The Huguenot Heritage of Marion
Today the Society was honored to present the French ancestry and Huguenot history of Francis Marion at the annual remembrance service in his honor at Belle Isle. Our thanks to Gen. Marion’s Brigade DAR and Hezekiah Maham SAR for their kind invitation to speak.
Below are remarks delivered to the attendees of the ceremony held at the site of Francis Marion’s tomb at Belle Isle on Thursday, February 27, 2025.
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to share the Huguenot heritage of Francis Marion. Today I assume a great responsibility in my role at the Huguenot Society, as well as with my own ancestry, since Francis and I both descend directly from Benjamin Marion, a French Protestant (Huguenot), the first of his line to emigrate to the colony of Carolina. I face a daunting task indeed as I would normally yield to my father, who is now passed, or my elder sister as the authorities on our Marion family history. But, as age often does to folks, the mantle has passed to me to carry on the tradition.
I hope to honor the valuable work since 1885 of the Huguenot Society to perpetuate the memory of the Huguenot emigrants and their histories. The Marion family is one of the many we study and for whom we preserve records. Knowing many fine historians who are with us today and those who have spoken here in years prior have presented Francis’ military story with great success, today we will enjoy a view into his French ancestry which surely influenced his character and life as we trace his ancestral line from France into Carolina.
History’s Impact on the Marion Family
Bear with me now as we take a short trip into history because the religious history of France had a huge impact on the Marion family’s history as well as all Huguenot families.
Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses were published in 1517 and the printing press enabled his work to quickly move across Europe. In 1536, French theologian Jean Calvin (John Calvin), published his Institutes on the Christian Religion. These two theologians lit the spark that burned onward for over a century as Protestants grew in number across Europe and France was no exception. It is from Calvin that the Huguenots would adopt their motto: “I am burned but not consumed.”
The Huguenot’s faith was rooted in a personal relationship with their God without intercession, the personal study of their faith and the Bible, and the freedom to worship as one pleased. These were very independent ideas in a time of conformity. The quest for religious freedom led to the Wars of Religion fought in France in the latter 16th c. A protestant victory by the forces of Henry IV led to the Promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in 1589, which carved out a place for the Protestants and gave them protection within predominately Catholic France.
By the mid-1600’s Louis XIV, the grandson of Henry IV, had established a centralized absolute monarchy. He defeated a resistance movement known as the Fronde, a crisis over an encroachment on liberties and high tariffs and taxation. After centralizing power, Louis turned to the Protestants (Huguenots), determined to eradicate their faith in France.
So we are seeing now familiar topics – oppression of freedom by a monarch, unreasonable tariffs and taxation, a restless population that has rallied resistance on numerous occasions to an encroachment on their liberties. Sounds familiar – similar precursors to our later American Revolution.
The port of La Chaume
The Origins of the Marion Family
The Marion family’s story began in La Chaume, in Poitou-Charentes, France which is a beautiful stretch along the western coast between La Rochelle and St Nazaire. Not very different from our coastline in South Carolina. In the 17th c. around 100 boats would leave the area twice a year to fish for cod, arriving back with fish that had been salted at sea. In addition, the export of salt, produced along the coast, brought more wealth to the community; this ‘white gold’ was sold throughout northern Europe as a food preservative. Arriving at port were boats filled with stone ballast and the town’s building material needs were conveniently provided. A familiar practice as seen in colonial Charles Towne. Just south of Charles Towne was also a salt works of another Huguenot named Mellichamp.
It is in La Chaume in 1655 there is a marriage contract for Jean Marion and Périnne Bastignon.
Note: Recently added to the records of the Society is a letter from Chateau D’Olonne from February 25, 1987 that provides the following: “here, in the “department” of Vendée, some 60 miles south of Nantes, in the town of “Sables d’Olonne” on the sea-shore, in a district named “la Chaume,” there was also a rather big Protestant community which nearly nothing is left of today…the greatest part of it were merchants ship captains or sailors, who could sail away to Ireland, England or the Low Countries, sometimes leaving wived and children behind them here.” The letter goes on the provide the spelling of “Balluet” and describes the family as “well-known Protesants.” It also provides “Bastignon” as the spelling for Pérrine’s surname, not Boutignon as is often seen in records. All researchers are welcome to study the letter at the Society’s library.
We find this parc in La Chaume on Rue de Marion of interest given its name…we plan to explore further the history in France.
