Huguenots in America

Tracing My Roots.

All my adult life I've known that a large percentage of my Grandma Anderson's family was Huguenot, one half traveling from France to Holland in the late 1500's and into New Amsterdam in the early 1600s, the Denyes family history says around 1610, and the other side, the Billets, coming to Canada via Cornwall England.

What I didn't understand was the suffering these original Hugenot's endured. Though persecuted and massacred in France they were also forbidden to leave the country. Sounds like damned if you do and damned if you don't to me. Over a few decades about half a million Protestants escaped from France and went to England, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Ireland, even Sweden. In comparison, the only larger mass migration was the Irish emigration after the Potato Famine. An interesting reference to why Cardinal Richelieu didn't want these Protestants to leave was the skills in weaving, lace and other crafts that went with them.

The Denyes side of the family escaped to Holland and if family history is correct must have almost immediately emigrated to the New World. I kept finding bits of information about Dutch settlements this early but nothing concrete yet. The Internet is not the best or safest source of historical information.

The Billet family spent a longer time in England before emigration to Canada, and whether or not there is any relationship I did find a mention on the 'Protestants in France' site of a Billet family in the Loire valley area near Sanserre. His occupation was listed as bottier which if my very hazy French still works means he was a shoemaker or bootmaker.

Since the only family genealogies were done by Canadians relatives, and mostly it seems, in relationship to the United Empire Loyalists group, they start with the first ancestor in the Americas. Like the DAR I understand you cannot be a member of the UEL unless you have a relative who was a British citizen in the American colonies and he served in a British unit of some kind in the American Revolution. That's a horrid definition I'm sure but there is a published book called "Scarcely a Ripple" that is a study of the Anglo migration to Canada and back again that mentions the Denyes family. In fact in the migration study Martin Denyes is described as a Dutch immigrant. From what I read tonight this appears to be very common as the Huguenots made up only about 10% or so of the original Dutch West Indies settlers.

The original Fort Orange was listed as being something like 58 feet on each side and it was the only settlement around, about 150 people. I can't even imagine being in an area that sparsely populated and I live in a "city" of less than 5000.