The Huguenot Ancestor of George Washington
Today at the Society we join the nation in remembering a fellow Huguenot descendant, President George Washington, on the date of his birth.
President George Washington
As described by The Huguenots of Spitafields: “George Washington was the great–great–great–grandson of a Huguenot named Nicholas Martiau (1591–1657). Martiau was born near the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle in France. He left France to come to England and he was mentioned in the register of the famous Huguenot church of Threadneedle Street, London in 1615.”
Here in Charleston, we have a lovely memorial to President Washington in the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church. In 1932, our Society placed a mural tablet in honor of President Washington in the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church. In the 1933, in Vol. 38 of Transactions of the Huguenot Society, there is a reprint of an “Address Delivered by Harold A. Mouzon, Esq. at the Unveiling of the Mural Tablet to George Washington, in the Huguenot Church in Charleston, S.C.” in which Mr. Mouzon stated “That Washington was of Huguenot blood is a fact which has been little known.”
Does this remain a little known fact to this day? In keeping with our mission to preserve the memory of our Huguenot ancestors, we share below excerpts from the address of Mr. Mouzon for your enjoyment.
“Dr. John Baer Stout, Historian of the National Federation of Huguenot Societies, while not the first to note this fact, has followed a dim trail through the earliest colonial and local records of Virginia to reveal in surprising detail the story of the life of this Huguenot ancestor of Washington and to show us what manner of man he was. The results of Dr. Stout's research are set out in his recent book, ‘Nicolas Martiau, the adventurous Huguenot, the military engineer, and the earliest American ancestor of George Washington.’
Nothing is known of the parentage of Nicolas Martiau … We do know that he had been long in England when Henry, fifth Earl of Hunting-ton, sent him to Virginia in the year 1620. The colonists had asked for engineers to supervise the building of fortifications against the Indians; and, upon the Virginia Company's applying to General Cassill for advice as to available men skilled in military engineering, he, to quote from the Company's records, ‘acquainted them of a Frenchman who hath been long in England very skillful therein.’ This Frenchman was Nicolas Martiau, and the Earl sent him to Virginia at his own expense, charged with the fortification of the colony and the management of the Earl’s Virginian estate.”
It comes as no surprise to read that Martiau was an engineer as we often find the professions of cartography and engineering in our Huguenot ancestors. George Washington himself was an engineer, Henry Mouzon was a cartographer, etc. With his engineering background, George Washington corresponded with the Santee Canal project in South Carolina and was also involved in canal constructions in several colonies.
As to the lineage to George Washington, Mr. Mouzon provides:
“Captain Martiau’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Lt. Col. George Read. Their daughter, Mildred, married Augustine Warner and a daughter of this marriage, Mildred Warner, was the wife of Lawrence Washington and grandmother of George Washington.”
The Martiau home in historic Yorktown, Virginia.
The marker at the Martiau home reads:
The adventurous Huguenot who was born in France 1591
Came to Virginia 1620
and died at Yorktown 1657
He was a captain in the Indian uprising
A member of the House of Burgesses
Justice of the County of York
In 1635 a leader
in the thrusting out of Governor Harvey
which was the first opposition
to the British colonial policy
The patentee for Yorktown
and through the marriage
of his daughter Elizabeth
to Col. George Reade he became
the earliest American ancestor of both
General George Washington
and Governor Thomas Nelson
Mouzon concludes his remarks with:
"The breed of the Huguenots has played no mean part in the making of this nation. The love of freedom and of God which drove them from their old homes in France enriched the whole spirit of their new country. That metal which was forged in the fires of persecution has strengthened the fiber of this new race. But not the least surely of the contributions of Huguenot France to America was the blood of Nicolas Martiau, which flowed hot and strong in the veins of George Washington and helped to make him enduring of the Ordeal of Valley Forge and fiery for the desperate thrust at Trenton, to give him that unfaltering courage and patience and strength and wisdom which could not only win the freedom of his country but play so large part in ensuring his country's lasting greatness. And so it is that we rejoice to welcome him today to the church of his fathers' faith, and we proudly and gratefully place among this company of his own people the glorious name of George Washington.”
Captain Martiau died in 1657, leaving a Will in the Parish of York, dated 1 March 1656/57 where he is described as “being very sick and weak in body.” In his Will, Martiau freed two enslaved persons, Phill and Nicholas, and provided “land for their use and personal property. They to have sufficient land ‘to plant in the Field where William Leigh lived' for their lives.”
The town of Yorke, Virginia was founded in 1691 on land owned by Capt. Martiau.