The following documents are records and accounts of the process that was involved in Huguenot efforts to seek freedom from persecution and opportunity for the accumulation of wealth. Conditions for Huguenots remaining in France were perilous – “the South Carolina refugee Judith Giton, who then lived in the town of La Voulte, Vivarais, had her home dragooned before moving she decided to flee France,” (Van Ruymbeke, 18). Dragooning, the practice of persecution through the threat of military troop force, was to be the deciding factor in the Gitton’s decision to flee France.
This practice not only was a terrifying experience, but “dragoons were an enormous finanacial burden for their Huguenot hosts simply because many were assigned to one home.” There is record of one home being forced to sustain up to eighteen soldiers at one time, harassing and demanding things often impossible for the rightful inhabitants of a home.
The receipt of passage show the transactional process behind coming to Carolina, yet it also shows the ease of immigration that we do not face today. This short, half-a-page document is a simple transaction of one being “paid” and therefore allowed to enter the country. In fact, the British commanders of Carolina were more than happy to take French refugees. The proprietors were in need “for settlers skilled in vine and silk production. In the 1670s Carolinians, in the hope of finding a lucrative staple, were experimenting with an extensive variety of crops… Joseph Dalton, secretary to the proprietary government at the Ashley River settlement, wrote to Shaftesbury in 1672 that Carolina’s ‘climate and Soyle’ were particularly suited to the cultivation of ‘Wine, Oyle, and Silke,’ precisely what the Huguenots were reputedly experts at producing.” Thus, it is only obvious that Judith Gitton and her family would have been highly encouraged and helped along in their journey to America. Her account symbolizes the struggle for freedom and the miles that settlers were willing to go for a presumably better life.
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