Sables-d'Olonne, le parc de la Marion, à la Chaume
In the years leading up to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Jean and Périnne and their family experienced increasingly severe persecution; however, “the sea-port town of La Chaume was inhabited chiefly by hardy sailors, whom the dragoons found it difficult to convert.” (History of the Huguenot Emigration America, Charles W. Baird, Dodd Mead & Co., 1885, pg. 52.)
In the autobiography of the French Protestant Rev. James Fontaine, we learn of the suffering endured at the time:
“All Protestants were excluded from public office, children were allowed to recant at the age of seven years, and severe penalties were enacted against relapse. This caused emigration, and those in power opened their eyes wide enough to perceive that in the departure of seamen and artisans they were losing many of their most valuable subjects, and to put a stop to it they issued an edict prohibiting emigration on pain of death. The Protestant churches were next ordered to be demolished, and no less than 700 were destroyed even before the revocation of the edict of Nantes. The last measure adopted was that which has been known by the name of dragooning, and if we had not the most undoubted testimony on the subject, it would be impossible to believe that such horrors could have been perpetrated under the mask of the Christian religion.”
The Wars of Religion brought to the French Protestants a word that chills the vein even to this day - dragoon. As Fontaine records, “They were accountable to nobody for their acts, each dragoon was a sovereign judge and an executioner, and he who had ingenuity enough to invent any new species of torture was sure of applause, and even reward for his discovery.”
Now we strengthen ourselves as I share a gruesome passage but one that so well provides the reality of the hardships endured in France and later carried in the family histories of those who arrived in Carolina. Here Fontaine provides a narrative of the experiences no doubt instilled in the hearts and minds of all French Protestants and passed down from generation to generation. It reads:
“A day was appointed for the conversion of a certain district and the dragoons made their appearance accordingly, they took possession of the Protestants’ houses, destroyed all that they could not consume or carry away, turned the parlours into stables for their horses, treated the owners of the houses with every species of cruelty, depriving them of food, beating them, burning some alive, half roasting others and then letting them go, tying mothers securely to posts and leaving their sucking infants to perish at their feet, hanging some upon hooks in the chimneys and smoking them with wisps of wet straw until they were suffocated, some they dipped in wells, others they bound down and poured wine into them through a funnel until reason was destroyed, and many other tortures were inflicted, some even more horrible than the above named.”
With that we have a real understanding of the horrors any thought of dragoons would bring to those who held this memory in their family history. We can be assured that Francis Marion knew this history very well.
Next we come to the most pivotal year in the French Protestant history: 1685. It represents the end of any semblance of toleration in France when, as Fontaine wrote, “In the month of October, … the edict of Nantes was actually revoked by that great persecutor, Louis the 14th. Of course, no choice was now left for Protestants; flight was the only alternative.” Fontaine then described the dwindling toleration they had undergone…
“Surely this act has been incorrectly termed the Revocation ... All its provisions had been repealed long ago by royal edicts and ordinances, except the bare toleration of Protestantism in some few towns and districts. …, forbade all exercise of the reformed religion, ordered the clergy to expatriate themselves within a fortnight, unless they would recant, and in that case their incomes were to be increased one-third, and continued to their wives. All infants were required to receive popish baptism, and everyone caught in the attempt to escape (unless he was a minister) was condemned to the galleys for life.
A year later, “in 1686, the enactments were still more severe. A Protestant taken in the act of public worship was punished with death, and all Protestant clergymen, whether natives or foreigners, were to be executed. To increase the vigilance of the soldiery, a reward of three or four pistoles was given for every Protestant that was taken up.”
Benjamin Marion in London
It is in the year after the Revocation that we find our first record for Benjamin. He was in London, England and recorded in the Minutes of the Consistory of the French Church. On September 12, 1686, he is listed with others at Threadneedle Church who, after the sermon, admitted he abjured his religion and attended mass. Listed with him is Judith Balluet of Les Sables d’Olonne (Talmont, les Sables d'Olonne et St. Martin de Ré) and Madeleine (possibly Magdeleine) Balluet, and Marie Nicolas. These ladies’ names will appear again with Benjamin in later records. Interestingly also found in the records of this church are Isaac Bacot, Daniel Huger, Jacques LeSerrurier - all before October 1682.
( Minutes of the Consistory of the French Church in London, Threadneedle Street 1679-1692, by Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland Quarto Series, Vol. LVIII, London, 1194, Pg. 171-173; Allhallows London Wall, Register General (1675-1729), MS 5086.)
Shortly thereafter we find a register of Benjamin Marion and Judith Balluet on the 1st of November being married at All Hallows London Wall Church.
