Another Huguenot question - Ferauge

[Richard in Perth]

I have just found an article on the Daily Mail Online website regarding the ancestry of the UKIP leader Nigel Farage (I presume we can name public figures on here? If not then mods please remove!). Anyway, the article suggests that his 6th great-grandfather was Georgius Ferauge who was born in Fumay in the Ardennes c1681. The article states that Georgius was a Huguenot who moved to Swallowfield, Berkshire around 1700, where the name was anglicised to George Ferridge.

Now, said politician is a distant cousin of mine (we have a common 3rd-great grandfather) and I already have the Ferridge family history back to this George Ferridge in Swallowfield. However, I never found a baptism for George - the earliest record in the Swallowfield register is his marriage in 1707. Therefore the Mail article does seem to fit with what I already know, and it is quite possible that he was indeed a Huguenot refuge. However, I have found no other data online to support this, other than references to the Mail article. I was wondering if our resident Huguenot expert Richard may be able to help, or indeed anyone else with Huguenot expertise?

Link to the Daily Mail article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257811/UKIP-Belgian-baiter-leader-Nigel-Farage-family-links--Belgium.html

[Richard]

Hello Richard in Perth, I looked into this myself about a year ago when it first came up and came to the same conclusion as you, there was certainly a George Farridge/Faridge in Swallowfield from 1707 baptising his children, this morphed into Feridg/Ferridge/Farage over the course of a century, and Nigel is his descendant, but I could find no evidence whatsoever he was originally Georgius Ferauge from Fumay, and none of the newspaper reports seem to offer any supporting evidence for that. I personally suspect it was made up to smear him when he made his comments about Belgium being a 'non-country'...but perhaps I am being cynical. What I did find is there was an influx of about 300 families in the Swallowfield region, from Flemish lands, about two centuries before the Walloon and Huguenot period, in the 1300's, and other families with foreign sounding names can ultimately trace a link to these. Maybe this was the origin of the Ferridge/Feruage family too and sloppy journalism mixed up the dates?

[Richard in Perth]

Thanks Richard. You are probably right - it was the Daily Mail, after all, and they are renowned for not letting the facts get in the way of a good story! I did however find a few Ferauges born in Fumay on FamilySearch, the earliest being a Jean Noel Ferauge born 2-Mar-1771. Also, there are several Ferauges on Geneanet, the most promising being this:

Bernard Georges FERAUGE
Born 10 March 1681 - Fumay, Ardennes, Champagne-Ardenne, FRANCE
Deceased
Parents:
Pierre FERAUGE †1699
Anne Marie LONGUET †1729

In fact, the above record is quite possibly the one on which the Mail article was based - 1681 is the year that they quoted for the birth of "Georgius". However, how they managed to link this record to the Swallowfield George is a mystery! Do you know if Ferauge is even a Huguenot name, and was Fumay a hotbed of Protestant activity in the late seventeenth century?

Cheers,
Richard

[Richard]

Hello Richard, yes there are definitely Ferauges in Fumay, Geneanet the French genealogy website almost exclusively links the surname there. I just don't see how on earth they link the family up to the Swallowfield Farridges either! I think you may be on to something and some hack with set agenda has pulled up that baptism on the IGI and said..that'll do! There had been lots of speculation 'Ferage' might be a Huguenot name before this alleged find, and even Nigel Farage himself had commented on it and admitted it could be true for all he knew, so I think they set out to find what they expected and wanted to find by any means possible, without much concern for the truth or accuracy.

Apart from the obvious lack of supporting evidence there are a few other major things against it in my mind.

First if they are claiming he was a Huguenot, he presumably fled to England after the revocation in 1685, where is the evidence of his parents in Swallowfield then, he would have been unlikely to have fled alone at those tender years? Why flee to rural Berkshire? There is no particular link with the Huguenots to this area. The refugees could rarely speak English so in general headed to the nearest Huguenot congregation to their landing point, and/or straight to London where there was a huge established community, with charities set up to help them , care for them, ease them into their new life. This aspect of the Georgius Ferauge story doesn''t seem to ring true either.

Also George married Mary Cowdery, a local Swallowfield girl from a well established Berkshire family in 1706. Intermarriage with outsiders was a rarity amongst the first generations of the Huguenot community, partly because of a language and culture barrier, but perhaps more importantly because of their creed, Calvinism, which if was important enough for them to travel hundreds of miles, foresaking homeland, friends, family and possessions, at great risk of life and liberty, was fairly unlikely to be easily ignored just to facilitate a convenient marriage with a local Anglican (A creed viewed by most Calvinists as Catholicism without a pope!). This doesn't seem to fit at all with the pattern known of first generation Huguenot refugees.

