The Huguenot Memorial Site - Jacksonville, FL
N 30° 24.668 W 081° 25.235
17R E 459603 N 3364418
The Huguenot Memorial Site is denoted by a marker located at the entrance to Huguenot Memorial Park in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. The site is dedicated to the Huguenots who left France to seek religious freedom and to escape religious persecution.
Waymark Code: WMBCTW
Location: Florida, United States
Date Posted: 05/07/2011
Views: 5
The marker text reads as follows:
"In 1562, when France was being torn by religious strife, Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, sent two vessels to the New World in search of a refuge for the oppressed Huguenots. Leading the expedition was the Huguenot explorer, Jean Ribaut, who charted a new course across the Atlantic and arrived off the coast of Florida.
On Friday, May 1, 1562, Ribaut's party first landed in the New World here on the east shore of Xalvis Island. In the presence of friendly Indians, the Frenchmen fell to the ground and gave thanks to God in the first Protestant worship service held in the New World.
Ribaut sailed on up the coast where he founded the colonial settlement of Charlesfort - named in honor of his king. Charlesfort did not last and in 1562 a Huguenot settlement - Fort Caroline - was established on the St. Johns. There, sometime before 1565, the first Protestant white child was born in what is now the United States.
On his second voyage to the Americas in 1565, Ruinate and his men were shipwrecked near St. Augustine. The bold explorer and most of his followers were cold-bloodedly murdered at Matanzas Inlet, near St. Augustine, by Spanish Governor Pedro Menendez, who feared the encroachment of France on Spain's Florida empire."
The following additional information about the Huguenots who sought freedom from religious persecution in Florida is from a book titled "Heroes of discovery in America" by Charles Morris (visit link):
"Jean Ribault and the Huguenots in Florida
In 1562, nearly thirty years after Cartier sailed up the St. Lawrence, another French expedition came to the shores of the New World, seeking the balmy south instead of the frosty north.
It was religious persecution that sent these emigrants across the seas. They were Protestants, or Huguenots, who had suffered much from their Catholic enemies in France, and were seeking a place of refuge in the New World. Their leader was Jean Ribault, a brave captain of Dieppe, France, and on his vessels were some of the young nobility of France, members of the Protestant party. The famous Admiral Coligny had sent them abroad, that they might found an empire in the New World where they could worship God in safety in their own way."