Discover the history and heritage of the last Huguenot Church in America and national landmark located in Charleston, South Carolina. The Huguenot heritage in the United States cannot be overstated. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, France was plunged into a series of religious wars. In 1589, Henry of Navarre became Henry IV of France, but peace was not achieved until he issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which recognized the Huguenots' right to worship in the towns they controlled. While Henry IV lived, the financial and military security of the country was ensured. After his assassination in 1610, it ceased. Religious persecution resumed, and in 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, and many French Protestants fled. Of the estimated 180,000 Huguenot refugees, approximately 3,000 crossed the Atlantic. This book is about their descendants and their influence on the development of the American republic and the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The Huguenot Church in Charleston, a national landmark, is the last Huguenot church in America.

This scarce work pulls together much important information on early settlers of Jamaica, including seventy pedigrees of early Jamaicans, a table showing the starting date for baptismal, marriage, and burial records as found in all Jamaican parishes, and an early census of 700 Jamaican landowners.

Life in colonial Charles Towne was dangerous--epidemic diseases, primitive medical practices, and a harsh environment led to the early demise of rich and poor alike. When Charleston's founders moved their settlement across the Ashley River to the peninsula in 1680, they hoped for protection from pirate and Native American attacks, as well as increased trade and healthier living conditions. While they were able to secure more protection for the residents and improve trade, health conditions rapidly declined. The graveyards and public burial grounds quickly filled, and today, Charleston's historic cemeteries are almost as common a sight downtown as the churches that define the city. These tree-shrouded glades invite tourists and residents to explore the resting places of Charleston's most illustrious and interesting personalities. Charleston's Historic Cemeteries offers a guided pictorial tour of the elaborate gravestones and elegant inscriptions dedicated to Charleston's famous and infamous alike, including William Rhett and the pirate Stede Bonnet, Rhett's adversary. With dozens of illustrated stories about the transformation of funerals, tombstones, and mourning customs in America over the past 300 years, this collection details how Charleston became the home of a historically unique, city-wide gallery of mortuary sculpture.

At the end of the 17th century, driven by terrible persecution in France, thousands of Huguenots fled their country in search of religious freedom. A large number found what they sought in the fledgling colony of (South) Carolina in the New World Here these noblemen, craftsmen and artisans took up axes and guns and struggled to build their homes and survive in the wilderness with their wives and children. Nowhere was this more evident than on the banks of the Santee River where a group of French and Swiss Protestant refugees arrived in 1687 and where, "a sail from a boat was our first house and the earth our bed. A cabin like that of savages...was our second house" Through their letters and tantalizing bits and pieces of recorded history they left behind, their struggles and triumphs to forge a new settlement are revealed. At French Santee, they established a wealthy plantation society until time and fate returned the land they had conquered to wilderness once more. This is an in-depth study of the 17th century Huguenot settlement on the Santee River in South Carolina, with biographical sketches of the more than 100 French Protestant families who lived there. Detailed maps, photographs and copies of old plats show the changes in the area as the settlement grew and evolved into the 18th century. The book includes translations of two letters written from Carolina prior to 1700 explanatory notes and footnotes. You may begin by reading about your own family, but you will soon find yourself checking out their neighbors and friends tracing land sales and untangling relationships.

"Here lyes Buried the Body of MARTHA PERONNEAU...Departed This Life December Ye 14th 1746 Aged 13 Years." Such an inscription was typical of 18th century grave markers in Charleston, South Carolina. Many epitaphs went on to reveal much more about the deceased: personality, religious beliefs, career accomplishments and social position. Attention to social matters was a natural part of life in Charleston, where descendants of the city's 17th century British founders sought to recreate the class-conscious culture of aristocratic England. The merging of this culture with influences from French Huguenots, German Lutherans, Scottish Presbyterians and Spanish Jews led to funeral practices unique in the American colonies. Focusing on pieces created between 1695 and 1802, this volume offers a detailed examination of the tombstones and grave markers from 18th century Charleston. It discusses not only the general trends and the symbolism of the period's gravestone art--such as skulls, portraits, ascending souls and stylized vegetation--but also examines specific instances of these popular motifs. Tombstones from Charleston's oldest and most significant churches, including the Circular Congregational Church, St. Philip's Anglican Church, the French Huguenot Church and the First (Scots) Presbyterian Church, are explored in detail. The work looks at how Charleston gravestones differed from funerary art elsewhere in the American colonies and reveals them to be some of the earliest examples of American sculpture. A guide to colonial gravestone symbols and a glossary of relevant Latin terms are also included.

Drawing comparisons with the broader Huguenot diaspora, this book reassesses the prevailing view that Huguenots in North America quickly conformed to Anglicanism and abandoned the French language and other distinctive characteristics in order to assimilate into Anglo-American culture. Although the standard interpretation may still be true for Huguenots in heterogeneous urban communities, it should be modified for Huguenots in ethnically and religiously homogeneous rural settlements like New Paltz and New Rochelle, where the process was more akin to a gradual acculturation.