Huguenot Society of America

The Huguenot Society of America, Highlights 1883-2004

From the time of its founding meeting in John Jay's home in 1883, the Huguenot Society of America expanded Reverend Alfred V. Wittmeyer's original goal of commemorating the bicentennial of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes into a broader program of fostering the memory of the Huguenots and their contributions to the United States of America. The Society inaugurated its foundation with a members' dinner, highlighted by a lecture by Sexton Van Rodeu. Within the first year members began to assemble an impressive library on Huguenot history and printed abstracts of the Society's proceedings. Lectures on Huguenot history (often followed by music and light refreshments), publications, and the library preoccupied the Society for many years to come.

In 1894 the Society took its first permanent rooms on 105 East 22^nd Street. Funds for the rent were largely raised by the Ladies Committee, founded in 1888 and originally chaired by well-known historian Mrs. Martha J. Lamb. Mrs. Lamb died in 1893, a year before the committee presented the Society with a bronze statuette of Admiral de Coligny. Some months later, the HSA moved to its permanent quarters. The library, which President Jay and Mrs. Lamb had previously arranged to be kept at Columbia College, was then returned to form the core of the expanding collection that still serves as an important resource.

As the 1898 tercentennial of the Promulgation of the Edict of Nantes approached, the Huguenot Society's membership and events blossomed. Planning for the celebration began as early as 1894, with invitations to sister societies in Europe to come to New York for the occasion.

In April 1897, the first of many grand Huguenot Society banquets was held at Delmonico's. A year later, an even more sumptuous meal at the same venue completed the week-long tercentennial celebration, which began on the anniversary (also Easter Sunday), April 13, 1898. Events included services at l'Église française du Saint-Esprit and a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the numerous delegates from English, French, and Swiss Huguenot Societies, as well as members from throughout the United States. As widely reported in the newspapers, choirboys from Grace Church sang the national anthems of all the delegates present in the flag-draped banqueting hall. After the dinner, the United States and Huguenot banners were carried through the hall and placed at the table of honor, where newly elected president Frederic J. de Peyster presided as toastmaster. These festivities were followed by the 1899 publication of handsome commemorative volumes on the Edict of Nantes.

Behind the scenes, Mrs. E. James M. Lawton, Secretary as well as Chair of the Library and Pedigree Committees, orchestrated these events and many ceremonies that became Huguenot Society tradition. It was Mrs. Lawton who, on April 13, 1893, presented her research on the marigold as the device of Marguerite d'Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (1492-1549) and convinced the Society to adopt it as its emblematic flower. (Editorial Note: Further research has lent credence to the belief that the marguerite daisy is the actual flower of Marguerite d'Angoulême). She then presented designs by Tiffany and Co. for the official Society pin, the original Huguenot Society insignia, and the white ribbon edged with a single thread of red, white, and blue to symbolize the United States of America and the white scarves Henry de Navarre and his troops wore into battle. Mrs. Lawton also personally paid for the original dies for these decorations.

While presenting her research to the Huguenot Society of London in 1894, Mrs. Lawton attended their banquet at the La Providence Hospital where she witnessed the Loving Cup ceremony as performed from instructions in its King's Charter of 1718. Mrs. Lawton adapted the ritual and introduced it to the Huguenot Society of America at the April 26, 1900 banquet at Delmonico's. Reporting that the event had been a resounding success, Dinner Chairman T. J. Oakley Rhinelander moved that the ceremony be a feature of all subsequent banquets. It remained a highlight of the biennial dinner until prohibition was introduced in 1920.

The new century was also inaugurated with a series of ten lectures given in French on Huguenot history in the library. Other activities included performances of early French music, visits to the Huguenot Historical Society in New Paltz, N.Y., and trolley car tours of historical sites in New Rochelle.

Mrs. Lawton established the Huguenot Society's special relationship with the Huguenot Church in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. In 1899 she presented the Society with a piece of stone from the Cathedral, which had fallen during a seventeenth-century fire and was dug up near the door of the Huguenot Crypt in 1894. Rector John R. Barnabas, who performed the services there, attended the tercentenary celebrations of the Promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in New York. The Huguenot Society sent him continued contributions towards his services until he retired in 1945.

