espinet/espenett - Jeanealogy

In Search of

Our Espenett Ancestors

by Jeanne Espenett Davis

June 2000

Port d'Envaux

We went to France, my sister Suzanne and I, to look for evidence that our Espenett family traditions have some basis in fact. Although we spell our name Espenett, ours is an anglicised form of the original French name Espinet. In 1700 our Huguenot ancestors lived in the little French village of Port d'Envaux 20 miles up the Charente River from the sea. They had a house in the village with a garden that ran down to the river and "considerable" lands outside of the town. Fleeing from religious persecution, David Espinet left France about 1701. Abandoning his property and bringing only his big Huguenot Bible, he crossed from France to England and settled in Rye. Suzanne wielded her camera and I scribbled notes as we searched Port d'Envaux and the surrounding towns for our Espenett origins, which date back in that location more than three hundred years.

Other Espenetts have gone to this tiny village with similar aims. David Espenett (1820-1886), an English descendant of the refugee, wrote in 1869, "The place of residence of our ancestors, their surroundings, their occupations, the time of their leaving France, and under what circumstances,. . . all this would have been and was ignored by us all. It has long been my desire to make inquiry into all these things, as also to seek out and visit, if possible, the birthplace of our French ancestors; and having been favoured little by little to accomplish this purpose, as my multifarious occupations have allowed, it is now my pleasant privilege and duty to place the results of such research in the hands of my well-beloved relatives".

Our father Edward Livermore Espenett visited the area in May 1957. He had been "sent to France on a short mission for the U, S. Army Engineer Corps, after which I took a week's 'annual leave' , spending a full day in Port D'Envaux. The language barrier was complete, as I was unable to find an English speaking person in the village of about 1,000 people. . . . I was thus unable to pierce the veil surrounding the parents of our ancestor".

Unlike our father who was frustrated by language, Suzanne and I were fortunate to have as our interpreter, tireless guide and cheerful companion Mme. Jacqueline Prost, a resident of Saint Savinien just down the Charente river and past president of the local genealogical society.

We were also fortunate to find a place to stay right in the village. We had been told that we "might not be able to get rooms" at the only inn, L' Auberge de la Charente. It' s a very old establishment with only three guestrooms. We feared the inn might sellout before we could finalise our reservations. When I placed a call from half way around the world, the proprietor Jean Michel seemed very eager to have us. I think on looking back that the question of availability was whether or not the place still operates as an inn. We may have been the only
guests in many months, or even years!.

The Land

The village of Port d'Envaux is surrounded by farm lands and forest. According to our family story , the Espinets owned lands outside the village.

In America farmers live on their land. As you drive across the U S countryside, you see a farmhouse, barn, silo, etc., surrounded by fields. Down the road is the next farm with house, sheds outbuildings etc. In France the landowners live in tiny villages surrounded by their fields. Each landowner has a plot of land in the vicinity and a house in the village. In Burgundy vineyards surround the villages. Around Port d'Envaux the fields are planted in corn, wheat, some kind of legume, sunflowers, all growing in the rich top soil deposited by flooding of the Charente river.

Our family tradition says "The Espinet family possessed considerable lands called 'le Chaume' literally translated 'The Thatch'. These lands were contiguous to the village". I had imagined that the property might have been distinguished by a little thatched cottage there. I was quite wrong.

We went to the town hall of Port d 'Envaux (called the Mairie, pronounced mayor-y, which means literally the place where the mayor' s office is.) When our interpreter asked the town clerk if there were any lands in the vicinity called Le Chaume, he said of course. He jumped up, darted into a little adjacent cubicle, flipped through a stack of sectional maps to "Map #17 0285YH Feuille remembree pour 1985" which showed two tracts at the intersection of Route de Petit Peu and Route de Pied Merle (D127). One tract was called La Combe Vallee and the other one was Les Chaumes, abutting a forest called Bois des Chaumes. We felt confident we had found the location of our family lands.

Our guide Jacqueline suggested the Espinets might have owned a portion of the large acreage other people may have also owned parcels. Therefore one owners land would be could La Chaumes (singular) and the entire acreage would be Les Chaumes (plural). A house with a thatched roof would be called "un chaumiere." Jacqueline says Chaume is a common name for parcels of land in France. The name Les Chaumes is further explained by the fact that these fields are planted in wheat. After the grain is harvested and taken to a local moltlin (mill), the rest of the wheat plant would be used to thatch buildings in town.

