Origins of the name

The Ballou family of New England traces its origin to Maturin Ballou, who settled in Providence , Rhode Island , some time prior to 1646. He was one of thirty-five so-called “quarter-rights men” who received twenty-five acres of land apiece early in 1646, and in turn signed a pledge of “Obeydience to the Authority of King, & parliament ... and to all Such wholesome Lawes, & Orders, that are or Shall be made, by the Major consent of this Towne of Providence.”[i]

Providence was changing rapidly at this time, and the admission of Maturin Ballou and his fellow quarter-rights men was part of the process. At first, all land in Providence was owned by Roger Williams himself. Williams had purchased it from the Narragansetts on his arrival in 1636, apparently with the idea of using it as a base for missionary work among the Indians. As more settlers arrived during the succeeding months, he decided instead to use the land for “a shelter for persons distressed of conscience,” and donated his purchase to a “fellowship” established for this purpose. Members of the fellowship became shareholders and voting members in the organization that owned common and undeveloped land, governed the community, and approved applicants for admission. In addition, each shareholder received title to one hundred acres of farmland and a small house lot, subject to certain restrictions. Newcomers who could not afford to buy shares might be granted “freedom of inhabitation” in return for a pledge of obedience to the decisions made by the fellowship, but did not own land or have the right to vote.[ii]

This arrangement was unpopular from the first. As early as the autumn of 1636, Roger Williams wrote, “Of late some young men ... being admitted to freedom of inhabitation and promising to be subject to the orders made by the householders, are discontented with their estate, and seek the freedom of vote also and equality.” The admission of the “quarter-rights men” in 1646 was a first step in the expansion of the franchise. These were men able to purchase a quarter of a share in the fellowship. They received twenty-five acres and use of the common land, but could not at first vote in the town meeting. However, as the number of these men grew, they were increasingly called upon to do service in the town, and were granted voting rights in return.[iii] On May 15, 1658 , it was decreed that “all those that enjoy lands in the jurisdiction of this town are freemen.”[iv]

Maturin Ballou and his future father-in-law Robert Pike were in the first group of these quarter-rights men. Thus, although Maturin Ballou was a relatively early settler at Providence , he was not – as later generations of Ballous sometimes implied – among the founders of the colony. On the first page of the family history and genealogy, compiled in the 1880s by Maturin ’s great-great-great-grandson Adin Ballou, the founder of the family is described as “a co-proprietor of the Providence Plantations in the Colony of Rhode Island.”[v] This description is not absolutely incorrect – as a shareholder in the fellowship, he was a part owner or “co-proprietor” of the town – but it is misleading. The implication is that he was a co-founder of the colony, rather than one immigrant among many, admitted to full citizenship over twenty years after the first settlement, and then only when the requirements were lowered. Similarly, the Genealogy quotes the colonial records as saying, “At a Meeting at Warwick , May 18th, 1658 , Robert Pyke and Maturin Ballue were admitted freemen.”[vi] Actually, the names of Ballou and Pike appear in a list of twenty-eight persons entered as freemen at this meeting, three days after the town meeting at which all inhabitants of Providence had been made freemen.[vii]

Maturin Ballou was not a prominent citizen of Providence . He did eventually become a freeman of the town and a land owner, but only in the smallest possible way. He never held public office or featured prominently in town affairs; he appears in the records of the colony only in lists of inhabitants or in connection with the buying and selling of small parcels of land. After acquiring his quarter-share, Maturin Ballou was able to increase his property somewhat: he purchased a house lot in 1650, three acres in 1657, six acres in 1661, and a share of some newly acquired land “on the East Side of the Seven mile line” in 1665.[viii] He and his wife Hannah Pike lived quietly on their small homestead and eventually had six children, of whom three lived to have families of their own. The dates of his birth, marriage, arrival in Providence , and death are all unrecorded.

This was the unremarkable origin of a family that grew over the next several centuries into a numerous and prominent one, distinguished particularly in the history of the state of Rhode Island and of the Universalist church in America . The family history and genealogy published in 1888 lists over 8000 descendants, and laments many more who could not be traced.