On May 10, 1902 the Society presented a bronze tablet to mark the site of the first Huguenot church in New Amsterdam (1688-1704) on the west side of the New York Produce Exchange.

In 1906, the Society took an additional room, which was inaugurated with a formal tea. Thereafter, the society regularly used the space for lectures and tea parties. Activity peaked in 1909, the 300^th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the river named after him. At the April 20 banquet four shrouded figures carried a replica of Hudson's ship, the Wraith of the Half Moon, into the hall as musicians played the Dutch National Anthem and the Song of the Half Moon Sailors.

That September, New York City held a parade honoring the anniversary of Hudson's discovery and Robert Fulton's 1807 application of steam to river navigation. Gentlemen of the Huguenot Society of America, wearing black frock coats and high silk top hats, formed a Guard of Honor to escort the float of Governor Leisler Receiving the Huguenots, 1690, manned by members of the Huguenot Association of New Rochelle, across Central Park West and down Fifth Avenue.

In 1910 the Society moved to new rooms in the Engineers Building at 29 West 39^th Street. That year, in addition to an exhibition of Huguenot Memorials held in collaboration with the National Society of Colonial Dames at the Van Cortlandt House Museum, Mrs. Lawton organized a lavish concert starring the renowned Madame Tetrazzini at the Waldorf-Astoria. The event was lauded as one of the highlights of the social season but failed to raise much-needed funds.

The following year, Mrs. Quincy O. M. Gillmore was appointed Chair of the Ladies Committee, whose name she changed to the Ways and Means Committee, since its primary duty was to come up with innovative fundraising ideas. On January 8, 1913, Mrs. Gillmore and her group staged an evening of comedies and tableaux at the Colony Club to benefit the Libraries Fund. Members appeared in such vignettes as The Huguenot Lovers after a painting by Sir John Millais, The Huguenot Weavers at New Rochelle, and a reproduction of the minuet danced by the Huguenot Freeholders before Lord Pell. The evening cleared a profit of $800 -- a considerable sum for the period. At that spring's banquet Mr. Charles Pryer, Chairman of the Publications Committee, announced the new volume of the Society's Proceedings, which he generously published at his own expense.

Because of World War I the Society decided to forego its banquet in 1915. However, at the First Presbyterian Church of New York they unveiled the Huguenot Window, given by member Dr. Benjamin G. Demarest in his mother's memory.

The 1916 banquet broke radically from precedent not only because it was held at the Hotel Knickerbocker instead of Delmonico's. Against Mrs. Lawton's vehement protests, women served alongside men on the banqueting committee and were also seated on the dais for the first time.

Two permanent Loving Cups were purchased that same year from a fund first established in 1899. However, in 1918 the ceremony and wine were skipped out of respect for the war. When prohibition legislation was introduced two years later the Loving Cups were packed away.

It was the end of an era. Mrs. Lawton died in 1919, only months after resigning and presenting the Society with her life's work -- the library catalogue. Miss Margaret A. Jackson took over the pivotal role of Secretary and unofficial patron/muse of the Society. However, in spite of prohibition, the biennial dinner continued at venues such as the Plaza and the Park Lane Hotels. Often, Miss Jackson personally donated the floral centerpieces for these events.

Reflective of the changed times, a new committee for the Relief Work of France was formed. Funds were sent to the Jean Calvin Institute in Montauban, France for boys raised in the Reformed faith. In 1922 the Society donated its first permanent scholarship there. By 1927 a total of five HSA scholarships had been established there and additional monies donated for building repairs. So too, funds were sent to the Société de l'histoire du protestantisme français for the restoration of its facilities, books, manuscripts, prints, and pictures; to the French Protestant magazine Le Christianisme Social; to Pasteur Mercereau, a destitute French minister; to the impoverished Church of St. Martin on the island of Ré, off the French Atlantic coast, for the appointment of a permanent pastor; and to the Comité du Secours des Lepreaux (Lepers' Aid Society).