We had our picture taken in the field and cut a few stems of wheat from' our land.' The next day, back at the town hall, we found we had stood at the wrong intersection and photographed Le Combe Vallee, the adjacent tract instead of Les Chaumes. About 500 yards farther down D127 toward the village of Lecurat is an intersecting one-lane dirt or grass road, which divides La Combe Vallee from Les Chaumes. We had to go back, take the right picture from the right intersection and gather the right wheat.

Interesting nearby features are the little hills called Le Peu and Le Petit Peu. These mounds are the sites of Etruscan tombs dating from 500 b.c. Route de Petit Peu on the sectional map leads to one of three of these tombs outside of Port d'Envaux.

The Village

David Espenett's 1869 description of the town is no different from what we saw. "The Port d'Envaux is situated on the river Charente, about twenty miles up the river coming from the sea. Rochefort-sur-Mer is a French naval port at the entrance of the river into the sea. The Charente is a tidal river, far beyond the Port d'Envaux in the interior . . The immense vineyards of Cognac, for the production of the best brandy, are not far distant. . . . The village lies along the river, at an elevation of about one hundred feet; and parts of the village are only a stone' s throw from the river".

Although the Espinets owned land outside the village, we don' t believe they were farmers. The economic life of Port d'Envaux revolved around the river Charente, which was navigable by ocean-going vessels this far inland. Wines from Cognac upstream were brought by flat boat down the shallow part of the river to this port and transferred to ocean-going sloops, goellettes and briques (brigs) that carried cargo to England. Wood cut from forests in the area and limestone from nearby quarries were also shipped out of Port d'Envaux.

Just two or three miles out of town at Crazannes are the ancient limestone quarries, which were actively mined until 1920. Limestone is easy to carve but hardens when exposed to the air; therefore it is a valuable building material. Limestone from Port d'Envaux was used in the construction of the cathedral at Cologne and as the base for our Statue of Liberty.

One translation of the name Port d'Envaux reflects its importance as a centre of shipping. d'Envaux may translate en avaI meaning on the to way to the sea. So Port d'Envaux de Taillebourg would be a port on the way to the sea from Taillebourg. Or perhaps the name simply means surrounded by a number of small valleys (vallx).

The population today is 1049 people. The population in a 1709 census was approximately the same. In the 1700' s a census would record the number of feux (hearth fires) or households, not the head count. At 270 feux with four people per household, the village must have been the same size as it is today.

The House

Our old family story says, "In the village itself they had a house and garden running down to the river. . . This house and garden were sold out of the family only' about forty years since, and are now (1869) the property of the mayor . ." Suzanne and I quickly found that there are only twelve or thirteen houses on the river between the inn where we stayed by the docks at one end of town and the Chateau de Panloy at the other end. This row of a dozen houses is very imposing. Each house is exceptional and some are very impressive.

We were excited to learn that these lovely places had belonged to nineteenth century' ship owners, men of some substance. Could the Espinets of the seventeenth century have been ship owners? Could that have made it possible for David Espinet to sail off to England at the time when " our ancestors were driven from France on account of their Protestant faith.

The last house of the group adjoins lands of the Chateau de Panloy and is several hundred yards from this historic house. The chateau, still owned by the de Grailly family as it has been for many centuries, is now the home of the Marquis de Grailly whom we met. Three hundred years ago his predecessor the Baroness saved our family lands, a story I will tell later . We decided that the end river house, abutting the de Grailly property , "about the distance of a good gunshot" from the chateau, might be the house that belonged to our Espinets.

On our second trip to the town hall, we got the name and address of the present owners of this end house on the river: M/ Mme PERRIN Jean and EHRET Annette, 10 Allee Panloy, Port d'Envaux, and 30 Rue Miollis 75015 PARIS. Fortunately Monsieur and Madame Perrin were in residence at their Port d'Envaux home. They graciously invited us to visit and agreed to talk with us about the history of the house and its earlier owners.

However, before we left the town hall, Jacqueline our interpreter spoke with the Vice Mayor, a doctor, who lives near the Perrins. He told us that all of the imposing homes along the river, including his house, were built in the 1800's and would not have existed when our Espinets lived there in 1700. We were disappointed to learn this. The Perrins told us the same thing: that the oldest part of their house is dated 1837, a date which appears on a stone on the facade of that wing. So we had to give up our fantasy that the present house might have been our ancestors home though we still believe we may have found the site of their house by the river.

