The Transatlantic Legacy of the Protestant Church of Cozes

Abstract of article published by The Huguenot Society Journal (2019), Vol. 32.

Lonnie H. Lee

Abstract:

By 1682, some of the Huguenots fleeing the persecution of Louis XIV were making their way across the Atlantic to English America. An important but little known part of this new world migration story can be attributed to a single congregation in the town of Cozes in the French maritime province of Saintonge. I made this discovery in the course of my research into the French origins and relationships of Huguenot families arriving in the Rappahannock region of Virginia beginning in 1687. How did they make their way to Virginia? Were they part of an organized migration that has so far escaped the notice of historians?

A 1656-1668 Baptism Register for the Protestant Church of Cozes that is now archived in La Rochelle offers clear evidence of such a migration. Cross-referencing information from the baptism register with Virginia county records confirms the Huguenot origins of a significant group of these refugees and their relationships with one another going back to their childhoods in France. Exiles tied to Cozes also migrated to other English American colonies stretching from Massachusetts to South Carolina—creating an extensive clan and kinship network of merchant oriented Huguenots.

“The transatlantic legacy of the Protestant Church of Cozes” explores what the baptism register reveals about the congregation and the town of Cozes less than two decades before Louis XIV closed all the Protestant churches of France. As one of the largest Protestant congregations in western France, living in the orbit of La Rochelle with an unusually large contingent of merchant members, the Cozes congregation was a productive breeding ground for future immigrants to the new world.