Then there is the location he fled from. Fumay is Walloon lands and did not become part of France until 1659 when it was ceded to Louis XIV by the treaty of the Pyrenees. Most Protestant Walloons had been to coin a modern phrase more or less 'ethnically cleansed' out of the area already by the Spanish Inquisition in the years 1566-1630, which is the real great period of Walloon immigration to London. Few came after this as religious refugees from this area, not, at least, until the mid 18th century, when Protestantism began to rise again as books filtered through to the populace there from the German lands via merchants. So the date doesn't seem to fit well at all for the alleged scenario for Georgius Feruage either. And in fact the baptism you yourself have found is evidence that the Ferauge family of Fumay were not Calvinists...it's from 1681, before the revocation, and took place in a Catholic church!

I'm more convinced than ever that this was a smear job on Farage....totally unnecessary as he does have much more recent immigrants in his tree, two sets of Victorian great great grandparents from Germany and Ireland respectively. The German ones are particular interesting, with plenty of potential for mud raking, and one would have thought a much more convenient tool for metaphorically bashing him over the head with, than trying to dig up non existent Huguenot/Walloon ancestry four centuries back! Again I think it simply came about because he made the comments about Belgium, some hack has thought hang on, he's a Huguenot descendant himself isn't he, and they have gone looking for proof, and when it was lacking, made it up with some very creative supposition! But just my opinion. I stand to be corrected of course.

[Richard]

Hello Richard

To add to the above I have been looking at the book 'Swallowfield and it's owners' and the only Huguenot connection seems to be through John Dodd who inherited the estate there in 1738 and married Jane St. Leger at Swallowfield on September 4, 1739. She was the daughter of wealthy Huguenots, but was not linked to the parish before her marriage to Dodd. In fact before Dodd the estate was in the hands of the Hyde family. When George Farridge first appears there it was owned by Henry Hyde, the second earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), who was a staunch supporter of the Jacobite cause, and the Stuart monarchs in exile. At the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1689, Clarendon refused to accept the new regime and was imprisoned in the Tower by William III in 1690 and 1691. It seems fairly unlikely Huguenot refugees would choose to settle in such a mans parish with these links, or be made very welcome if they did!

Another thought occurs to me that within just a few years of his supposed settlement in England Georgius Feruage/George Farridge has apparently Anglicised his surname, and is using the Anglican church to marry and baptise his children. My experience is these things usually occurred much further down the line for the refugees, on average 50-100 years after a family first arrives, and certainly in the case of Anglicisation didn't necessarily happen at all, many descendants today still bear unchanged French surnames as testament to that fact.

As far as I'm concerned, in the absence of any other evidence coming forward, there is more than enough doubt for the Mail story to be considered thoroughly debunked!

[Richard]

Incidentally this seems to be the original comment, from an interview in 'The Telegraph' May 2009, which ultimately led to the Jan 2013 Mail article I think:

"Could the leader of the Euro-phobic United Kingdom Independence Party be a little bit – well – French?
"Don't think so, no," he says. "Thought it might have been Huguenot. No problem with that – great people, the Huguenots."

[Richard in Perth]

Hi Richard. Many thanks for your detailed assessment. Everything you have said makes much sense, and therefore I think that I can safely discount any Huguenot connection on that particular branch for now! As you have surmised, it was probably no more than some Mail hack's rather pathetic attempt to smear him, and as Farage himself pointed out, the country of Belgium didn't even exist when this Georgius was supposed to have lived there so it wasn't that much of a smear in any case!

Cheers,
Richard

[CAlba]

Hi Richard,

I'm researching a biography about Nigel Farage and I was interested in your comments questioning his supposed Huguenot roots. I wondered if you might permit me to use your coments in my book?


If so could you give me your surname and a designation so that I can innclude a proper reference?

Thanks and best wishes,


Carlos Alba


Sorry Carlos but I have had to remove your e-mail address as our T&C's don't allow them on the open forum. You would need to send it to Richard in a Private Message. You can do this by clicking on his name and you will see the box come up.

[kylejustin]

Hi richard,

I tried this as a pm. But it said your inbox was full.

I've long wondered about an ancestor of mine, and whether he may had Huguenot ancestry.

Thomas demaine, born about 1771, d.28 January 1849 at grinton, Yorkshire. First appears there on 7 jul 1800, marrying mary bonson. She died in 1808, and on 27 sep that year at grinton he married ruth spence.

I don't know of any siblings or parents of his, and in truth don't know if Huguenot families ever went to Yorkshire. I only suspect it is a french surname, so if so, could be from any time period.

What do you think?

Regards
kyle