Finding a Huguenot or Walloon Ancestor

Waloon: people who speak a French dialect and live in southern and eastern Belgium and neighboring parts of France.

Huguenot: a French Protestant of the 16th–17th centuries

The breaking out of war between France and Spain in 1635 caused a large influx of Protestant refugees into England from Picardy, Artois, Hainault and Flanders. Amiens was the capital of the Amienois in Picardy.

The Huguenots had long been persecuted in their homelands. Many families, in terror, fled for other lands after the fall of La Rochelle and Montauban. The West Indies, inviting because of its climate and fruitfulness, was becoming the refuge of many Huguenots for whom the cold region of Canada had no attractions.

Removals to these islands had been going on under the direction of a company formed at Paris in 1626, under M. D'Enantbus, who the year before had visited the island of St. Christopher in a brigantine from Dieppe. There he planted the first colony in 1627. In 1635, Martinique was occupied by a hundred old and experienced settlers from St. Christopher, including Phillippe Casier and his wife Maria Taine.

In 1640 Jesuit missionaries arrived at Martinique where there were almost a thousand French, "without mass, without priest,". Having been reluctantly admitted by the governor and the people, the Jesuits heightened the public dissensions which broke out in the islands and which grew so violent five years later, especially in Martinique, that many of the Huguenots were glad to get back to Europe. Many of them went to the Netherlands, some of them, as the Casier family of Calais, eventually finding safe haven at Harlem, New York.

Those seeking their Huguenot or Walloon ancestors may find the following helpful:

Huguenot Ships Passenger Lists
Huguenot Family Names
Huguenot Historical Overview
Huguenots to South Africa

I have written a book about one Walloon immigrant who settled in New Amsterdam (now New York City), New Netherland.

New Netherland Settlers: A Walloon in New Amsterdam:: Adriaen Vincent and his Wife Magdaleen Eloy - 2nd edition! available on Amazon

Adriaen Vincent, a Walloon from Belgium, made the perilous journey to New Netherland with his wife Magdaleen and their young family in the early 1640s. A former West Indies Company soldier, Adriaen was embarking on a new life. The family settled in the village of New Amsterdam, which would one day become the city of New York. Life could not have been easy for the couple, faced with a different culture and language. But settlers were pouring in and New Amsterdam was flourishing. Within a few years Adriaen and Magdaleen opened a tavern which catered to sailors and new arrivals. Their fortunes soon took a turn for the better and the family settled into their new life. This book contains new information on the family in the Netherlands and New Netherland, as well as details on descendants of Adriaen and Magdaleen