Register of Benjamin Marion and Judith Balluet on the 1st of November being married, Nov 1, 1686.
Benjamin and Judith Marion
Except for the arrival of a small group in 1680, the majority of Huguenots settled in the Carolina colony between 1684 and 1688. Their arrival in the new world, in search of religious freedom, was not exactly as smooth a transition as perhaps was hoped.
Many of the incoming Huguenots had been denizened while in London, but very few had been naturalized. This meant the Huguenots could hold real property but could not bequeath it to their children born before their denization. They could not inherit either. Naturalization provided immigrants with all the rights of natural-born English subjects including the right to vote, to run for public office, to pay a lower duty on imported and exported goods, and to transfer and bequeath property to heirs. It would take about a decade for the Huguenots to achieve all the rights of an English subject.
“An assessment of inhabitants of Goose Creek made in January 1694 lists Benjamin Marion among those owning property in that area.” (French Santee, A Huguenot Settlement in Colonial South Carolina, Bates and Leland, Otter Bay Books, 2022, p 233.)
The earliest record of Benjamin in Carolina is from 1693/4 and it is found in the journals of the Governor and Council and describes Benjamin Marion arriving in Carolina with seven persons among whom we find again Judith, his wife, Madeleine Balluet, and Marie Nicolas.
The earliest record of Benjamin in Carolina 13 March, 1693/4
Warrants for Lands in South Carolina 1672-1711, Edited by A.S. Salley, Jr. University of South Carolina Press, 1973, pg.442.
The next record is dated November 21, 1694, in which Benjamin Marion is mentioned in the records of the Province as one of the individuals authorized by the Governor to go to various parts of the Province to make an inventory of the estate of Hon. Thomas Smith, Esq., late Governor, as directed by Thomas Smith, Esq., executor of the estate. This leads me to believe Benjamin was bi-lingual as he is being directed by an English esquire to inventory the estate of the deceased Governor Smith. (Abstracts of Records of the Secretary of the Province of South Carolina 1692-1721, compiled and edited by Caroline T. Moore GRS, The R.L. Bryan Company, 1978, pg. 62.)
As to the Liste de Francoise et Suisses , it “falls neatly into place to have been presented to the governor at the end of March or beginning of April 1697…” (French Santee, A Huguenot Settlement in Colonial South Carolina, Bates and Leland, Otter Bay Books, 2022, p 233.)
The Liste recorded a list of Huguenots who desired naturalization, included are Benjamin, Judith, and their three children noted as born in Carolina. This record confirms the names of Benjamin’s parents and his origin being “la Chaumé en Poitou.” It is the first record of the children, “Ester, Gabrielle, et Benjamin.” ( “Liste des Francois et Suisses" from an Old Manuscript List of French and Swiss Protestants Settled in Charleston, on the Santee and at the Orange Quarter in Carolina Who Desired Naturalization, Ravenel, Daniel compiler, prepared probably about 1695 or 1696, Charleston, S.C., W.G. Mazcyk, 1868, pg. 30.)
“Liste des Francois et Suisses" from an Old Manuscript List of French and Swiss Protestants Settled in Charleston, on the Santee and at the Orange Quarter in Carolina Who Desired Naturalization, Ravenel, Daniel compiler, prepared probably about 1695 or 1696, Charleston, S.C., W.G. Mazcyk, 1868, pg. 30.
Benjamin and Judith settle as planters in the Parish of St. James, Goose Creek on a track of land near the northern portion of The Elms bounding northwardly along Crowfield, at the time the property of Henry Middleton. The Marions settled on land not far from that granted to the Fleurys. Their first land grant of existing record, dated March 14, 1704, was on Yeamans Creek and bounded on lands he already owned. Thereby indicating he had settled prior to 1704 along the head of the Goose Creek.
Judith would live to see grandchildren from her three children. Her husband Benjamin, the father, did marry again – to Mary (Marie), and they would go on to have eight children.
On 13 January 1734 at the time of his Will’s writing, Benjamin was a resident of St. John’s Parish and his Will was written in French.
We garner a glimpse of his humor in his Will as well as a few other hints about him.
Benjamin’s Will (written in French). This indicates the continued use of French as his first language up until the time of his death, estimated to be in his 70’s. From the text of his Will we learn he was sick and weak at the time and remained faithful with his statement “first and foremost I commend my soul into the hands of Almighty God.” Benjamin died a landholder with a substantial estate. He died debt free - noting in his Will “in the first place as to debts, thank God, I owe none and therefore shall give my executors but little trouble on that score.” (South Carolina, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1670-1980.)
