaril, residing in the parish of Saint-Martin-d’Ecublei north-east of L’Aigle, led discussions with the Catholic party in the town over cemetery rights.13' In 1684, on the eve of the revocation, the marriage of the chevalier Christophe de Berault de la Maugere de Saint-Jacques to Louise de Challenge was celebrated.136 Some members of the family, Louise de Challenge among them, were to emigrate, but the estates at Saint-Sulpice-sur-Risle, between L’Aigle and Saint-Martin-d’Ecublei, remained after the revocation in the hands of Elisabeth de Berault de la Maugere.137 Arms were registered at Verneuil-sur-Avre in 1697 on behalf of Marie de Berault, widow of Louis de la Maugere.138 It is evident that the Cape Beraults, Anne and Louis, left France several years before the revocation at a period of intensified action by Louis XIV against the Calvinists. A widow LaMaugere is known to have emigrated to the United Provinces with four children139 and on September 6, 1679 Louis de Berault, Esquire, of L’Aigle was accepted as a member of the Walloon church at ’s-Hertogenbosch in Dutch Brabant.140 A little over a year later, on October 29, 1680, Anne de Berault, described as the Demoiselle des Fontaines, was received at Middelburg on the island of Walcheren in Zeeland with attestation from L’Aigle.141 This was probably Simond’s future wife and the couple may have met in Middelburg. A former minister at L’Aigle, Michel Chastreson de la Juganiere, who had signed the attestation presented by Louis de Berault at 's-Hertogenbosch, also made his way to Zeeland and settled at Tholen.142 Louis de Berault joined the service of the Dutch East India Company and it was as a sergeant that he accompanied his sister and brother-in-law to the Cape on the Suijdbeveland.
Coastal Normandy provided the Cape settlement with several colonists. Among those on the Suijdbeveland was Salomon de Gournay. He came from the port and textile manufacturing town of Dieppe and would seem to have been resident there after the revocation. A schoolmaster Abraham de Gournay was also still in Dieppe after October 1685 and it is possible that he was the Cape settler’s father.143 Calvinism was strong in Dieppe and it was not until November 1685 that the intendant Marillac sent in troops to bring the Protestants to heel.144 It was a contributory cause of the decline of the Norman seaport, accentuated by outbreaks of plague in 1668 and 1670, and the obstruction of navigation in the harbour after the great storm of 1672. Dieppe’s misfortunes culminated in the bombardment of July 1694 by Berkeley’s naval squadron and the resultant fires which razed most of the town.145
The revocation and its aftermath led to massive emigration, particularly to England and the United Provinces... The schoolmaster Abraham de Gournay went first to Middelburg, where he was received on March 2, 1686.147 He subsequently settled in London, but did not long survive his changed fortunes and was buried in the English capital on February 1, 1687/8.148 In London too was Salomon deGournay’s eldest brother Jean, evidently living in the Spitalfields district. Jean de Gournay was the close friend of another refugee couple in London, Jean Senecal and his wife Elisabeth Poitevin, and was god-father to their children Jean Guillaume, Jean and Jean Robert, baptized in the capital between 1693 and 1705.150 The repetition of the Christian name suggests a high rate of mortality in the crowded Spitalfields district in which the family lived. Jean Senecal is first described as a turner, but later became a weaver. That some who followed this trade in the early eighteenth century suffered economic hardship is demonstrated by the references to poverty among silk-weavers in the records of the French church in Threadneedle Street.151It is reasonable to suppose that Jean de Gournay married during his early years in London. An entry for August 27, 1690 at Threadneedle Street speaks of the marriage of Jean de Gouy (sic) to Catherine Nel, or more properly, Neel, of Luneray in Normandy.152 The daughter of Jacques Neel and Anne de la Balle, her baptism is recorded in the registers of the Norman church on December 3, 1662. Her father was both serge maker and cultivator, a duplication of remunerative activities not uncommon for the period.153
The Luneray temple lay near Dieppe and until its closure in 1681 served a wide rural area to the south-west of the port. The Senecals, allied by marriage to both the La Balles and the Neels, figure prominently in the church records of the seventeenth century.154 Senecals from both Dieppe and Luneray took refuge in Canterbury and London after 1682155 and it is probable that the Cape refugee David Senecal of Dieppe was related to some of them. David Senecal emigrated to Middelburg, where he was received by the Walloon church on May 4, 1686.156 He accompanied Salomon de Gournay to the Cape on the Suijdbeveland. Another Dieppois who became a burgher at the Cape of Good Hope was Jean le Sage. He reached the Cape in 1714 aboard the Sleewijck and was appointed cook to the governor, Maurits Pasques de Chavonnes, soon afterwards.157 A David le Sage, still living in Dieppe after the revocation, was