My Original Huguenot Ancestors: A True Story

Many years ago my cousin, Vera, told me that I could join the Huguenot Society.  At the time I didn't think much about it.  There was no Huguenot Society in our small town in the Upstate of South Carolina, but I stored the information away in my memory.  It came in handy later in life, as is often true of random things.

When I moved to lovely Charleston, South Carolina in 1995, I realized that the French Huguenot Society of South Carolina is headquartered here, and Charleston has a lovely French Huguenot Church on the corner of Church and Queen Streets downtown. 

Seeing the Huguenot Church at first just gave me a "hmmm" moment.  It was years later, when I started studying my genealogy in earnest, that I became a member there, and, yes, Vera was right.  I can (and did!) indeed join the Huguenot Society.

I discovered that my paternal grandmother was descended from French nobility who were Huguenots.  Her French ancestors were the Marquis Jean Paul Frederick de Hulingues of the old French Province of Bearn and his bride, Isabella du Portal, who was a Lady in Waiting to Catherine de' Medici, mother of three kings of France: King Francis II, King Charles IX, and King Henry III. 

Jean Paul and Isabella's story is fascinating!  It begins in Paris, as all great French romances should, in my opinion.  

Paris is where they must have first met.  Our young Marquis would have visited the court with his friend King Henry of Navarre.  He must have first seen Isabella there.  

As was the custom in France in the 1570s, the young couple's marriage was arranged, but it seems it was also a true love match, as they escaped the city together to be married.  

Why did they escape???

Now.  Therein lies the story.

It was 1572.  Late August.  In France.  In Paris. 

Many of you will be thinking, "OH NO!!!  The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre!" and you would be right.

In late August of 1572 King Charles IX of France ordered the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that resulted in the Catholics massacring tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France from August to October 1572.

It seemed like the perfect time to leave the country. 

Our dashing young Marquis rescued his Lady in Waiting and  escaped to Dieppe, France, a port city in Normandy, where they married.  

Immediately after the marriage they boarded a ship and left their beloved France to escape being killed for their religion.

The ship had planned to sail to England or Amsterdam in The Netherlands, but the winds blew the ship to Sweden instead, where the Marquis and his new wife, Isabella, were taken under the protection of the Swedish court.  They settled there and raised their family.  They had only one son, whose name is not known, but that son had a son named Lars (Lawrence) Huling.

Lars immigrated to America (Delaware) sometime before 1640 and married a young woman named Elizabeth Portallis.

Lars and Elizabeth had a son named Marcus Huling who married Brigitta Danielsson.

And so on and so on and so on until the little boy, Thomas, who was my father, was born in 1900.

Thus my family fell from the heights of European nobility to the little boy having to go to work in the cotton mill at the age of six to help support his family.  

I have no doubt that any and all of my family would still give up hearth and home in defense of faith, so a bit of that nobleman still lives in all of us, I think.

There is more to my family's story, of course.  Much much more.  

I'll tell you more.  By and by....

In the meantime, you might enjoy reading this account of what happened to Jean Paul and Isabella from: The Boyds By Elizabeth Boyd Henry Tennies – Page 390

The late Dr. William Henry Egle, State Librarian of Pennsylvania, in an article in the "Harrisburg Daily Telegraph," of February 11, 1882, gives this history of the Hulings family:

The Marquis Jean Paul Frederick de Hulingues, a distinguished Bearnese nobleman, who followed the fortunes of his prince and kinsman, Henry of Navarre in France, was one of those heroic men who defended La Rochelle and, finally, in April, 1572, accompanied Henry to Paris to be present at the nuptials of that prince with Marguerite de Valois, daughter of the cruel Catharine d Medici on August 18th. On the 24th of August, he witnessed the horrible massacre of St. Bartholomew (the massacre of Protestants), just as the Boyds were victims of the massacres in Ulster, Ireland, because they were Presbyterians.

The Marquis de Hulingues was one of the young noblemen who waited in the ante-chamber of the prince and his bride on that fatal eve.

He alone of all their personal attendants escaped from the Louvre, as by a miracle, through the gratitude of one of the Catholic soldiers. After various perils, he succeeded in reaching Dieppe. Here he was soon joined by this betrothed wife, Isabella de Portal who. Although a protégé and maid of honor of Queen Catharine, was a member of one of those rare old French families of Languedoc, descended from the Albigois, whose war cry and armorial device was renowned through Southern France.  Their name is inscribed in the “Book of Capitols”, which, like the “Golden Book” of Venice, contained the names of all the patrician families of the ancient nobility.

She was a native of Toulouse, and was rescued by a caprice of Catharine’s from the fate of her once powerful, but now persecuted family, and though carefully educated in the Catholic tenets, was secretly faithful to the (Huguenot) religion of her family. The Marquis and the Lady Isabella de Portal were privately married at Dieppe and sailed for England; but fearful of pursuit and the weather proving stormy, they were landed on the Danish coast. They afterwards proceeded to Gothenburg, Sweden, where they lived but a few years. They left an only son, whose descendants emigrated to America.

References:

Sir Robert Douglas, Volume Second 30-34. Charles A. Hanna THE SCOTCH-IRISH, (New York, 1902) (Reprinted, Baltimore, MD., Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1985), Vol. II, 440-441, 466-467, 469, 484.

The American Genealogical Research Institute, THE BOYD FAMILY, (Arlington, Virginia, Heritage Press, 1973.) 4.

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Here is a copy of our French Huguenot Liturgy for you.  Enjoy!