Jean Marion (bef. 1640 - abt. 1683)

Born before 1640 in Chaunay, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France

Husband of Perinne Boutignon — married about 1670 in France

Descendants

Died about 1683 after about age 43 in Chaunay, Vienne, Poitou-Charentes, France [uncertain]

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Cheri Passey [send private message]

Biography

Jean Marion was the Protestant ancestor of a Huguenot emigrant to South Carolina.

Jean Marion was born before 1640 in Poitou-Charentes, the western French region between Poitiers and La Rochelle on the Atlantic coast. As he was the great-grandfather of a notable American patriot soldier, General Francis Marion, of Revolutionary War fame, chroniclers of the family say they were from the village of "Chaumé," now known as Chaunay, in the Vienne departement, not far from Poitiers.

One modern-day book associates the surname "Marion" with the Marranos, ancient Sephardic Jewish families who were forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism in 1498 in Spain. Some of them escaped by boat and ended up in the Atlantic region of south-west France. The thesis is that many of these families superficially practiced the Catholic faith but were attracted to the anti-Catholic doctrines and practices of Calvinist Protestantism, becoming French Huguenots in the mid-1500s. Significant numbers of French Huguenots with surnames this thesis identifies with former Jewish or Muslim Iberian families escaped Roman Catholic persecution and forced conversions a 2nd time in the 1680s by fleeing to England and English colonies in America, notably to South Carolina. Jean's son Benjamin Marion was part of that emigration.^{[1] [2] [3]}

Jean Marion was doubtlessly of upper-middle-class origins. His father was Gabriel Marion; his mother is said to have been of the local French gentry (Louise d'Aubrey) and his son, Benjamin Marion, was clearly literate. Jean's wife was Perrine Boutignon (aka "Bategnon" or "Battignon"), said to be from La Rochelle. They were married before 1660, doubtlessly in a Protestant ceremony in the Poitou-Charentes region. Alas, most documentation for such "heretical" unions was destroyed by the Catholic administration, especially after 1685. It's likely they had several children with Benjamin Marion being the youngest son ("Benjamin" was Isaac's youngest son in the Old Testament). Benjamin was born around 1665 as he married about 1685 and he and his wife fled France in 1688 or 1689, by boat, for England, and then on to Charleston, South Carolina.

Neither Jean Marion nor his wife ever left France, so far as is known. It's likely he died around 1683 just before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes made being a Huguenot Protestant illegal in France.

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia: Marrano
2. ↑ Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America: A Genealogical History, by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman, Donald N. Yates: 2012. See pg. 146 on South Carolina.
3. ↑ Jean Marion on OurFamTree

• Jean Marion profile on geni.com

• The Marion Family in the "Southern and Western Monthly Magazine and Review," Volume 1, pp. 209 ff