He continued, writing “Secondly as to the poor I have always treated them as my brethren. My dear family will, I know, follow my example.”H `is first bequest was to charity - stating “shall give to the poor fifty pieces” - a very Calvinistic belief which allows us to assume he had held his Protestant faith to the end of his life and had likely reared all his children in the faith and instilled in them his beliefs.
And we gain a little glimpse of his manner when he writes his direction to Mary his wife — “But here is a hard article and I cannot dispense with it-if my wife should happen to marry [again], she must depart with what I have given her, her horses and her furniture. Would it not be an unjust thing that a stranger should squander property that he had not earned? But I have better opinion of my wife-I believe that she will live a virtuous widow, governing her family in the fear of God as she has always done.” And, Mary did, indeed remain a widow the remainder of her life.
And, the Will was witnessed by a fellow Huguenot Mr. Guerin, along with Mr’s. Sanders and Galiot. Guerin was Peter Guerin, the direct descendant of Pierre Guerin my 7th great grandfather on my maternal side who was married to Marie Nicolas who you may recall was listed with Benjamin both in London and in Carolina. Peter Guerin had married Mary Marion, the granddaughter of Benjamin. And a Mary Sanders would marry Benjamin’s son, John (my 6th great grandfather), at St. Thomas St. Denis in Cainhoy.
This Will is a fine example of many Huguenot Wills where fellow friends and relations of French Protestant families witnessed Wills for each other. Strengthening the knowledge that they were a close-knit group with marriages, legal proceedings and business amongst each other.
This brings us to Gabriel, son of Benjamin and Judith and father to Francis.
In 1711 Gabriel married Esther Charlotte Cordes, daughter of Dr. Anthoine Cordes and his Aunt, Esther Madaleine Baluet, making his wife Esther his first cousin. This Madaleine Baluet is believed to be the same Madeleine as mentioned before in London and in Carolina with Benjamin.
They lived at Goatfield in Berkeley. It was from Dr. Cordes that they came to possess Goatfield. The couple had six children, the youngest of whom was Francis. He probably did not remember his grandfather Benjamin who died 1735 when Francis was only three years old, but his step-grandmother Mary lived until 1750 when Francis was 18 years of age.
In 1737 the Gabriel Marion family left Goatfield and moved to a plantation near Georgetown so the children could attend an English school. In 1737, they move back to Goatfield where Gabriel died in 1747. Francis would have been about 15 years of age upon the loss of his father. His mother died a few years later in 1757 when he was 25. A short while later Francis would make his first foray into military engagement with the Cherokee Wars which began in 1759.
His aunt Esther had married Henry Gignilliat and was living in Charleston. She and Henry had seven children. His Uncle Benjamin had married Elizabeth Cater and they lived in both St James Goose Creek Parish and St. John’s Parish. They had nine children. So, Francis grew up with numerous cousins from these first three children of Benjamin’s (with Judith) and the brood only grew larger with the emigrant Benjamin’s second marriage to Mary. Among the marriages of the Marions are numerous Huguenot families – including Allston, Bonneau, Cordes, Gignilliat, Simons, and Videau.
The Marions descended from a people who had made their escape from France and carried in their blood the fire for religious freedom and personal liberty. They had endured a forced flight from their homeland with or without their wealth and means, they had endured the violence of the dragoons and humiliations against their clergy, the hardship of traveling to England and then to Carolina, only to arrive in Carolina and be met with several years of working to achieve their full rights and freedoms here. These were a people who knew the agony of oppression and suffering under the boot of a monarch. They were of many who upon arriving in a new world began building churches, forming charities for the needy and establishing thriving businesses.
It comes as no surprise to find Francis and his relations - along with many other Huguenot descendants - in the Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution which records of the Marions: Benjamin, Francis, Gabriel, Gabriel (nephew) and John.
The Huguenot descendants who joined the fight for liberty are numerous in number and through our work at the Society we endeavor to preserve their memory as well as the history of their lineage.
I end with a quote on the Huguenots …
“In spite of the care with which the coast and frontiers (of France) were guarded, it is believed that not less than 50,000 families made their escape, and they enriched every land that received them, carrying arts and manufactures and industry in their train; and it has been remarked by close observers that their descendants, up to this day, continue to be distinguished for virtue and respectability.
Oh, my children! let us never forget that the blood of martyrs flows in our veins! And may God of his infinite mercy grant that the remembrance of it may enliven our faith, so that we prove not unworthy scions from so noble a stock.”
I am burned, but not consumed.
