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Translation to be reviewed. This page is a translation of the French original, which remains the reference. Read the French version

From Clairac to the world

People from Clairac in America

Claude Martin’s list of emigrants names no American destination. His extracts give one: “Louis LATANé, in 1701 minister of South-Farnham in Virginia”. He also studied departures for Louisiana, and descendants of the emigrant families came to meet him from Philadelphia. [L] [G] [A]

Claude Martin’s figures

In his list of emigrants [L]
no destination in America: all the destinations in the list are European
In his register extracts (G02, table of places, p. 7) [G]
1 person ; Virginia once

The two counts are not to be added together. The list places each emigrant under one destination; the extracts count the people Claude Martin found in registers, town by town, and the same person may appear in both. The figures are the ones he wrote.

The list says nothing of departures to America; they appear in the register extracts and in Claude Martin’s studies.

The town figures in his table do not always match the lines of his extracts: the differences are documented with the transcription, never corrected. [G]

The list of emigrants Claude Martin’s extracts (G02)

The families traced

Three leading leads: the Fauquiers, a confirmed line from Clairac to Virginia; Louis (Lewis) Latané, minister of the parish of South Farnham, in Virginia, whose origin in Clairac is probable (only Claude Martin gives it); Jacques Pégus, a man from Clairac enrolled for Louisiana in 1718.

Records concerning North America: the Fauquiers, the minister of South Farnham, Claude Martin’s study of Louisiana and the Pegues lead, which remains a hypothesis.

4 lab records: 2 confirmed, 1 probable, 1 hypotheses (status of the whole record).

All related records

All the lab records

Map

America on the map

The “From Clairac to the world” map, centred on North America: the same points, the same entries. Open a point to read the entry for the place.

Hover over, tap or select a point on the map with the keyboard to open the place’s record. On a small screen, swipe the map sideways to see all of it.

From Clairac to the world: North America Map of eastern North America, with the outline of the present-day United States in colour. The lines come from Clairac, on the other side of the Atlantic. A diamond marks South Farnham, in Virginia, named in Claude Martin’s extracts; a dot marks Philadelphia, from where descendants came. In green, French Louisiana, studied by Claude Martin. Dotted, with a “?”, the Pegues lead in South Carolina, an unproven hypothesis. Philadelphia South Farnham La RochelleNantesFrench LouisianaPeguesPeiret The lines start from Clairac, on the other side of the Atlantic, to the east.
Clairac Destinations recorded by Claude Martin in his list of emigrants, with the number of lines naming them [L] Places from which descendants came, according to the exhibition panel [A] Dutilh family: departures (dotted lines) and Nérac [D] [E] [H] Places named in the registers recorded by Claude Martin, grouped by region (hollow diamond: mostly a stopover) [G] Findings of the lab, confirmed or probable: a section in the record of places already on the map, squares for new places. Studies by Claude Martin: Louisiana (departures from La Rochelle, Nantes and Clairac), Cobham, in England, the glassworks of the Couserans, and the glassmakers’ diaspora from the Ariège (Gabre, Montauban), distinct from the Clairac list Hypothesis Unproven leads, dotted: Pegues (South Carolina), Labat (Ireland), and Peiret, from Gabre to New York (glassmakers’ diaspora from the Ariège) Route of Paul Brochequin, a tailor from Clairac (1688-1705), stage by stage, in dashes Base map: Natural Earth (public domain). The lines link each place to Clairac; they do not represent routes, except those of Paul Brochequin and of Pierre Peiret, which starts in Gabre. Countries and regions named without a city: marker at the approximate centre. Off the map: 89 “not followed” lines, 2 with no destination and 1 “Indes Or.”. Lab: the number of families and of facts is given for each place; the exact number of people cannot be measured reliably. The list of emigrants names only European destinations; the “Studies by Claude Martin” and “Hypotheses” layers concern his work and unproven leads, not his list.

Outline of the country: present-day borders (Natural Earth, public domain), as a reference; at the time of the Refuge, the states and their borders were different.