In Universalist history, the most well-known member of the Ballou family is Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), the great evangelist and theologian of Universalism. Others notable in denominational history are Hosea Ballou 2d (1796-1861), Universalist minister, historian, and president of Tufts University ; and Adin Ballou (1803-1890), Universalist (later Unitarian) minister, reformer, and founder of the utopian community at Hopedale , Massachusetts .

Other descendants distinguished themselves in more secular pursuits: Adin Ballou’s brother, Dr. Ariel Ballou (1805-1887), served in the Rhode Island legislature and as president of the Rhode Island Medical Society in addition to a long career as a physician; Latimer Ballou (1812-1900) was a leading banker in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, one of the founders of Rhode Island’s Republican party, and served three terms in Congress. Major Sullivan Ballou (1827-1861) was a successful attorney and a member of the Rhode Island legislature before his death at the age of 34 in the battle of Bull Run . Sullivan Ballou is best known today for the farewell letter he wrote to his wife before the battle, which provided one of the emotional high points of Ken Burns’ documentary The Civil War.[ix]

The Two Theories

Like many American families, the Ballous can trace their descent to the common immigrant ancestor, but no further. The recorded history of the family begins with the first mention of Maturin Ballou in the records of the town of Providence , in 1646. From this point onward, the lives of Maturin Ballou and his descendants are documented in a collection of deeds, contracts, wills, court records, minutes of town meetings, letters and memoirs. Prior to this, there is only legend and speculation.

There are two alternative theories about the European origin of Maturin Ballou and his ancestors. The first, a family tradition that “has always been cherished ... and held very sacred” was that the ancestors were Huguenots.[x] When Adin Ballou began his autobiography in the early 1880s, he recorded the accepted belief regarding the founder of the family: “Tradition holds him to have been of French extraction, belonging to a Huguenot family and coming to this country from England , whither many of that persecuted sect fled some generations since.”[xi] In his history of the town of Milford , written in 1881, Adin Ballou gave another version of this same tradition, including more details:

My immigrant ancestor, Maturin Ballou, a French Protestant, as tradition says, fled first to England , remained there till he had formed a marriage connection, then came to Massachusetts Bay , and thence removed to the Providence Plantations. There, about 1640, he joined the co-proprietors of Roger Williams.[xii]

Belief in the family’s Huguenot origin was apparently unchallenged until 1884. At that time Frederick M. Ballou, a retired manufacturer and banker, traveled to England and France to research the family’s European roots in connection with the family history and genealogy then being prepared. F. M. Ballou came to believe that the Ballous were not of Huguenot origin at all, but were a branch of the Bellew family of England , with Norman roots going back to the time of the Conquest. Adin Ballou accepted this version and incorporated it into the Genealogy.[xiii]

Because of the stature of the Genealogy as the authoritative work on the subject, its conclusions regarding the family’s origin have been widely circulated in biographical and genealogical dictionaries, encyclopedias, and similar reference works. These secondary works generally report the family’s Norman origin as an established fact, without the careful disclaimers found in the Genealogy. A typical example describes Adin Ballou as “descended in the sixth generation from Maturin Ballou, American pioneer of an Anglo-Norman family.”[xiv] A more elaborate version, from a dictionary with more emphasis on genealogy, includes a wealth of details from the Genealogy, but in the forcefulness of its assertions goes far beyond its source:

In tracing the Anglo-Norman stock of Ballou, we find that the family is of Norman-French descent, as is evidenced in one of the junior lineages, and that the French ancestor, Gunebored Ballou, was probably a marshal in the army of William the Conqueror, and took part in the memorable battle of Hastings in 1066. It is a well-authenticated tradition through several generations that the family is essentially French, and it is an absolute certainty that the present members of this prominent family are remote descendants of the chieftain mentioned above.[xv]

