Those Athletic Huguenots

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The lovely Mrs. Gammons and I are currently visiting Jacksonville Beach.  We stay just a couple blocks south of the Huguenot Tennis Center.  We've been here several times before and the name of this facility amuses me, although I'm clueless as to its origin.

I do know that the Huguenots were French Protestants who were persecuted by the Catholic majority in the 1500's and 1600's.  Many Huguenots fled France for other parts of Europe or for the New World.  Your humble correspondent is descended from a Huguenot who settled in Maryland.

The Huguenots were essentially Calvinists, practicing a particularly stern and humorless brand of Puritanical Christianity.  They were not big fans of sports or leisure activities of any sort.  Which is why I find the "Huguenot Tennis Center" such a funny name.

It tickles me to imagine that while the Spanish were building forts and cannons and castles in St. Augustine (the oldest settlement in the continental U.S.), just a few miles up the road at Jax Beach, an enclave of athletic French Protestant refugees devoted themselves to constructing tennis courts!

Revisionist history!














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But wait!  Here's even more Huguenot trivia for your blogging dollar.  (OK, blogs are free, but you know what I mean.)

The aforementioned ancient relative was one Mareen Duvall, a French Huguenot who emigrated to Maryland in 1650 at the age of 25.  Mareen is the oldest known relative in any of the branches of our family shrubbery.  Upon arrival, he was given (given!) a tract of land by the Calverts, overseers of the Maryland Colony, and later procured even more by his own industry.  He was a prosperous farmer and merchant.  Mareen preceded little ol' me by 12-13 generations, give or take.  (In subsequent years, some, like my grandmother Katharine, changed the spelling to the more French-ified "DuVal".)

Included among his many descendants are Supreme Court Justice Gabriel Duvall (my 4th great-grandfather), President Harry Truman, king-stealing socialite Wallis Simpson, wealthy investment guru Warren Buffett, actor Robert Duvall, Vice President Dick Cheney, and of course, current President Barack Obama, a.k.a. my Cousin Barry.

I happily embrace my distant affiliation with all of them, except Dick Cheney.  Every family has its black sheep.