| AdminHistory | The Barons de Beaufain, who held property at Orange (Vaucluse) and also near Grenoble, were a branch of the ancient family of De Brenger, and were Protestant. Frédéric, Baron de Beaufain, Procureur-General of the Principality of Orange, was one of the Counsellors of the Parlement of Orange who, with a large colony of Orangeois Huguenots, took refuge in Switzerland and Germany in 1704. They received some help from Queen Anne of England thanks to the English connection with the Dutch House of Orange, which derived its title from the little French principality.
After spending some years in Germany, Frédéric retired to Neuchâtel where he died in 1717; not, however, before he had sold his possessions in France and succeeded in transferring the proceeds to Swiss banks. He was assisted in this by his agent Jacques Pélissier-Tanon, a Huguenot who had remained in France in an official post; in 1740 one of this name, Châtelain Royal of Mens, and his nephew Jean, were condemned to the galleys for life.
Of Frdric's sons four died young. The fifth, Hector, is said to have taken a doctorate at Leyden, then moved to England, and in 1732 emigrated to America with General Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia. In 1742 he received a grant of land in South Carolina and became Collector of Customs at Charlestown.
Hector's younger brother was Frédéric, born in 1701, who served from about 1716 to 1749 as an officer in the Prussian army under Frederick William I and his son Frederick the Great. This Frédéric de Bérenger died in Holland in 1757. His eldest son, Jean Henry de Bérenger, born 1729, was also a Prussian officer from 1746 until he retired through ill-health in 1761. He then, after a stay in England, visited his uncle Hector in Carolina, but returned, as apparently the climate did not suit him. Hector died in 1766, but his nephew and heir Jean Henry was unable to make good his claim to the estate, as the American War of Independence broke out, and the inheritance was seized as loyalist property. The bulk of the records in this collection are related to Jean Henry's vain attempts to obtain compensation for this loss. |