Before the Genealogy was published, biographers drew on a variety of sources, including both family tradition and published works. Several of these take up the question of when Maturin Ballou arrived in America . An 1852 biography of Hosea Ballou, written by his son Maturin Murray Ballou, sets forth what is presumably the family tradition as passed down through this particular branch of the family: that Maturin Ballou “came from England , though a Frenchman by descent, about the year 1640.”[xvi] Earlier dates have been proposed, though none are definitively documented.[xvii] The understanding of Ballou family history prior to the publication of the Genealogy is perhaps best summed up in the 1854 biography of Hosea Ballou, written by his close confidant and associate, Rev. Thomas Whittemore:

Whether those who introduced the name into America came from England or from the continent of Europe , we cannot say, nor is it essential for our purpose to know. There is a tradition that it is of French origin, and that the earliest member of the family who came to our shores sailed hitherward from some part of the continent, to which his parents had been driven by the persecution against the Huguenots. This, however, must be received as tradition merely.[xviii]

After the publication of the Genealogy, its version of the family history completely superseded these earlier accounts. Here is the corresponding passage from the definitive twentieth-century biography of Hosea Ballou, by Ernest Cassara:

His great-great-grandfather, the first Ballou in America , was among the co-proprietors with Roger Williams in Rhode Island in 1646. This Mathurin Bellow (for so he spelled his name) was apparently descended from the Normans who crossed over to England with William the Conqueror.[xix]

Here the tell-tale phrase “co-proprietors with Roger Williams” would (had the footnotes not already done so) immediately identify the Genealogy as the source for this passage. Such is the authority accorded to the Genealogy that Cassara felt justified in relying on this source alone, disregarding the genealogical material in at least three earlier works – Whittemore’s and Maturin Murray Ballou’s biographies, and Adin Ballou’s autobiography – all of which he cited as sources elsewhere in the biography.

As these examples indicate, the version of the family’s origin recorded in the Genealogy – the Norman ancestry, the co-proprietorship, the year 1646 – is now virtually undisputed. It has replaced the earlier, more accurate understanding of Maturin Ballou’s position as a quarter-rights man, and the suggestions that he had arrived in America before 1640. Above all, it has removed from the record all references to the Huguenots. If the Huguenot theory is remembered at all, it is as an old legend, long since superseded by the facts.

The more closely we examine the evidence, however, the less confident we become of these supposed facts. The Norman theory remains unproven. At best, it may be advanced as an alternative view.

There is, of course, a difference between pointing out that a theory is unproven, and asserting that it is incorrect. To say that it has not been proven is to say no more than Adin Ballou did in the Genealogy, or than Ernest Cassara did in his biography of Hosea Ballou. Yet in spite of this absence of proof, those who follow the lead of the Genealogy usually assert that the evidence strongly supports the Norman theory – that it is much the more likely of the two. The tone was set by this crucial, much-quoted passage on the first page of the introduction to the Genealogy:

It has been a universal tradition through several generations, that we are of French descent. Of this there seems no doubt. Another tradition has always been cherished along with this, and held very sacred, that our ancestors were Huguenots. We are in danger of having this favorite legend exploded. Critical investigation finds no proof of its truth. The evidence is against it. We shall have to abandon it, however reluctantly. The very strong probability, if not absolute certainty, is, that we are the remote descendants of a Norman Chieftain.[xx]

This assertion has stood for over a hundred years. It is time to re-examine the evidence and to decide for ourselves, for this century, which theory the evidence supports.

The Nature of the Evidence

We begin the review of the evidence by examining exactly what it means to say that the Norman ancestry of the Ballou family has not been proven. What is the basis for this “very strong probability, if not absolute certainty”?

It is important to realize that, at the conclusion of F. M. Ballou’s research in Europe , the factual basis of the Ballou genealogy was exactly what it had been before. It is not just that the ancestry of Maturin Ballou had not been traced back to the Battle of Hastings; it had not been traced at all, not a single generation. Neither his mother, nor his father, nor any European ancestor had been identified. None has been identified to this day.

