The Huguenots

In 1685 Louis XIV instituted the death penalty for the crime of being a protestant and unleashed a long grim period of bloody sectarian violence. Two young Huguenots, Andre Rembert and Anne Bressan, then living in the little town of Pont-en-Royan (photo) fled for their lives to the New World.

In 1686 the first daughter of Andre and Anne was born in "Carolina," in a Huguenot refuge colony on the swampy banks of the Santee River, just north of Charleston. Around 1700, they had a daughter named Margarite who grew up to marry another Frenchman, Peter Guerry. The Guerry's daughter Anne in 1754 married Alexander DuPont, and their daughter Anne DuPont married John Perdreau in 1772. So nearly a hundred years after they left France, these immigrants were still pretty much keeping to themselves for the purposes of marrying.

John and Anne had a son, Peter Perdreau, who in 1800 married Martha Graves. Their child, Ann Lacomb Perdreau, became the wife of the first William James Clark in 1830. Their child was WJ Clark of the beautiful French skin, the father of Maggie and the father of Inez Clark Thames, my great-grandmother.

The information on the Remberts comes from the book researched and published by Sallie Henrietta Rembert and Allsobrook McCall, who married a Rembert descendent, Carolyn Elizabeth Heriot. The McCalls lived in a huge old house surrounded by ancient trees dripping Spanish moss. The house had not been painted in a hundred years. I remember a handsome good-natured man nicknamed Brooks, but Daddy called him Mack. I also remember Betsy as a pretty, sweet woman, and have vague memories of Ann Richards, their daughter my age, and the two younger ones. Brooks died a few years ago, and we ran across his grave at Mt Hope a while back. A large slab of marble lays across it like a blanket and is engraved with the full names of his wife and all his children and their children. In his death Brooks McCall tried to make life easy for genealogists. Bless his heart.