Text version: the places on this map and their sources

  • Philadelphia (United States)

    Families
    Not specified: the panel names the Saffin, Dutilh, Darné and Cobet families together, without saying which one came from this place.
    Period
    From the 1960s onwards
    Connection with Clairac
    Descendants of the emigrant families came from this place to Clairac to meet Claude Martin.
    Sources
    Exhibition panel “Claude Martin” [A]
    Confidence level
    Medium: the panel names the six places together, with no family or date for each.

  • South Farnham (Virginia)

    In the registers recorded by Claude Martin

    Lines
    1 line of transcription (G02: 1).
    Mentions
    Minister of religion (1).
    Period
    1701, according to the dates written on the lines.
    Connection with Clairac
    People from Clairac whose presence, marriage, death or settlement in this place Claude Martin recorded.
    Sources
    Claude Martin’s typed records: G02 p. 4 (documents not reproduced on this site) [G]
    Confidence level
    High for what the document says: Claude Martin cites the register or publication each line comes from. A line is not a person: the same person may appear in several documents. These numbers are not to be added to those of the list of émigrés.
    People
    The line: person, date, entry, document and page
    PersonDateEntryDocument
    Louis LATANé1701minister of religionG02 p. 4

    “(?)”: uncertain reading. “reg.”: Frankfurt relief register, cited by Claude Martin.

    Findings of the lab (confirmed or probable)

    Families
    1
    Confirmed or probable facts
    1

  • French Louisiana (marker: New Orleans, now United States)

    Confirmed

    Study
    “L’émigration vers la Louisiane (La Rochelle, Nantes, Clairac), 1698-1754”, by Marie-Claude Guibert, Gabriel Debien and Claude Martin, presented at the national congress of learned societies in Nantes (1972) and published in its proceedings (1977).
    Departures studied
    La Rochelle, Nantes and Clairac, from 1698 to 1754.
    Marker
    New Orleans, for French Louisiana: the article is about the colony, not a town.
    A man from Clairac
    Jacques Pégus, enlisted for Louisiana with two coopers before the notary Gadiot on 26 August 1718, according to Claude Martin’s records.
    To follow up
    The other names have yet to be extracted from the article.
    Records
    Clairac and Louisiana (lab) · the publication

  • Pegues Place (near Wallace, South Carolina, United States)

    Hypothesis

    Pegues: Glenys’s hypothesis, unproven.

    Supposed route
    Clairac, London, Charleston (arrival around 1736), then Pegues Place, near Wallace (house built around 1770).
    What is established
    Claudius Pegues was born in London in 1719, the son of a Huguenot refugee whose home town in France is not known.
    In Claude Martin’s records
    A Suzanne Pégues in Clairac in 1690 (notarial agreement) and a Jacques Pégus enlisted for Louisiana in 1718: the name existed in Clairac.
    What is missing
    No public document links Claudius Pegues to Clairac.
    Record
    Pegues: from Clairac to South Carolina?

  • New York (Trinity Church, United States)

    Probable

    Peiret: probable route, according to a note by Claude Martin.

    Route
    Gabre, England, then New York: Marguerite de Grenier Latour and her husband Pierre Peiret, a minister, according to a note in Claude Martin’s records (SHPF Library).
    What is established
    Pierre Peiret was minister of the French Church of New York from 1687; he died there on 1 September 1704 and was buried in the churchyard of Trinity Church.
    What is missing
    No independent source says Marguerite was “from Gabre”; Pierre Peiret’s origin is disputed (county of Foix or Béarn).
    Glassmakers’ diaspora
    A family from the Ariège, distinct from the list of emigrants from Clairac.
    Record
    Marguerite de Grenier Latour and Pierre Peiret: from Gabre to New York

See the full map

The routes

No network has yet been documented in this country: few of its registers have been examined (limits of the networks of departure).

The Fauquiers, from Clairac to Virginia

Confirmed Born in Clairac around 1672, Jean-François Fauquier, a refugee in London naturalised in 1698, became deputy master of the Royal Mint under Isaac Newton, then a director of the Bank of England. His son Francis, baptised in London in 1703, was lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1758 until his death in 1768; Fauquier County, created in 1759, bears his name (the lab record; the line).