The Well and the Bible

Another part of the Espinet family story tells how they buried their Bible or hid it in a well. "All that we know of this our Huguenot ancestor is, that he left all his property for the truth' s sake, bringing with him to England, as far as we know, one single treasure, the pearl of great price -- his large Huguenot family Bible, a copy of one of those valuable editions by Theodore de Beza, published about seven years before the revocation of the edict of Nantes".

The tradition is that a company of persecuted Huguenots buried their most precious possession, a copy of the Bible, for safety in a dried out well. They succeeded in getting away, rescuing the Bible and bringing it with them. They landed at Rye, and before parting, they tore apart the various books of their Bible and handed one to each of the families among them. In turn these pages were shared between each member of these families.

I had imagined a sort of wishing well like ones we see in the 20th century. But I found the attached picture of an old covered well near Port d'Envaux, which dates from 1773 and shows something very different from what I had in mind. If the Espinets did hide their Bible in a well, it may have been something like the one in this picture. Did a well like this once stand on the Espinet property adjacent to the land of the de Graillys?.

In a slightly different version of the family story "the Bible brought over by our ancestors was buried in the garden of an inn the night before they left France. I should rather say, that it was dug up the night of their departure, since I have seen the spot; for the following seems to be a conjecture so reasonable, as to be almost as good as known fact. Intending to flee, and fearful of a domiciliary visit in search of heretical books, they would have buried their Bible in a part of the garden touching the river Charente; and then, waiting for a dark night and a -favourable tide [author's italics], they would hastily disinter their treasure, get on their sloop or schooner leaving for England, drop down the river with the ebb tide, and before the morning light they would be out at sea, far away from their pursuers. And while thankful for the escape, especially with the knowledge that a country like England was ready to receive them, yet must the heart have grieved to leave that sunny clime, and all the comforts of home.

A third version of the family story is found in an explanatory caption on a page of the old Huguenot Bible. When Suzanne and I were growing up, there were two picture frames hanging above the upright piano at our Espenett grandparents' house in New Brighton, Minnesota. We both took piano lessons for many years as children, and of course were encouraged to play when we visited our grandparents. Since we stayed with our relatives in Minnesota much of every summer, we were probably required to practice the piano in New Brighton. I do remember spending a lot of time sitting on that piano bench. An endless source of fascination for me was what I stared at above the piano. The two picture frames contained leaves from the Huguenot Bible that had been handed down in our family for generations. I loved to ask my grandparents about these pages. As I wondered about them and tried to learn their origin, my curiosity' about family stories grew.

A typed caption at the bottom of one of the pages says "...a portion of that sacred Bible which 'They buried in the garden of the inn (for fear of the priests) while they slept in Calais the night previous to embarkation for England, 1685.'" This date of 1685 raises questions. Did an Espinet ancestor leave France the year of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes? Or did these pages come to us from the Dance family who came to England earlier and married into the Espinet family in 1705?

The photo caption also tells us that their journey included a stop in Calais which is not mentioned in our other sources.

In three different versions of our story , the Bible was buried for safety in a dried out well, buried in the garden of an inn at Port d'Envaux, or buried in the garden of the inn in Calais. The remarkable thing is that our family has two leaves (four pages) which have been handed down to us for three hundred years.

Our family pages are now in the possession of our cousin Edwin Wetherill who lives in St. Peter, Minnesota. The only other pages of the Espinet Bible known to exist were donated in 1972 to the Sandhurst Baptist Church where they now hang. Sandhurst, one of the earliest Huguenot churches in southern England, is located twelve miles west of Rye in Kent. David Espenett and his wife Elizabeth Dance Espenett were members of Sandhurst Church from 1735 until 1750. Copies of the two Sandhurst pages are also included as accompanying illustrations in this booklet. All of these pages are from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel.

We visited a tiny historical research museum called Maison du Patrimoine facing the
Charente River near the bridge in Saint Savinien six miles north of Port d'Envaux.

There I found a big old Huguenot bible intact. A descriptive label called the venerable old book "La Sainte Bible of the Temple Protestant of Saint Savinien with commentary by J F Osteveld who lived from 1663 to 1747." Our Espinet family bible might have looked like this one before its chapters were distributed among the families who fled.