At home, the Society participated in the America's Making exhibition at the 71^st Armory by producing educational leaflets about Huguenot history and sponsored a $25 prize for the best academic paper about the Huguenot role in shaping America. In 1924 a special commemorative Huguenot Coin was designed and sold to raise money for the Huguenot-Walloon Tercentenary Celebration, for which on May 18, 1924, the Huguenot Society donated an elaborate Communion Table to the Reformed Church (Huguenot) in Huguenot Park, Staten Island. Thereafter, every May the Society held an annual service at this church. On May 24 1931, for the Eighth Annual Huguenot Day of Remembrance at the church, Miss Jackson unveiled the Ever Radiant Cross of the Huguenots, which the Society donated. In collaboration with other societies, the Huguenot Society contributed to the building of the Patriotic Chapel at St. John the Divine.

Lectures, teas and other social events continued apace. HSA President Dr. William Jay Schiefflin played Peter Minuet alongside other members in a reenactment of the purchase of the Island of Manhattan at the Beaux Arts Ball at the Waldorf Astoria on January 22, 1932.

As the Depression progressed, although continuing its gifts to the Lepers' Aid Society and Canterbury Cathedral, the Huguenot Society increased its attention to charities at home. In 1932 members assisted the Red Cross in making garments for the unemployed. A gift to the McAll Mission, which had been founded in the nineteenth century by an English clergyman to foster Protestant worship in France, became a regular donation in 1935.

In December 1934, the Huguenot Society moved its annual service to l'Église française du Saint-Esprit. The following May, the Society installed a tablet in the church in memory of Reverend Wittmeyer. During this period, the Huguenot Society also contributed to the Jean Ribaud memorial in Dieppe and published its 1919-33 Proceedings.

In 1939 the Huguenot Society moved to its present location in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society building on East 58^th Street. The new rooms were inaugurated with a members' tea in the library. On July 13^th the Society, in collaboration with the Huguenot-Walloon Commission, sponsored Huguenot-Walloon Day at the French Pavilion of the New York World's Fair. Colonel L. Effingham de Forest presided over the festivities, which included a concert by the French Church Choir. That same year, Percy Lawrence Hance donated a die for a miniature insignia made by Bailey, Banks & Biddle, who since 1912 had also produced the larger version. In addition to its usual gifts, the Huguenot Society also made donations to the Paris Theological Seminary and to the Huguenot Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

On April 30, 1940, attendees of the Plaza Hotel banquet dined on Petit Marmite Henry IV, listened to a speech by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, and received a copy of the Record of the Church at Narragansett and the 1933-40 Society Minutes. It was the last of the old-world dinners.

In December, a circular called France Forever was sent to members, with a plea for help from Mme. Maurice Garreau-Dombasle, whose husband had resigned his position as Financial Attaché of the French Embassy after France collapsed to become leader of the De Gaulle movement in America. The following May, the Huguenot Society participated in a service of intercession for the people of France at the Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas in New York. They also made substantial donations to the United Service Organization for National Defense.

In these bleak, wartime years there were few social events. One happy occasion was the first annual Huguenot service at the newly finished sixth l'Église française du Saint-Esprit. The society held a more solemn service there in 1944 as a memorial for Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of the American president and a Huguenot descendant, who was the first Allied general officer to wade ashore on the Normandy beachhead on 6 June 1944 and who died on the battlefield five weeks later.

On January 17, 1945, members gathered for tea at the Plaza to present Miss Jackson with a silver chalice for serving twenty-five years as Secretary. (Miss Jackson, who joined the Society in 1891, did not resign her post until 1950). At this gathering, Mme. Philippe Davey, Vice President of the Fighting French Relief Committee and a member of the National War Fund Agency, informed members about conditions in France. In response, the Huguenot Society donated funds to the Foster Parents Plan for War Children and Foster Homes for Children in France funds.

In 1949 the Huguenot Society began to resume its prewar pace. The biennial spring dinner was resuscitated as an annual December luncheon, first held at the Plaza Hotel. In 1950, a framed, gilded Huguenot Society of America Seal was sent to the prison on the Isle de Sainte-Marguerite, off the French coast near Cannes, in memory of the Huguenot pastors who, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, chose to die there rather than renounce their faith under torture.

