Molly McClain and Alessa Ellefson

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Molly McClain and Alessa Ellefson | A Letter from Carolina, 1688: French Huguenots in the New World | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.2 | The History Cooperative

A Letter from Carolina, 1688: French Huguenots in the New World

IN 1686 a small group of French Protestants crossed the Atlantic to seek refuge in the British colony of Carolina. They settled along the banks of the Santee River, forty miles north of Charleston, South Carolina. Many of them had been substantial merchants and landowners in France before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes deprived them of their religious liberties. They developed a modest plantation in Carolina, but they held out little hope for making a great fortune. "In leaving Europe," a member of the colony wrote, "we still had our heads full of great lands and other extravagances that were not in season. But the truth is that we have become wiser, contented with a small house of twenty-five feet, built out of wood in the Carolina fashion" and enough land to "give us what we need to eat. We will leave the greater projects to others."¹	1
A remarkable six-page letter by that Huguenot émigré, written in French and dated May 18, 1688, sets down the ambitions and experiences of French immigrants to Carolina. Addressed to Agnes van Wassenaer Obdam, a close friend of the Dutch stadhouder, William, Prince of Orange, and his wife, Mary, it remains preserved among recently cataloged papers in the archives of Twickel Castle in the Netherlands. The letter supplies insight into the motivation for the French migration to the British colonies in America. It also illustrates the experiences and personal preoccupations of a people who left few written records of their encounter with the New World.²	2
The Huguenot exodus from France was one of the largest population movements in early modern Europe. An estimated two hundred thousand people departed France from 1680 to 1710. It was, according to one historian, "the third largest one-shot migration in early modern Europe after the expulsion of the Jews and the Moriscos from Spain in 1492 and 1609, respectively."³ The refugees fled their homeland to escape harassment, threats of violence, and the suppression of Protestant worship. During the 1680s King Louis XIV ordered the billeting of French soldiers in Protestant households. In 1685 he revoked the Edict of Nantes (1598), a decree that had granted France's Protestants freedom of worship under limited conditions. Huguenots who refused to convert to the state religion faced imprisonment, torture, and possible death. For many the only option was escape. They left behind family members, land, and often considerable wealth to seek safety in England, Ireland, the Netherlands, North America, and the Cape of Good Hope.	3
Agnes van Wassenaer Obdam (1636–98), a Dutch noblewoman, was active in organizing relief efforts for French Protestants. She was the daughter of Jacob, Baron van Wassenaer Obdam, a Dutch admiral, and his wife, Agnes van Renesse van der Aa. On their deaths she and her brother Jacob inherited considerable properties in the Netherlands, including Huis Ten Dorp, the estates of Wardenberg and Gerenstein, and Huis Zuidwijk in Wassenaar. Van Wassenaer Obdam never married but lived near her brother in a house on the Kneuterdijk in The Hague. Her wealth and relative independence allowed her to play a prominent role in Dutch society. She corresponded with Sophie, Electress of Hanover, and befriended Princess Mary of Orange, later Queen Mary II of England, whom she served as a maid of honor. Her brief autobiography reveals her to have been intelligent and unconventional. Impatient with gallantry and uninterested in the pursuits traditionally assigned to women, she was well educated, physically active, and gifted with considerable artistic talent. An early illness from which she never fully recovered led Van Wassenaer Obdam to, as she put it, "equip myself with strength of mind" and "busy myself" with a variety of pursuits, including the aid of Huguenot women. She founded the Société de la Haye, a charitable organization that aided unmarried and widowed refugees.⁴	. . .

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