Francis le jau biography of rory end

Francis le jau biography of rory mcilroy Born into a French Huguenot family in the La Rochelle region of France he later fled to England during the persecution of Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in Christopher's Island where he served for 18 months at the request of Bishop Henry Compton. Francis Le Jau wrote numerous letters to the Society for the SPG describing events that were taking place in the colony of South Carolina as well as his own activities. Other major events in the history of the colony that he lived through and described were the Tuscarora War of and the Yamasee War of During the Yamasee War his home region of Goose Creek was attacked by a coalition led by the Catawba tribe.

Francis Le Jau

Description

Francis Le Jau (), originally a French Huguenot, was one of the earliest missionaries employed by the Society in Goose Creek, South Carolina, and wrote numerous detailed letters about his experiences of mission life. His letters trace many of the founding practices and work of the society over the course of its first fifteen years.

His life was marked by itinerancy: leaving France for England upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in , he was educated at Trinity College Dublin, and spent time on the island of St Christopher’s, before arriving in South Carolina in Many of his letters provide an insight into the difficulties that SPG missionaries faced upon their decision to travel to the colonies: the dangers and cost of the journey across the Atlantic, fears of bad weather, piracy, and war, and also of the many setbacks faced when trying to establish homes and churches upon arrival.

Le Jau wrote frequently about his family’s difficulty in acclimatizing to the hostile environment, of endemic sickness which afflicted the local area, and of attempts to sustain his household with apparently limited assistance from his parishioners.

Francis le jau biography of rory After his arrival, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, earning a doctorate. He then became an Anglican minister. Christopher in the West Indies and then to South Carolina as a missionary. Image: portrait of Le Jau, by Henrietta Johnston. Le Jau arrived in Charleston then Charles Town in

Le Jau was dependent on the financial and material resource of the Society, as well as local networks of professional support from other neighbouring clergy, but his limited material comfort was underwritten by his purchasing of three slaves to help maintain his household. His exploitation of enslaved people within his own household sits uneasily alongside his frequent denunciations of the cruel behaviour he had observed in neighbouring slave-owners.

Le Jau also writes frequently of his encounters with indigenous Americans, including reports that there was a shared ‘Savannah’ language used across the continent, and his attempts to send a copy of the Lords prayer in that language to the secretary. In Le Jau’s letters we can trace the conventions and etiquette of the Society’s correspondence, and the importance of communicating through the proper channels.

While he generally writes directly to the secretary, he was forced to apologise in for circumnavigating the secretary and the central committee of the Society, and writing to another SPG member instead: from Le Jau’s remorseful subsequent letter to the secretary, it appears that this was a breach of the desired protocol.