William Ballendine was a transatlantic ship captain from Liverpool who married Mary Ann Ewell, widow of Charles Ewell, in 1724. Mary Ann was the daughter of a Huguenot minister named John Bertrand and his wife Charlotte Jolly who migrated to Virginia in 1687. Bertrand helped lead a Huguenot migration to the Rappahannock region and worked with his wife to establish a landing for transatlantic ships at their 920-acre Deep Creek plantation, later known as Belle Isle (now preserved as Belle Isle State Park). Charlotte came from a French merchant and noble family. Both her father and brother remained in France where they held the title of Seigneur de Chadignac.

Presentation to the Huguenot Society of Virginia on April 20, 2024

Jehan (Jean) Jolly (died c. 1599) is cited in French archives (1J 115, ADCMLR), a research article: H. Patry “Une Chronique de L’Etablissement de la Reforme: A Saint-Seurin-d’Uzet en Saintonge,” Bulletin Historique et Litteraire (Society de l’Hisotire du Protestantisme Francais) 50, (15 Mars 1901), 135-157 (at jstor.org), and a reference in the Bulletin de Saintonge et d’Aunis (1898), 166 (copy in the files of LHL). Jehan is also cited on websites devoted to the documented history of the noble houses he acquired: Suire Yannis, Region Poitou-Charentes, Inventaire du patrimoine culturel and Bulletin de la Société des Archives historiques de la Saintonge et de l’Aunis, 1880, t. 7, 455. These sources use the Jehan variant of his name, and variously identify him as Sieur de Pommiers, Sieur de Saint-Denis, and Sieur de Chadignac.

Presentation to the Lancaster, Virginia Historical Society on October 24, 2023

When Protestants were outlawed in France by Louis XIV in 1685, about 200,000 of them fled the country. They scattered all over Europe and throughout the Atlantic world in one of the largest migrations of the early modern world. In their search for a new home they quickly learned they were highly dependent on the hospitality of the governments, churches, and ordinary people in the places to which they went. Not everyone welcomed immigrants who spoke a different language, practiced strange customs, and were sometimes willing to work for meager wages. In England there were riots by workers afraid the French refugees would take their jobs. In the English Parliament some politicians spread bizarre conspiracy theories claiming many of the Huguenots were really secret agents of Louis XIV posing as persecuted refugees. (Conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon). Finding a new home in a foreign land was not easy for French Protestant refugees. 

Land acquisitions north and south of the Rappahannock River

Historical Timeline of The Huguenot-Anglican Refuge in Virginia

About four years ago I heard my five-year-old granddaughter Caroline humming the tune to Beethoven’s Hymn to Joy. I told her there was a great hymn written to that tune called Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee. I asked her if she wanted to learn it and pulled out my hymnbook. For a time, we sang it almost every time we got together. I was amazed by how quickly she memorized the first few verses of the Henry Van Dyke text. 

The French village of Le Chambon sur Lignon is nestled in the Cevennes Mountains south of Lyon. It is an isolated place far from the centers of population in France. Its Protestant roots go back to the sixteenth-century church reform movement inspired by John Calvin. Though its people were poor, its isolated location enabled the village to maintain its Protestant Huguenot identity through the persecutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By the early 20th century the village became known as a place of refuge for people in need. Summer camps were organized for poor children from inner cities and mining communities. Refugees poured in from World War I and the Spanish Civil War. International aid organizations built dormitories to house refugees there.