Ebook Memoirs of a Huguenot Family

The history of the little work now in the reader's hands, is briefly this. Among the private documents, belonging to one of the most respectable families under the parochial charge of the present writer, there has long been preserved, with pious care, a manuscript autobiography of one of its ancestors, who, as a persecuted Huguenot, endured much for the sake of his faith. It was the labour of his latter days to prepare for his descendants the record alluded to, as a memorial of his gratitude for the Providence that had sustained him in many dangers and trials, and as an admonition to his posterity to adhere to the faith for which their forefathers hazarded life. The work, which extended to several hundred pages, was written in the French language, and without any view to publication.

In the friendly confidence growing out of parochial relations, the existence of this manuscript became known to the writer of this introduction. Curiosity led to its examination; the strange and interesting nature of the incidents it recorded, related as they were with unpretending simplicity, soon fixed his attention. It struck him as being a vivid picture of by-gone times sketched by an honest eye witness; and the page of past history thus illustrated was not the least interesting in the records of Protestantism.