At the 1952 luncheon, the Loving Cups gleamed on the dais as Society President James Nathaniel Dunlop gave a short talk about their history and the seventeenth-century Huguenot medals set into them. Although the uncrated objects were greatly admired, the ceremony for which they were intended was neither revived nor even fully remembered at that time.

On June 6, 1954, the Huguenot Society of America commemorated the 250^th anniversary of the laying of the cornerstone of the Temple du Saint Esprit by Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, British Governor of New York (1702-1708). Through the 1950s and the early 1960s gifts to the McAll Mission continued. In addition, donations were made to the Association for Aiding the Numerous Families of the Ministers of the Protestant Sect.

The Society did not always achieve its idealistic goals. A 1955 committee to investigate the deficiencies in the teaching of American History in New York City public schools made little headway with an unsympathetic Board of Education. Even more tragically, despite the Society's vigorous protest, in 1959 the ancient churchyard behind the Old First Church in Newark, New Jersey was destroyed. Although the Society had no formal ties with this church, HSA members were outraged that the remains of many second and third generation Huguenots buried in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were exhumed and reburied in a common grave to make room for a modern parking lot. The church's only concession was to create a memorial garden containing the early names on a low wall.

However, these same years also brought resounding successes that have redefined the Huguenot Society ever since. In 1956 the Society established its first scholarship at Cornell University for an American of Huguenot descent. At the same time, the Society amended its Constitution to establish a standing Color Guard to carry flags at receptions and services. A committee also designed a new insignia, because it was felt that the original placed too much emphasis on Marguerite d'Angoulême, who died before the worst travails of the Huguenots. Reverend Canon West (subsequently President of the Huguenot Society, 1963-66) created the new version: the Languedoc Cross, enameled red and decorated with four heraldic eagles from the Coligny shield, with pendant dove. Marguerite d'Angoulême's flower remained at the center. The red-white-and-blue rosette also made its debut at this time.

Society President Rev. Dr. Gilbert wore the new insignia mounted on a silver star for the first time at the 1958 annual meeting. At this event, he distributed pamphlets containing the Sermon on the Mount in French and announced that he had arranged for 100,000 copies to be placed in the American Pavilion of the Brussels World's Fair.

The following September, the Huguenot Society of America, in collaboration with the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames, the Holland Society of New York, and the St. Nicholas Society, held a reception for Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands at the National Society of Colonial Dames, making her an honorary member and presenting her with a gold insignia.

By 1961 the Cornell University scholarship had increased from $200 to $600, monies to the McAll Mission doubled, and a new grant was given to l'Église française du Saint-Esprit. However, a whole new level of patronage began in 1962 when, as trustee of a generous bequest by a French widow and friend of the Society, Marie L Rose, the Huguenot Society began to offer scholarships of $1,000 for four years to eighteen collegiate students of Huguenot descent at a variety of institutions.

In this buoyant climate, a lapel medal was in 1962 introduced as an award for five years of service in the Color Guard. The following summer members received the first published edition of the Huguenot Society's history, organization, activities, and membership, from which the present volume is derived.

By 1967 the number of annual scholarships had increased to 24 due to an accumulation of interest from a few unused awards. Three years later, the Society transferred $5,000 from its General Fund to the Scholarship Fund and thereby issued 23 $1,000 grants and 12 of $500.

In 1972 the Society also made a donation to the Huguenot Historical Society of New Paltz for restoration work on the Huguenot Street houses. In October 1976 members made an excursion to visit the refurbished village. By this date, many members had participated in Huguenot pilgrimages further afield -- in the summer of 1969 a trip to La Rochelle, France, and in August 1972 sites in England, Holland, Germany, France, and Switzerland.

As a contribution to the American Bicentennial celebrations, the Society offered slide presentations to interested groups and prepared a short pamphlet on Huguenot Contributions to the Founding of the United States.

In 1977 the Society sponsored a reception at the Parish House of Saint-Esprit for members to meet the new vicar, Rev. Thomas W. Wile. At the annual luncheon the Ceremony of the Loving Cup was reintroduced for the first time since 1919.

In October 1980 the Society installed a bronze plaque at l'Église française du Saint-Esprit to commemorate twenty United States Presidents of Huguenot descent.

