350 



THE FEEI^CH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



French 

 Ministers 



1700 



Manakin- 

 town 



Marquis de la 

 Muce the 

 Leader 



A Noted 

 Colony 



Mr. David Dasliaise, Elder of the French Church in 

 Loudon, for fifty-five French Protestants to go to Virginia, 

 Seventy pounds sterling.'' In 1687 Stephen Fouace came 

 from London with letters from the Archbishop of Can- 

 terbury. He became rector of a church near Williams- 

 burg, was i)rominent among the colonial clergy and was 

 later made a trustee of William and Mary College. In 

 1689 came another Huguenot rector, the Eev. James 

 Boisseau. 



IV 



In the last decade of the seventeenth century at least a 

 thousand French Protestants came to America, receiving 

 transportation from the Relief Committee in Loudon. A 

 few of these settled in Florida, a number in South Caro- 

 lina, but not less than 700 of them landed in Virginia, to 

 establish a settlement, according to the earlier idea of 

 Jesse de Forest. In 1700 four fleets sailed from Graves- 

 end, bringing all told more than seven hundred of the 

 French refugees, with ' ' the brave and devoted ' ' Marquis 

 de la Muce at their head, and Charles de Sailly as his as- 

 sociate. There were with the expedition three ministers 

 and two physicians. Various sites had been considered 

 for a settlement, but on arrival in Virginia the colonists 

 were directed to a spot about twenty miles above Rich- 

 mond, on the James River, where they were given ten 

 thousand acres of laud which had belonged to the extinct 

 tribe of Manalciu Indians. Thus the name of the settle- 

 ment became Manakiutown. Baird says no more in- 

 teresting body of colonists than that conducted by Oliver 

 de la Muce had crossed the ocean. Many of them be- 

 longed to the persecuted Waldensian race, who had taken 

 refuge in Switzerland when driven from their Pied- 

 montese homes by the troops of Louis XIV. Their num- 

 ber being too large for the Swiss Cantons to suppoit, Eng- 

 land responded liberally to the appeal for aid, and they 

 were given transportation to America, together with the 

 Huguenots. Three thousand pounds were appropriated 



