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Please attach the profiles of French Huguenots who were born in Saintonge. 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 Saintonge at the time of the Huguenot Diaspora
Midway along the Atlantic coast, from the northern shore of the Gironde estuary to the mouth of the Sevre niortais above La Rochelle, are Saintonge and the Pays d'Aunis, with the Angoumois behind them.
..The reformed church in this region was organized in eight synodal provinces and formed a part of two others. The complete provinces were Poitou, Saintonge-Aunis-Angoumois, Lower Guyenne, Bearn, Upper Languedoc-Upper Guyenne, Lower Languedoc, the Cevennes and the Vivarais… Saintes in Saintonge [was a ] cathedral city. .. We are concerned here with a part of France in which Calvinism was at its strongest. Although there were many scattered communities, the great majority formed a reasonably compact body in a well defined arc of territory extending from Poitou in the north-west through Aunis, Saintonge and Guyenne to Languedoc in the south-east, with an outlying group in Bearn against the Pyrenees. Many rural communities were entirely or almost entirely Protestant in the middle years of the seventeenth century..
Poitou, Aunis and Saintonge have much more in common with the area north of the Loire than they have with, say, Languedoc
- M. Boucher.M (1981). French speakers at the Cape: The European Background. Pretoria, UNISA: Ch 6: Cape settlers II: from the Rhone to the Atlantic p140; p142; p158
Countries of Dispersal
South Africa
- Anne Roulin ( -1750) from Marennes, Saintonge in c 1698. Settles in Tafelvallei. Returns to Europe 1718 Returns to Cape 1731
- Marie Gautier ( -1745), from Marennes, Saintonge - Anne Roulin's niece. Comes to the Cape with her husband in 1731
- Claudine Seugnat (1671 - ) from Saintonge in 1689. Settles in Drakenstein
- Suzanne Seugnat (1673 - ) from Saintonge in 1689. Settles in Drakenstein
- Jeanne Seugnat from Saintonge in 1689. Settles in Drakenstein