The French Huguenot Connection

By Tom Poland 

 

Writer’s Note: August 7, I had the privilege of speaking to the Huguenot descendant’s reunion at John de la Howe School near McCormick. This column, in part, is an adaptation of my talk. Background: The Huguenot Church (French Reformed Church) arose in France only to suffer fierce persecution. Many French Protestants (Huguenots) fled France after the 1572 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In 1598 the Edict of Nantes granted religious freedom. The edict, when revoked in 1685, caused some 200,000 Huguenots to flee to other countries. Huguenots came to Charleston and spread throughout colonial South Carolina. The French Huguenot settlement of New Bordeaux in present-day McCormick County, close by today’s Georgia-South Carolina border, represented the last of seven Huguenot colonies founded here.

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I grew up across the line in Lincolnton (Georgia). While a student at the University of Georgia, I worked two summers at Elijah Clark State Park. I was one of the garbage men. We went from campsite to campsite on a Massey Ferguson tractor—red, of course—that pulled a wooden trailer. We’d empty trashcans into the wagon and dump it all into a huge trench in the backwoods. Now and then, for lunch, my fellow garbage men and I would leave then-dry Lincoln County for the cold beers we could legally buy at Gates Beers in Bordeaux.

Let’s go back in time … It’s 1968, a hot July day. After a long morning of hauling garbage, it’s lunchtime. Off to Carolina we go. We head to Bordeaux to buy cold red cans of Carling Black Label and chilidogs. The gravel in the road catches the noonday sun and sparkles. We leave Gates and head back toward Georgia and eat our lunch on the South Carolina side at a picnic spot no longer there. We sit and eat and sip, oblivious to the history around us.

Back then I knew nothing of New Bordeaux—that it was the last of seven French Huguenot colonies founded in South Carolina. I did not know that the colony was settled in 1764, 252 years ago, by a group of French Huguenots led by the Reverend Jean Louis Gibert and his followers. I did not know they had fled their village in France in search of religious freedom to eventually establish a church along the banks of Long Cane Creek.

Much later, I would learn that the French brought a European form of agriculture here. They planted fruit trees, olive groves, and vineyards and began producing white and red wines. The Reverend Jean Louis Gibert wanted to grow grapes by the Ohio River. That didn’t work out so he and about 200 of his fellow Huguenots ended up here in what was then the newly formed Hillsborough Township.

War and misfortune arrived. New Bordeaux’s residents were ardent Patriots who raised a militia company that Loyalists repeatedly hit. The Reverend Gibert died in New Bordeaux in 1773 after eating poisonous mushrooms. Without his influence in Charles Town on New Bordeaux’s behalf, its wine and silk industries faltered. The village had thrived for a bit but the Revolutionary War devastated its economy and New Bordeaux faded away. By the 1790s, New Bordeaux was a ghost town. But growing up, I had heard nothing of New Bordeaux. I was famously ignorant of our region’s rich and wondrous history.

About the same time I was working at Elijah State Park, 1968 or so, I first heard of the John de la Howe School. My church, New Hope Baptist, had begun to give Christmas gifts to the children of John de la Howe School. My late mom and dad were very involved with that. When I learned the school was for poor children and orphans, I felt sadness, warmth, and pride at the same time. I was glad my church was helping.

They say growing old is not for sissies but age opens your eyes. Over the last four years I’ve explored western South Carolina a lot for book projects. I had traveled its roads as a young man and all I remember is piney woods isolation and those cold beers from Gates, which a good friend told me was torn down and replaced with a rental-storage business. These days the roads are blacktopped. Even so, I see them better now. The eyes of the boy and eyes of the man see things differently. Historical markers now hold more interest than beer signs. And here’s a marker straight ahead, John De La Howe School.

It’s spring 2013, and photographer, Robert Clark, and I leave Irmo early one morning to drive to John de la Howe School to work on our book, Reflections of South Carolina, Volume II. In the 1980s Robert had photographed de la Howe’s tomb for South Carolina Wildlife magazine. That spring day in 2013 Robert asked me a question. “Have you seen de la Howe’s tomb?”

I hadn’t.

We took Tomb Road, a lengthy road dead-ending at De La Howe’s grave. The tomb’s roof was gone and orange strings crisscrossed the small cemetery. It looked as if an archaeological dig would soon commence. I’m not sure de la Howe, a physician, would have been pleased. His will left specific instructions about his burial arrangements. Where the roof should have been, a tall green stalk sought the sun. Perhaps the grid of strings hinted of improvements and a new roof. (I later learned the tomb has been restored.)