Aaron Espinet

Our Hugenot ancestor David Espinet was one of three brothers: David, Jean and Aaron, all from Port d'Envaux. David fled from Port d'Envaux, but Jean and Aaron did not. "M. Jean Epinet, although he was born at the Port d'Envaux, did not emigrate from that place. He appears to have followed the example of hundreds of Protestants of the province of Saintonge of that period, who chose Marennes, a seaport some forty miles from his native place, as a residence, that in case of persecution their might flee to England with the greater facility." Jean eventually settled in London.

The third brother Aaron, a surgeon, remained in France when his Protestant relatives fled to England. Many laws and regulations had been passed curtailing the liberties of the Huguenots. "The professions of medicine and law were largely in their hands. . . But one royal declaration, . . . confessing naively that the profession was so full of Huguenots that there was a danger of Catholics being excluded altogether, ordered that for the future no Huguenot should practice medicine." Aaron could not have been a surgeon without being Catholic.

We looked in records of births and marriages at the town hall for evidence of our Espinets. Since Catholicism was the state religion of France and Protestant Huguenots were heretics, only Catholic births and marriages were recorded in town registries; There were no public records for David or Jean Espinet only information about Aaron would have been recorded.

The city clerk brought us an ancient leather-bound book called "Registy of Births 1669-1723", a fragile; 300-year-old, hand written tome, which one would expect to see in a museum rather than in a dusty bookcase with the town records. Jacqueline our interpreter leafed through its pages and almost immediately found a hand written entry which translated "November 17,-1712, was born Marie Espinet, 'daughter' of Aaron Espinet, and baptized November 20, 1712, the godparents being Jacques Bouteaud and Mme. Marie Menet Espinet." Jacqueline said that the godparents are possibly the infant Marie's grandparents.

Just south of the village of Port d'Envaux we visited the 12th century Catholic church where Aaron Espinet's daughter Marie was baptised in 1712. Located at Rue du Presbytere and Rue de la Prevote in St. Saturnin de Sechaud, the church is so old that the ground it was built on is four feet lower than today' s ground level. Because the frequent floods bring silt to these low lands, the new section of the church steps up about four feet from the original part of the sanctuary . In the higher level there are special pews reserved for the de Grailly family.

In winter the ground around the river Charente becomes saturated from heavy rains and melting snow comes down from the interior. When these conditions coincide with a high tide, the entire area floods. Each little village along the Charente has houses on only one side of the river; the other bank of the river is a flood plain we were told.

The Chateau

According to out family sources the Catholic Aaron Espinet had the family property after his Huguenot relatives fled to England. Aaron was a surgeon. M. Aaron Espinet did not long enjoy his property . He was fond of gambling, and little by little he played away all his landed property called 'Le Chaume' . And he would have gone still further, and had one day staked the family house and garden, of which I have spoken already, whilst playing with the principal personages of the Port d'Envaux. The Baroness de Grailly , whose god-daughter was the wife of M. Espinet, hearing of this, went immediately to the place, and courageously said, 'Give me those title deeds; I mean to keep them for your wife.' I saw the residence of the Baron de Grailly when I was at the Port d'Envaux [1869]. It is about the distance of a good gunshot from the Espinets' family house.

Because of the patronage of the Baroness de Grailly and because of the proximity of the chateau to the Espinet house, Suzanne and I decided to tour the Chateau de Panloy, as it is now called. We first encountered a workman on the property who ran off to find someone to show us around. Imagine our surprise when he came back with the Marquis de Grailly himself. A witty , charming man dressed in work clothes, he gave us a nice little tour. In his Louis XV drawing room furnished with tapestries and period furniture, the Marquis observed drolly that he is too poor to buy copies so has only originals.

The odd round dovecote or pigeon house has 2,500 clay pigeon nests and is the largest such structure in France. A clever mobile ladder makes it possible to reach into any nest for pigeon eggs or to catch a pigeon for dinner.

When we asked the Marquis which Baroness de Grailly might have been our family patroness, he ran his fingers over a huge family tree hanging on the wall and decided there were many baronesses among his predecessors who could have been ours -- Francoise, Angelique, Charlotte. "Take your pick," he said.

It was disappointing to learn that the main structure of Panloy was built in 1770-1772, well after the period we were interested in. However, the right wing (maybe both wings) of the present structure are Renaissance gate lodges of a much older chateau. Also the dovecote (built in 1602), the ancient laundry and the stables all date from an earlier time and would have been there when Aaron Espinet was trying to gamble away the Espinet house and gardens "the distance of a good gunshot" away.

The Huguenots

If our ancestors lived in a prosperous community, owned fertile fields, had a house in the best location and were people of substance, why would they flee?

