my mother, adèle petigru, was the granddaughter of jean louis gibert, one of the pasteurs du desert, who brought the last colony of huguenots to south carolina in april, 1764, after enduring persecution in france, holding his little flock together through great peril and having the forbidden services of his church in forests, in barns, at the midnight hour, in order to escape imprisonment and death. there was a price set upon his head for some years before he made up his mind to leave his beloved land and escape with his little band of faithful to america. these perils and the martyrdom of some of his followers is told in “les frères gibert.” it is a thrilling story, but too long to tell here. the two brothers, etienne and jean louis, escaped to england, the little flock following one by one. king george iii made a grant of land in south carolina to jean louis for the settlement of the colony. he retained etienne in england as his chaplain.{44}
the difficulties and setbacks encountered by the little band were most harrowing and discouraging, but at last they reached the shores of what was to them the promised land, and disembarked at charleston, south carolina, april 14, 1764, from which city they made their way some 300 miles into the interior of the state where their grant was. their difficulties were by no means over; indeed, to them it seemed sometimes as if they were only begun. the wild rugged wilderness where they were to establish themselves, they called by the names they had left in their beautiful france, new bordeaux and abbeville, and they set to work to clear land and plant the cuttings of grape-vines to make wine, and the cuttings of mulberry to carry on the manufacture of silk, which were their industries at home. it is hard for us now to realize what they had to encounter and endure—wild beasts, indians, difficulties of transportation, of transforming the big trees of the forest into lumber suitable to building houses; but all these they conquered. they built homes, they planted vineyards and orchards and mulberry-groves, and succeeded in the manufacture of silk with their spinning-wheels and hand-looms. there is at the old home place in abbeville now one of{45} the little spinning-wheels with which the silk was spun, that the colony sent with pride as a gift to be made into a dress for the royal wardrobe of the queen of england.
my great-grandfather was a man of executive ability and strength, with that personal charm which made him intensely beloved and revered by his little flock; and they prospered as long as he lived, but, alas, his life was cut short by an unfortunate accident. he had brought with him from france a devoted and capable attendant, pierre le roy, who in this wilderness filled many and diverse offices; he delighted to vary the often very limited diet of the pasteur by preparing for him dainty dishes of mushrooms with which he was familiar in the old country. there are many varieties here unknown there, and any one who knows this delicious but dangerous vegetable, knows how easily confounded are the good and the poisonous; the deadly aminita resembles very closely one of the best edible mushrooms; we know not exactly how, but one night the dainty dish proved fatal to the great and good pasteur, and his flock was left desolate in august, 1773, just nine years after their arrival in the new world.
jean louis gibert had married isabeau bouti{46}ton, a fellow emigrant and sister of his assistant minister, pierre boutiton. she was left a widow very young, with two little daughters, louise and jeanne, and one son, joseph, to struggle with the difficult new life. i cannot pursue the fortunes of the colony, but without the leader and counsellor on whom they leaned the colony soon began to disintegrate and disperse, and their descendants are now scattered all over the country. but of this i am sure, wherever they have gone they have carried their strong, upright influence, always raising the standards and ideals of the communities they entered.
little louise gibert very early married william pettigrew, a blue-eyed, fair-haired young neighbor, who was charmed by her dark beauty. his grandparents had come from ireland and settled in pennsylvania, from which state their sons had scattered, charles settling in north carolina, where he was to become the first bishop of the episcopal church, and william settling in south carolina as a farmer.
they had a large family, four sons and five daughters:
james louis, who became a very distinguished man, a lawyer.
[image unavailable.]
james louis petigru.
miniature by fraser.
{47}
john, clever and witty, but the ne’er-do-well of the family.
tom, who died a captain in the u. s. navy.
charles, who graduated at west point.
the daughters were:
jane gibert, who married john north.
mary, who never married.
louise, married philip johnston porcher.
adèle, married robert francis withers allston.
harriet, married henry deas lesesne.
the sisters were all women of rare beauty, but mary. outsiders never could decide which was the most beautiful, but, of course, each family thought their own mother entitled to the golden apple. my mother was painted by the artist sully when she was twenty-two, just a year after the birth of her first child, benjamin, when she was so ill that her hair was cut, so she appears in the portrait with short brown curls, and is very lovely. there is a portrait of her painted by flagg, in middle life. when she died in her eighty-seventh year she was still beautiful, with brown, wavy hair only sprinkled with gray.
