Huguenots and Walloons

Comment

Comment by Sherril Edward Bilky Jr on March 31, 2010 at 8:26pm

my name is Ed Bilky and I am researching a part of my family line and it appears to be hidden somewhere in the French Huguenot exodus during the reform movement. I believe that they were in or around La Rochelle France.The family of Gabriel Laboyteaux B: 1664 in France D: 1734 Middlesex Nj I also believe that he married Constance Le Brun in 1695 New York

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 29, 2010 at 7:12pm

I should add that the family in question were involved in the shipping industry, according to the text (and I know from other sources that the son who emigrated to New Netherland was a seaman before emigrating), so if these new-to-me occupation citations are correct, it is theoretically plausible that they could be living in Dover even if they were born in continental Europe and/or ethnically French/Flemish/similar.

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 29, 2010 at 7:03pm

I have to admit it's not a subject I know very much about as of yet. The unknown author called them "walloons" (lower-cased) in the manuscript, and cited several documents that were in French, and called the family French, but perhaps they were French Belgian? I read some of the text to a relative who knows more about Belgium than I do because she was friends with a Belgian for thirty years, and she mentioned that a particular surname (the wife of one of the family members) sounded Flemish to her ear (her friend was Flemish). I am not sure that Belgium as a country existed at the start of the 1600s when the events in the manuscript were occuring? I will have to read up more on the history of the area during this time period. Thank you for posting the link!

I also looked more into Duvres/Dusvres (particularly the spelling I found in search engines - Douvres - though it's not the same as the spelling in the aforementioned text) and discovered that it is also the French name for Dover, England (in addition to being a few place names in France as I mentioned in my last post). The mystery deepens!

Comment by Michael Helmantoler on March 29, 2010 at 5:35pm

Interesting, Wallons from France, I thought Wallons were from Belgium and Huguenots were from France, both of reformed faith but different cultural dialects. Here is an article describing their physical traits http://www.jstor.org/pss/2841329

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 28, 2010 at 9:16am

Hi again,
You didn't say whether you were interested in a follow-up :-) but I thought I'd provide one anyway. Despite the vaguest of citations ("a manuscript at NEHGS"; luckily I knew that this stood for New England Historic Genealogical Society) I was able to locate the document in question. At least as far as I've read so far, there is nothing in the document definitively stating that this family were Huguenots, but the author very precisely argues that they were walloons from France. Based on other inaccurate information on the webpage, I am pretty sure that the author of the webpage never actually looked at the document. According to the manuscript in question, the family fled France and in a single generation came to North America (the author states that the children were born in France and fled with their parents, the children going on to New Netherland). The manuscript repeatedly refers to a place called "Duvres" or "Dusvres" (the unknown author's spelling for place names tends to vary; I don't know if that's based on their original sources, or...) and the closest I have found online is Douvres, but I don't know if that is the correct corresponding place.

I was allowed to xerox some pages of the manuscript, so I am planning to better review the pages I copied at home later this week.

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 22, 2010 at 7:27pm

Michael, thank you for posting. From what I know of this family, they came in the 1640s, but it shows that it seems to have been a pretty common occurance at the time. I am curious to see what I find at the research library, and would be happy to share if you're interested. :-)

Comment by Michael Helmantoler on March 22, 2010 at 6:55pm

Liz,
Wikipedia says "In June 1625, 45 additional colonists disembarked on Noten Eylant from three ships named Horse, Cow, and Sheep, which also delivered 103 horses, steers, cows, pigs, and sheep. Some settlers were dispersed to the various garrisons built across the territory: upstream to Fort Orange, to Kievets Hoek on the Fresh River, and Fort Wilhelmus on the South River. Most of the settlers were not Dutch, but Walloons, French Huguenots or Africans (who were brought as slaves).[18
16. Bert van Steeg. "Walen in de Wildernis" (in Dutch). De wereld van Peter Stuyvesant. http://stuyvesant.library.uu.nl/kaarten/steegessay.htm.
17 "1624 In the Unity (Eendracht)". Rootsweb Ancestry.com. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~nycoloni/shfrsten.html.
18 "Slavery in New Netherland / De slavernij in Nieuw Nederland" (in English/Dutch) (The Library of Congress Global Gateway). The Atlantic World / De Atlantische Wereld. http://international.loc.gov/intldl/awkbhtml/kb-1/kb-1-2-3.html#track1.

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 22, 2010 at 4:11pm

"...they fled to the Netherlands within a few generations of coming to New Netherland in North America"

I realize I worded that poorly - I mean that, according to what I found anyhow, within a few generations after fleeing to the Netherlands, they moved onward to New Netherland. (I know they were in New Netherland because I have many documents of that, but I haven't traced them back very far in Europe.)

Comment by Liz Loveland on March 22, 2010 at 4:10pm

I don't actually know if I have any Huguenots in my tree or not, but I joined this group due to recently finding information indicating that one of my supposedly Dutch family surnames is actually a Dutch-ization of a Huguenot name and that they fled to the Netherlands within a few generations of coming to New Netherland in North America. This information cites documention held by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, and I'll be doing research at their library this weekend, so I hope to find out one way or the other then. Does anyone know how common this kind of migration would have been?

Comment by Michael Helmantoler on February 24, 2010 at 3:19pm

Family History Library Catalog entries on Walloon

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• …
• 8
• Next ›
• Page