Until 1517 there was no Protestantism. The Christian Church was Catholic. On Oct. 31,1517 Martin Luther nailed on the door of the court church at Wittenberg his 95 theses against some of the abuses of the Catholic clergy. He had no intention of breaking away from the Church. However, his suggestions for reform of the Church earned him excommunication by the pope. His central tenet was a doctrine of "justification by faith", which enables the individual to pray directly to God. Such a belief makes the entire hierarchy of Catholicism unnecessary intermediaries between the individual and God.

In France the ideas of the Reformation spread quickly. The Huguenots were recruited primarily from nobility . Between two-fifths and one-half of French nobility were at one time Protestant. Very few peasants became Protestants. The religion drew members from the capitalist/artisan classes.

By the last half of the 1500's Huguenots had armed themselves and formed a political party to fight persecution. In a forty-year period there were eight conflicts, known as The Religious Wars, which pitted the Protestants against the crown. The wars ended in 1598 when the Edict of Nantes gave Huguenots some political rights, recognition as an armed political party , some fortified towns, and the right to practice their reformed religion in certain cities and towns. Their religion was not allowed at the court of the king and not allowed in Paris and other major cities.

By the early 1660s France contained around one million Huguenots -- with six or seven hundred churches -- in a total population of about twenty million. The Catholic Church never approved the toleration guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes. "From 1679 the attacks on the Huguenots became constant. Between that year and the withdrawal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 there were more than a hundred and twenty-five documents of different kinds dealing with the Huguenots, and all of them curtailed their liberties or inflicted on them penalties of some kind.". By law Huguenots were excluded from public office. All Huguenot colleges and hospitals were to be closed. Huguenots could not be admitted to the legal profession. No Huguenot could practice medicine. Mixed marriages (Catholic and Huguenot) were forbidden and offspring of such were classed as illegitimate. By law children could at the age of seven declare themselves converted to Catholicism and leave their parents who were then required to pay an annuity for their support. Huguenot places of worship were torn down and the Huguenots were not allowed to worship on the site under heavy penalties. IX In 1669 the emigration of Huguenots was punishable by arrest if they were captured and confiscation of their goods. Condemnation to the galleys for life was the penalty for anyone who aided a Huguenot to emigrate.

In 1680 the dragonnades began. There was an existing custom of billeting soldiers in private homes. Now under orders of the minister of war, district administrators housed their dragoons (mounted troops) exclusively among Huguenots with the understanding that the soldiers treatment of their heretic hosts might result in conversions to Catholicism. Soon the soldiers were robbing, beating and raping the Huguenots. "The financial burden was crushing and conversion at once relieved the victims from the obligation of supporting the soldiers and also from the need of paying certain taxes. But the real pressure was not financial; it lay in the brutalities of the soldiers which were encouraged by the authorities. Property was destroyed and stolen; old men, women and children were cruelly ill-used. . . . the dragoons were encouraged to ill-treat those on whom they were billeted.

In October, 1685, the King revoked the Edict of Nantes as now unnecessary in a France almost entirely Catholic. All Huguenot worship and schooling were henceforth forbidden. All Huguenot conventicles were to be destroyed or transformed into Catholic churches. Huguenot clergymen were ordered to leave France within fourteen days, but emigration of other Huguenots was prohibited on pain of condemnation to the galleys for life. Half the goods of lay emigrants was pledged to informers. All children born in France were to be baptised by priests and were to be brought up in the Catholic faith.

In many provinces, under Louvois' [minister of war] urging, the dragonnades continued, and obdurate Huguenots were subjected to pillage and torture. More than 50,000 families including military leaders, men of letters, and a large part of the artisans of France fled to foreign countries including England, Holland, English North America and South Africa. In all, probably 250,000 Huguenots left France. Their loss was a blow to the industry of the county.

In Closing

The idyllic village that we visited was not always a peaceful place. But all the details in our family story seem to fit what we saw in the little town of Port d'Envaux. We think that we have visited the Espinet land, the site of their house and garden that went down to the river, their village, their fields, and the estate of their neighbour the Baroness de Grailly.

It was a moving experience to take a boat ride down their peaceful river, to walk the "hauling path" on the river bank in front of their house, to be on the street where they once lived, to handle the ancient town records that documented their lives, to talk with a descendant of their patroness, to stand in a field they once may have tilled, to swim in the river where they launched their boat, to play in the current that carried them away from persecution.