While digging out the answer to the "When were royal offices first denied to Huguenots?" question, I found a lovely map showing the probable population of Calvinists in various parts of the royal demense for the period 1630-1670. The numbers are definitely more....circumspect?...than those of the Victorian-era chroniclers (who relied on people's reportage in a pre-statistics era). http://www.demarests.com/documents/huguenot_population_map.pdf The file is ~250K.

Marc, Very interesting map--for both the distribution of Protestants (who went to Britain) and the geography (I can see where Dauphiné was situated from this map and how the present departments correspond to the former Dauphiné). We frequently see a change of boundaries when researching in the U.S. as counties were formed which can affect where official records are housed today. Are there any guidelines to follow when looking for documents if Dauphiné is an area of interest? Thanks, On Feb 20, 2006, at 1:17 AM, Marc Demarest wrote: > > While digging out the answer to the "When were royal offices first > denied to > Huguenots?" question, I found a lovely map showing the probable > population > of Calvinists in various parts of the royal demense for the period > 1630-1670. The numbers are definitely more....circumspect?...than > those of > the Victorian-era chroniclers (who relied on people's reportage in a > pre-statistics era). > > http://www.demarests.com/documents/huguenot_population_map.pdf

-----Original Message----- From: Marcia Bignall [mailto:mbignall@mac.com] > Very interesting map--for both the distribution of Protestants (who went to Britain) and > the geography (I can see where Dauphiné was situated from this map and how the present > departments correspond to the former Dauphiné). MD: I want to make sure we're clear about what the chart shows. It attempts to count (necessarily averaged numbers of) Calvinists *in situ* in various parts of France during the period. It does not count all Protestants, nor suggest how many emigrated to Britain. It does not show geography, or provincial boundaries. > We frequently see a change of boundaries when researching in the U.S. > as counties were formed which can affect where official records are housed today. Are > there any guidelines to follow when looking for documents if Dauphiné is an area of > interest? MD: Generally, you have to undo your notions of boundaries, first of all. The dashed lines on the map, for example, are not geographical boundaries at all -- they are the lines of control of the provincial Calvinist synods (as I think the legend says). The names of traditional regions -- Picardy, the Pays D'Oc, Bearn, Brittany -- are also on the map, but I don't believe there was ever a provincial synod for Picardy. The map is trying to relate traditional regions to provincial synodal boundaries. I find the following are always useful guidelines: 1. focus on towns and geographical loci, not the names of (ill-defined) broader areas. Looking for a "Beauchamps" in "the valley of the Bresle" is tractable. Looking for a "Beachamps" in Picardy is less so, in part because there is more than one, and in part because the boundaries of Picardy did indeed change, as far as cartographers were concerned, during the period. If you don't have town-level or geographical clues, you're reduced to surmises based on period maps (see below). Think "transportation" -- where people traveled was a function of what transportation systems they had ready access to. For example, the reason why so many protestants of various stripes living in the Palatinate left for the new world via Amsterdam was, first and foremost, the Rhine as a transportation system... 2. Get a Michelin driving map-book of modern France. The maps are detailed and close to ground level. Barnes and Noble will sell you one in the states. 3. Get several maps of the area in which you are interested in for the period -- or as close as you can get -- from a good map dealer. The Map House in Kensington (google them) usually has what I am looking for, will give you JPGs of the map before you purchase one, and will even tell you whether the places you are looking for are on the map (if they have time) before you buy. Good people. Keep in mind that all maps are political documents -- the cartographer is trying to prove something, flatter someone, or otherwise adopt a rhetorical stance. What is chosen matters; what is left out, matters more. 4. Keep orthography in mind. The 'home town' of my (incorrectly identified) Crusader-noblemen ancestors was spelled, variously, Marets, Maraye, Maray, and Marest on maps made less than two decades apart in the 1600s. We had a recent post on this list where someone was failing to find a town because the sixteenth century spelling (present on period maps) was different substantially from the twentieth century spelling (present in the Michelin maps). 5. Find (and it's hard sometimes) a history of the region in which you are interested in. That may entail going to the Library of Congress catalog or the National Union Catalog or the French national library catalogs to see if such books exist, and then hunting down copies either in research libraries or on abebooks or alibris. 6. Find a read Edward Whiting Fox's *History in Geographic Perspective: The Other France.* In the case of Dauphine, one needs to keep in mind that the principality of Orange (as in William of Orange, stadholder and mortal enemy of the Bourbons) is implicated. William was, technically speaking, a vassal of the Kind of France. I have put some useful baseline maps up for people who don't have a sense of the lay of the land, including maps showing the area under discussion in the late 1400s, at 1515, and in the 1550s, as well as a nice map of the distribution of Calvinist churchs. http://www.demarests.com/documents/huguenot_maps.pdf A large file (1.4 MB) For people researching Picardy, Flanders and Artois, and looking for maps of the period, contact me -- I have probably already bought and digitized what you're looking for.