Here’s a lot more I didn’t know. That the John de la Howe School is the oldest state institution in South Carolina and the second oldest in the Carolinas. It has been recognized as the oldest manual training foundation in America.

Back to spring 2013 … We leave de la Howe’s grave and make our way to Badwell Cemetery. We park near a beech tree where souls have carved initials into aged bark. We put Badwell Cemetery in our new book, Reflections of South Carolina, Vol. 2. On page 36, here is what I wrote:

“Among the graves here is that of the Reverend Gibert (1722–1773). A rock wall, partially caved in, protects the cemetery, or tries to. Years ago, thieves made off with the Grim Reaper that adorned the iron door providing entry, but it was recovered.”

I later learned that legend says a troll guards Badwell Cemetery. At the path leading down to the cemetery that spring morning sat a huge toad. We walked past him dozens of times. He never budged. I don’t think he was a troll but a plat-eye, shifting his shape into a toad, and keeping not one, but two wary eyes on us.

After Robert photographed Badwell Cemetery and I finished making notes, we visited the nearby springhouse. Made of stone blocks it squats over a spring. Above the door “1851” is chiseled into stone. People placed their food in vessels and kept it cool in the springhouse, this precursor to ice blocks in sawdust and refrigeration. By the way, Elbert County borders McCormick County, which leads me to suspect that the stone blocks that form the springhouse and Badwell Cemetery’s walls came from Elbert County—Georgia blue granite beneath a blue Carolina sky.

Leaving the springhouse, we made our way to the monument the Huguenot Society of South Carolina erected in 1937 near Little River. As Robert scouted the shot, I imagined what the area looked like before Clark Hill Dam backed the mighty Savannah into Little River. I conjured up fruit trees, olive groves, and vineyards, but it existed only in my imagination. Now I know the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. As for the monument, we put it on page 37 of Reflections of South Carolina, Vol. 2. Here’s what I wrote about it.

“A Maltese cross marks the spot of the New Bordeaux Huguenot place of worship. New Bordeaux was the last of seven French Huguenot colonies founded in South Carolina. The French settlers brought the European model of agriculture here, and fruit trees, olive gardens, and vineyards sprang up. The villagers prospered in the 1760s and early 1770s, but the Revolutionary War ruined their economy, and New Bordeaux faded away.”

I never heard of the Guillebeau House until I became a writer. I did not know that French Huguenot Andre Guillebeau built this house shortly after arriving at New Bordeaux in August 1764. The house is all that remains of New Bordeaux’s buildings.

“Guillebeau,” the name, however, is familiar to me. I had a French Huguenot connection and didn’t realize it. Back in Lincolnton, I had a substitute teacher, Miss Clarice Guillebeau. I had no idea that her family had a Huguenot connection. Miss Clarice was a Christian woman who licked her lips before speaking and she taught me in Sunday School where my misbehaving earned her stern stares. She enunciated her words, always licking her lips. My chief memory is seeing her and her sister, Miss Eva, whom we insensitively called old maids, sitting in the same pew Sunday after Sunday waving funeral home fans. And then neither sister was with us anymore. They had gone to the Great Beyond. Now, I know for a fact that Miss Clarice and her sister, Eva, traced their ancestry back to New Bordeaux and the Huguenots.

So, these things I now know about the French Huguenots who settled here. It’s said that everywhere the Huguenots settled they disappeared. Well, that can’t be true as I stand here and look out over all of you, many of whom are descendants. I’d say they didn’t disappear. Instead, they adapted and assimilated. That’s nice to hear given the immigration issues we face today, but I do not write about politics. I’ll leave that to others.

 

Writer’s Note: For those interested in learning more about their family history, attend Edgefield’s Southern Studies Showcase September 16 and 17 and visit the Tompkins Library at 104 Courthouse Square. Visit also the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society at http://www.oedgs.org/index.html. Contact also the Huguenot Society of South Carolina, 138 Logan Street, Charleston, SC 29401-1941, 843-723-3235.

 

 

 

Visit Tom Poland’s website at www.tompoland.net
Email Tom about most anything. [email protected]

 

Tom Poland is the author of twelve books and more than 1,000 magazine features. A Southern writer, his work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. The University of South Carolina Press released his book, Georgialina, A Southland As We Knew It, in November 2015 and his and Robert Clark’s Reflections Of South Carolina, Vol. II in 2014. The History Press of Charleston published Classic Carolina Road Trips From Columbia in 2014. He writes a weekly column for newspapers in Georgia and South Carolina about the South, its people, traditions, lifestyle, and changing culture and speaks often to groups across South Carolina and Georgia, “Georgialina.”