perhaps the refugee of that name in Rotterdam; there was at least one Jean le Sage in exile at Leyden.158C. Graham Botha has suggested that the widow Du Puis, Anne Martin, was from the Calais region.159 There was certainly a Jean du Puis,married to an Anne Martin, at Guines, near Calais, in 1679, where a son Jean was born to them on May 31. The baptismal entry for June 4,1679 may refer to the future Cape refugee and her first husband, particularly as it would seem that they resided in several places during their life together.160 There is, however, a strong possibility that Jean duPuis was a native of Dieppe and as his widow married Salomon deGournay of that town and her daughter Anne-Madeleine became the wife of another Dieppois, David Senecal, Anne Martin may also have come from the Norman seaport.161 There was indeed a Jean du Puis from Dieppe in exile who, with his wife Anne Martin, is noted in the records of both London and the United Provinces.162 He was a clock-maker by trade. If we are dealing here with the widow Anne Martin at the Cape, the fact that her daughter Anne-Madeleine du Puis was born in Paris may indicate a move to the capital by Jean du Puis in search of work.163 It is with this part of Normandy that the surname Vivier is particularly associated. Again, as at Dieppe, proximity to the sea gave many fugitives the opportunity of escaping by boat to England and the United Provinces and Viviers were to be found in both countries. Among those in London in 1693 was an Abraham Vivier, a widower from Criquetot.173 The temple at Le Preche was closed at Easter 1685 and the pastor, Jean Taunay, took refuge in the United Provinces, where he died before the close of the year.174 Was this the congregation to which the Cape Viviers were attached? A Pierre Vivier, son of Abraham Vivier and Elisabeth Louvel was baptized there on July 2, 1662 and the christening of a son Jacob in the same family took place on January 20,1665. An Abraham Vivier was baptized on June 20, 1654; he may have been an older brother. Elisabeth Louvel died in October 1670 at the age of forty.175 Whether or not this is the Cape family, there is no doubt that the three Viviers were in exile at Zierikzee on the island of Schouwen in Zeeland,before embarking with the minister Simond on the Suijdbeveland. They were in needy circumstances. On September 29, 1686 a small sum of money was paid to Pierre, “qui estoit malade”. This was the first of a series of charitable gifts made to Pierre and Abraham. The purpose was not always specified, although on May 11, 1687 they each required two shirts. Another payment was made to Abraham Vivier early in 1688, but it was apparently with some relief that the Walloon church authorities were able to note on March 28, 1688 that a final sum had been handed over “aux 3 Viviees (sic) pour partir”.176 Jacob, whose name does not appear before, had evidently rejoined his brothers. Was he perhaps looking for work elsewhere? There was certainly a Jacob Vivier in Amsterdam just before the revocation.
...extracted from Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 5: Cape settlers I: from the Loire to the Channel
Countries of Dispersal
South Africa
- Estienne Cronje (d1724) from Thimerais, Normandie in1698. Settled Olyvenhout Wagenmakersvallei
- Pierre Cronje (1671-1718) from Normandie in1698. Settled Olyvenhout Wagenmakersvallei
- Anne de Bérault from L'Aigle, Normandie in 1688. Wife of Pierre Simond. Settled in Bethlehem, Drakenstein. Returned to Europe in 1702.
- Louis de Bérault from L'Aigle, Normandie in 1688. Settled in Bethlehem, Drakenstein
- Salomon de Gournay from Dieppe, Normandie in 1688. Settled Salomansvallei, Drakenstein. Left for England in 1718.
- Anne Fourdrinier from Dieppe, Normandie in 1720. Settled in Tafelvallei
- ?Jean le Long from L'Aigle, Normandie in 1685. Settled Bossendaal, Drakenstein
- ?Jacques le Long from L'Aigle, Normandie in 1685. Settled Bossendaal, Drakenstein
- ?Marie le Long from L'Aigle, Normandie in 1685. Settled Bossendaal, Drakenstein
- ?Louis le Riche (died 1732) from Normandie in 1698. Settled Wagenmakersvallei
- Jean le Roux (died 1752) from Normandie in 1689. Settled Vlakkeland, Daljosaphat.
- Jean le Sage from Dieppe, Normandie in 1714. Settled Tafelvallei.
- Gidéon Malherbe (1663-1723) from Laons, Thimerais, Normandie in 1688. Settled Normandie, Drakenstein.
- Guillaume Nel(1663-1734) from Rouen Normandie in 1688. Settled Blaauklippen, Stellenbosch.
- Jacques Pinard from Dreux ou l'Aigle, Normandie in 1688. Settled Lustigaan, Drakenstein
- David Senechal (1667-1746) from Dieppe, Normandie in 1688. Settled de Hartebeest Kraal, Drakenstein
- Abraham Vivier (1654-1713) from le Preche, Normandie in 1688. Settled Schoongezicht, Daljosaphat
- Pierre Vivier (1662-1714) from le Preche, Normandie in 1688. Settled Non Pareille, Daljosaphat
- Jacques Vivier (1665-1714) from le Preche, Normandie in 1688. Settled Goede Rust, Daljosaphat
North America
Britain
Ireland
References & Resources
- List of Huguenots embarking from France
- Huguenot Heritage Society of SA
- Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 5: Cape settlers I: from the Loire to the Channel