Manuscript note: Elizabeth Howell of Savannah married Charles Mason Bessellieu of Grahamville, and their children

An unlined sheet bearing a handwritten note, in dark ink in the compiler’s hand, recording that Elizabeth Howell of Savannah married Charles Mason Bessellieu of Grahamville and listing their eight children, ending with Julia Virginia who married B. F. Dunkin Perry. A diagonal annotation written sideways across the central white space refers to a Bessellieu memorial stone in the Huguenot Church yard in Charleston; it closes ‘of the Bessellieu family — / erected in 17—’ (year truncated). Couple are the maternal grandparents of Mary Anne Perry FitzSimons (Minnie) and great-grandparents of the compiler Amy FitzSimons, via their daughter Julia Virginia Bessellieu’s marriage to B. F. Dunkin Perry (see p630 for the matching Perry-FitzSimons leaf).

The Bessellieu (also Besselleu, Bessellieu, Bisseleau) line is one of the Huguenot families that fled France after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and settled in the South Carolina Lowcountry. The reference is to the French Huguenot Church of Charleston on Church Street — the only independent Huguenot congregation in the United States — whose burying ground holds many of the surviving stones of the post-1685 emigrant generation.