Gale:

Hugenouts were French Calvinists, who arose shortly after the Reformation
in Geneva.  If you're Protestant, you believe that the French king
persecuted them terribly - to include the St. Bartholemews Day Massacre -
ultimately leading to an exodus of many of them from France.  (If you're
Catholic - which I am - you're supposed to believe that they were
antisocial troublemakers who brought their troubles on themselves).    As a
group, they were a very industrious group.  One of the venues of their
exile was South Carolina (another was Germany, where their descendents
became some of the leading industrial, commercial, and even military
families - Krupps, etc. - on a more somber note, Hermann Goering was of
Hugenot extraction.)  After the French Revolution, when freedom of religion
was established, Hugenouts came out of hiding in France and became a small,
but very successful, group in French commerce.

The influence of the South Carolina Hugenouts is best shown in the fact
that the original constitution of South Carolina was written by the French
philosopher Montaisque, whose thinking also guided the writers of the U.S.
Constitution.  Much of Mantaisque's constitution survives to this day in
the South Carolina Constitution.

Most Hugenout congregations ultimately joined up with the Presbyterians,
who (at least historically) are also Calvinistic.  There are, at most, only
two Hugenout congregations in the US - one in New York and one in
Charleston - and the New York one is more of a historical society than an
active, witnessing congregation.

For more interesting Hugenout stuff, you might look up - in French history
- Henry of Navarre and the period of Cardinal Richelieu.

Roger Lucheta
My bod' may be on Johnston Island, but my heart's in Pickens County.


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