The annual banquet moved to the Union Club on December 11, 1980, when it became a dinner rather than a luncheon for that year only. At this event, a new Society flag took pride of place. In the same year, a resolution was taken to credit any net income in a given year not otherwise designated to the scholarship fund. The library was reorganized, and duplicate books were given to the New York Biographical and Genealogical Society Library and other institutions.

Mrs. Hans A. Frech became the first woman to serve as President of the Society in 1983. She dedicated this year, the Society's centennial, to the memories of Mrs. Lawton and Miss Jackson as well as that of Mr. Warren DuBois, President from 1953-56, who had recommended the Society to the widow Marie L. Rose.

The celebratory spirit reached its crescendo in 1985 with the tercentennial anniversary of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To mark this occasion, the annual meeting was held on April 12th at the Museum of the City of New York, where curator, Margaret D. Stearns took members through an exhibition of Huguenot silver from New York. A reception was held amidst these resplendent objects. The next day members visited the Staten Island Historical Society. On Sunday, a special service at St. Mark's in the Bouwerie, where the remains of early Huguenots had been re-interred in a vault owned by the French church, a box luncheon, and an outing to Trinity Church, where small French flags marked the graves of known Huguenots, rounded off the weekend. That summer, many members traveled to Europe to commemorate the tercentenary. The Huguenot Society of London entertained the Americans, who also visited a comprehensive Huguenot exhibition and attended a service at St. Paul's. French President François Mitterand later greeted the group in Paris after they had toured Huguenot sites throughout France.

The next year the Society published a special tercentennial book, Huguenot Participation in the Settling of Colonial North America, edited by Dr. Peter Hannon and containing essays by eleven members.

In 1987 the bronze tablet placed by the Society in 1902 at the site of the first Huguenot church in New York was stolen. A stainless steel replacement was proudly installed in the same spot (2 Broadway) in 1991. An updated volume of the Huguenot history, organization, activities, and membership (also known as the Red Book) was published in 1993.

In the past eleven years, the Society has given grants to various projects having to do with its mission and purpose totaling $156,750. Many of these grants were to upcoming and eminent scholars of Huguenot history. In these years, the Society also disbursed a total of $458,831 in scholarships to undergraduates of proven Huguenot descent around the country. A bequest to be used for scholarships was received in 2001 from Mrs. Jacqueline Wells Dickey and was added to the Marie L. Rose Scholarship Fund.

Other highlights of these years were the striking of the Huguenot Medal, which is presented to speakers at our Annual Luncheon and Annual Meeting, the acquisition of our first computer, the refurbishment of our meeting room under the direction of Mrs. Mieke Armstrong, and the week-long celebration of the 400^th Anniversary of the Edict of Nantes in 1998 chaired by past President Mrs. Hans A. Frech. Activities during this festive week included an inspiring church service at l'Église française du Saint-Esprit, a reception and banquet at the Colony Club, a forum at Saint-Esprit with speaker Professor Philip Benedict of Brown University, followed by a cocktail reception in our refurbished library and office, and two day trips to Huguenot sites in New Rochelle, New Paltz, Staten Island, and lower Manhattan. The week was topped off by a dinner cruise on the Spirit of New York.

In 2000, the Society supported a project of l'Église française du Saint-Esprit to recreate the plaques picturing the fifty Huguenot and Walloon coats of arms that decorate the sanctuary, the old plaques having deteriorated. In 2001, we joined with the New Netherland Institute and the Holland Society of New York in a three-day seminar with scholars from across the nation and abroad, New Netherland at the Millennium, held in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society's auditorium.

Thanks to then President Courtney A. Haff, our website was launched in 2002, the address being www.huguenotsocietyofamerica.org. This year also saw the publication of papers by three of our grant recipients and Medalists in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland, and Colonial America, 1550-1750, the Proceedings of a conference held in the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, London, in 2000.

The chief highlight of 2002 was the publication of Quatercentenary Celebration of the Promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, edited by member Michael J. Burlingham, which contains accounts of the celebration of the Edict's 400^th anniversary, essays, and illustrations. Finally, in 2003, the Society's Constitution was revised and is printed in this edition of the Red Book, which supercedes the out-of-date 1993 edition.