the tradition in my mother’s father’s family was that the pettigrews had come from france{48} after the revocation of the edict of nantes, and had gone to scotland, when they had changed the spelling of the name from petigru, and had eventually moved to ireland. this idea was, of course, pleasant to the little frenchwoman, and when her eldest son, james louis, grew up and proposed to change the spelling of his name and revert to the french spelling she was delighted, and the father consented that the children should spell the name as they preferred, but he declined to change his. so on his and his wife’s tombstone in the most interesting little god’s acre at the old home in abbeville, his name is william pettigrew, while all his children are recorded as petigru. my mother said to me not long before her death that she felt it had been a mistake, as there was no survivor of the petigru name, all the sons having died. but i do not agree with her, for my uncle, james l. petigru, was a great man—heart, soul, and mind—and left a mark in his state, having codified her laws with knowledge and wisdom. he was almost the only man in charleston who was opposed to secession,—i may almost say the only man in the state.[2] but he was so revered{49} and beloved that, at a time when party feeling was intense, he walked out of his pew in st. michael’s church (which he never failed to occupy on sunday) the first time the prayer for the president of the united states was left out of the service, and no one ever said one word of criticism or disapproval. in a period when party politics ran high and bitter feeling was intense, it was a wonderful tribute to a man’s character and integrity that, even though running counter to the intense united feeling of the community, love and respect for him should have protected him from attack.
my mother always talked with great pleasure of her early life. she spoke with admiration and love which amounted to adoration of her “little mother.” her father took second place always in her narrative, though he was a most delightful companion—very clever and full of wit, a great reader, and it was his habit to read aloud in the evenings, while the family sat around the fire, each one with some appointed task. the elder girls sewed, while all the children had their baskets of cotton to pick, for in those days the gin had not been invented and the seed had to be carefully picked from the cotton by hand! it would seem a weary task to us, but they regarded it as a{50} game, and ran races as to who should pick the most during the long winter evenings while my grandfather read milton, wordsworth, shakespeare, and other masters of literature. when one contrasts those evenings, those influences on the minds of children, with the amusements and diversions deemed necessary to the young of the present day, one does not wonder at the pleasure-loving race we are becoming. add to this that there were no little story-books to dissipate the minds of children. my mother’s ideal of a story-book was her beloved plutarch’s “lives,” and i remember still with intense regret her disappointment when, i having accomplished the task of learning to read fluently, she one morning placed in my lap a large volume with very good print, and turned to the life of themistocles, which she had so loved. perhaps if it had not been for the long s’s which adorned this beautiful edition of plutarch it might have been more of a success, but at the end of the half-hour i announced that i saw no pleasure in such a dull book.... i would gladly read to her from one of my story-books, and then she would see what a really nice book was. my dear mother was so pained. she had had the same experience with the older chil{51}dren, but she thought me very bright and felt sure that she would find a congenial mind in her “little bessie.” seeing how hurt she was and that she had set her heart on that special book, i did not insist on my book but came every day and read the plutarch aloud; but i never enjoyed it, which she could never understand.
this thing of bringing all reading matter presented to a child down to its level is a great mistake; it lowers ideals and taste. stories while you are a child, and then romances, novels, detective tales, corrupt the taste until it is so reduced that there are not many young people now who can read scott’s novels with any more pleasure than i read plutarch at ten. my mother’s school was the old field school of the long ago. the country was thinly settled and the schools widely separated, so that children had to make an all-day business of it. the nearest school to the family home was on long cane, three miles away, and mamma, at first accompanied by an older sister and brother, later alone, walked three miles to school every day. she took her little basket of lunch, a substantial one, for she did not get home again until late afternoon. it is quite surprising to find what excellent instruction was{52} given in these “old field schools.” education was not so widely diversified, but it was more thorough and of a higher kind, as far as it went.
mamma learned to prove sums by “casting out the nines” in a wonderful way, which no one else that i ever saw knew anything about. her mind was stored with treasures of good poetry which she had been required to memorize in school. on her solitary walk home she was never lonely. the birds and the little inhabitants of the woods were her delight. at a big chestnut-tree about a mile from home she had special friends—two squirrels who ran down from their castle in the top of the tree when they heard her coming, and she always reserved some of her lunch for them. she sat at the root of the tree and played with them until she saw the sun about to sink below the horizon, when she picked up her little school-bag and started at a run for the last stretch of her way home.