The revocation of the edict of Nantz, by Lewis XIV., though highly detrimental
to France, proved beneficial to Holland, England and other European countries;
which received the protestant refugees, and encouraged their
arts and industry. The effects of this unjust and bigoted decree,
extended themselves likewise to North America, but more particularly
to South Carolina: About seventeen years after its first settlement,
in the year 1690, and a short time subsequently, between seventy and eighty
French families, fleeing from the bloody persecution excited against them
in their mother country, settled on the banks of the Santee.
Among these were the ancestors of General FRANCIS MARION. These families
extended themselves at first only from the lower ferry at South Santee,
in St. James' parish, up to within a few miles of Lenud's ferry, and back
from the river into the parish of St. Dennis, called the Orange quarter.
From their first settlement, they appear to have conciliated their neighbours,
the Sewee and Santee Indians; and to have submitted to their rigorous fate
with that resignation and cheerfulness which is characteristic
of their nation. -- Many must have been the hardships endured by them
in settling upon a soil covered with woods, abounding in serpents
and beasts of prey, naturally sterile, and infested by a climate
the most insalubrious. For a picture of their sufferings
read the language of one of them, Judith Manigault, bred a lady
in ease and affluence: -- "Since leaving France we have experienced
every kind of affliction, disease, pestilence, famine, poverty, hard labour;
I have been for six months together without tasting bread, working the ground
like a slave." They cultivated the barren high lands, and at first naturally
attempted to raise wheat, barley and other European grains upon them,
until better taught by the Indians. Tradition informs us,
that men and their wives worked together in felling trees,
building houses, making fences, and grubbing up their grounds,
until their settlements were formed; and afterwards continued their labours