Description:

South Carolina

Archive comprised of letters written in both French and English documenting the French Huguenot ancestry of the Ravenel Family of South Carolina.  James Ravenel (1818-1880) exchanged five dated and two undated manuscripts with his French relative Leon Sauve of Vitre in Brittany between December 1873 and May 1875. Ravenel and Sauve were avid amateur genealogists who pooled their combined knowledge. Between the two cousins, they were able to reconstruct the names, dates, and occupations of their common ancestors from the seventeenth century to the present. The American branch of the Ravenels had emigrated from France, like many other Huguenots, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

 

The archive is comprised of a 16pp ALS (in French) by Leon Sauve dated December 10, 1873 and addressed to James Ravenel; a 5pp ALS by James Ravenel dated May 28, 1874 and addressed to Leon Sauve; a 3pp ALS (in French) by Leon Sauve dated August 5, 1874 and addressed to James Ravenel; a 13pp ALS (in French) by Leon Sauve dated September 21, 1874 and addressed to James Ravenel; a 6pp ALS (in French) by Leon Sauve dated May 5, 1875 addressed to Robert N. Gourdin and containing copies of related letters; and two undated manuscripts, one an impressive bifold family tree in French. The lengthier letters have been hand-bound. In near fine condition, with expected paper folds and toning. Average size of paper sheet is 8.125" x 13.125".

 

James Ravenel wrote his French cousin on May 28, 1874: "…I have been able fully to appreciate the laborious and extensive research to which you gave yourself - Let me here repeat my sense of the obligation I am under to you. Several French Biographies, I am in possession of, gave me information in respect to the Ravenel family of France, but the link between them and us in America had been lost, and this, Sir, you have supplied … Hoping, Sir, that the interest engendered by the discovery of our common Ancestry, will lead to a better knowledge of each other, and between the Ravenels of South Carolina, and our relatives in France, I beg to record myself, your friend + obedient servant, James Ravenel".

 

James Ravenel also mentions some research difficulties resulting from "our late civil war", during which time his father's history of French Huguenots in South Carolina, as well as other public and private records, had been destroyed by the "Northern army".

 

The Ravenels were one of the leading families of South Carolina in the antebellum period. The family influence continued into the twentieth century; James Ravenel's maternal granddaughter Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (1876-1858), a painter and printmaker, would become one of the leaders of the artistic movement known as the "Charleston Renaissance".

 

Ex-Charles Sigety

 


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