Louis Latané, minister in Virginia

Published sources confirm Claude Martin’s note: a minister named Latané came to Virginia with the Huguenot emigration of 1700-1701, with his wife, a child and a servant, and Lewis Latané was for more than thirty years minister of the Anglican parish of South Farnham, in Essex County. Matriculated at Oxford in 1691, aged 19, he was the son of a Henry (the lab record).

Probable His origin in Clairac is given only by Claude Martin: an American historian counts him among the ministers who came from Guyenne, without naming a town, and the Oxford register gives a miscopied place name. That this place is Tonneins, near Clairac, where the minister Henri Latané served until 1685, is a hypothesis of the lab. To be checked

Louisiana and the Pegues lead

With Gabriel Debien and Marie-Claude Guibert, Claude Martin studied departures for Louisiana from La Rochelle, Nantes and Clairac, from 1698 to 1754 (the publication); he noted Jacques Pégus, enrolled with two coopers on 26 August 1718. The other names have yet to be extracted from the article (the lab record).

Hypothesis Pegues: that Claudius Pegues, who settled in South Carolina in the 18th century, descended from a Clairac family has not been shown (the lab record).

Further south, three Labadies, “natives of Clairac”, married in Paramaribo, in Suriname, a Dutch colony, between 1703 and 1726 (the lab record).

Archives and registers in the country

  • Library of Virginia — the library and archives of the State of Virginia, in Richmond: county and parish records, including those of Essex County, where South Farnham lies.
  • Louisiana State Archives — the archives of the State of Louisiana, in Baton Rouge, with records from the colonial period.
  • Archives nationales d’outre-mer (Aix-en-Provence) — the archives of the French colonies, including Louisiana; their website did not respond when we checked. To be checked

Huguenot societies

Websites checked on 8 November 2026. Those without a link did not respond or could not be found: they are marked “to be checked”.

Appeal

Are you a descendant?

Does your family descend from Huguenots who came from Clairac (Lot-et-Garonne, France)? Letters, family papers, photographs or memories of a visit to Clairac can enrich these pages. Nothing is published without your consent.

Share a memory Send a document

Does your family come from Clairac?

Search for your surname in Claude Martin’s extracts and the lab records, in all its spellings (Brochequin, Brousseguin, Boursequin…).

Search for a name
From Clairac to the world

Did you know?

  • A single American name

    In the table of places in his extracts, Claude Martin writes for America: “1 personne, Virginie, une fois” (1 person, Virginia, once). It is Louis Latané. [G]

  • A French accent

    According to a 19th-century historian, some parishioners of South Farnham tried to replace Lewis Latané, whose French accent they disliked; they did not succeed (the lab record).

  • From Philadelphia

    From the 1960s, descendants of the families who emigrated from Clairac came to meet Claude Martin, among other places from Philadelphia. [A]

Further reading

On this site: the full map, the list of emigrants, Claude Martin’s extracts, the lab and the Refuge in figures.

From Clairac to the world The emigrants of Clairac Claude Martin’s record extracts The Refuge in figures The networks of departure Protestantism in Clairac

The other countries of refuge

Germany Netherlands England Ireland Switzerland

Sources

  • [A] Exhibition panel “Claude Martin” (PDF, original document in French)
  • [L] Claude Martin, “Emigrés de CLAIRAC en Agenois Province de Guyenne”, typed list, 3 pages, date unknown — facsimile and transcription
  • [G] Claude Martin, typed records of registers: G02: refugees from Clairac in Germany, England, America, Holland, Switzerland and Ireland; G03: refugees from Clairac given relief in Frankfurt (registers of the French Reformed Church); G04: people from Clairac who took refuge in Dublin after the Revocation; G05: Frankfurt registers and deeds of the notaries of Clairac; G15: Huguenots in England and Ireland, from the publications of the Huguenot Society of London. Claude Martin’s archives (records and original documents: Claude Martin’s record extracts)