Although F. M. Ballou collected a good deal of detailed information about the Bellew family of England and Ireland , he did not establish a connection between this family and the Ballous of Rhode Island. He apparently believed himself to be on the verge of establishing such a connection; according to Adin Ballou, “he had been prevented only by limitation of time and means from reaching demonstratively the pedigree of our Rhode Island progenitor.”[xxi] But he did not do it.

In the absence of definitive evidence, we must fall back upon more general considerations of plausibility and probability, just as the compilers of the Genealogy had to do in the 1880s. Here we have to work with the same general types of information that Adin Ballou and his associates used in making their judgment. These are:

1. the name Ballou itself, in the light of research into the origin of surnames;

2. the general historical background of the period prior to Maturin Ballou’s arrival in Providence ;

Adin Ballou took into consideration another factor, which most people today would not accept: physical appearance. “A striking resemblance of physical structure and complexion is plainly observable in the Devonshire Bellews to the stalwartness and floridity of the old type Rhode Island Ballous, strongly indicative of hereditary kinship.”[xxii] When we consider how subjective such a judgment must be – and how distant the relationship must be between any Rhode Island Ballou and any Devonshire Bellew, even if the Norman theory is correct – we will not pursue this line of reasoning further.

The Evidence of the Name Ballou (and a note on the name Maturin )

The Norman theory rests primarily on the evidence of the name Ballou itself. After this theory had been proposed, Adin Ballou used his understanding of history to evaluate its plausibility; but no one would ever have questioned the family tradition had it not been suggested that Ballou was a Norman name. This suggestion seems to have been made by the British genealogists consulted by F. M. Ballou and another Ballou cousin, Ira Ballou Peck.[xxiii]

Names are not, in themselves, a very reliable indicator even of nationality, much less of descent from a particular family. Before spelling was standardized, a single name might have been spelled in a variety of ways, even among persons who were actually close relatives. Conversely, different but similar-sounding names might share the same spelling.[xxiv] Thus, while there is nothing inherently implausible about the idea that the Ballous of Rhode Island might be related to the Bellews of England (or the Belleaus of Normandy), this is only one of many possibilities.

Modern authorities on names are in substantial disagreement over which other names are related to Ballou. Among the possibilities are:

1. A French form of the Germanic name Ballo or Baldo, from the root bald (bold).[xxv]

2. The cluster of French names based on the root Bal (to move, shake, or dance), including the names Ballet, Ballot, Ballon, Ballou, Ballaire, Balland, and Ballandier (as well as variant spellings of all of these).[xxvi]

3. The French name Ballon, from a place name in Sarthe , France ; recorded in England as early as 1176.[xxvii]

4. The French occupational name Ballou, from the Old French bluter or beluter (a bolter, or sifter of meal or flour).[xxviii]

6. The English and Irish name Bellew, descended from the Norman name Belleau (beautiful water).[xxx]

7. The English name Bellows or Bellowes, which may be a variant of Bellew/Belleau or Bellou and/or an independent English name referring to the blacksmith’s implement.[xxxi]

About the only point on which the authorities agree is that the name Bellew found in England and Ireland is descended from the Norman name Belleau. Of all the names in this cluster, this is the one that has been most extensively researched and documented. The connection between Belleau and Bellew was known in the 1880s when F. M. Ballou was doing his research. It is natural that British genealogists, familiar with the history of this family, would have assumed that Ballou was a variant of Bellew, and advised F. M. Ballou accordingly.

Yet in the light of an additional century’s worth of scholarship, it looks increasingly unlikely that Ballou is in fact related to Bellew. We see instead two quite distinct groups of names: a French group (Ballou, Ballon, Bellou, etc.) and an English/Norman group (Belleau, Bellew, Bellows), with little evidence for a connection between the two.[xxxii]

Consider first the spelling of the name Ballou, with its unusual (in English) use of the digraph ou. There is a general tendency for immigrant names to lose their “foreign” character over time, either by adopting simplified phonetic spelling, or by becoming identified with a similar name already in use in the new country. The transformation of Belleau into Bellew is typical of this process. Norman names imported to England tend either to have retained their original spelling (e.g. Beaumont ) or to have been transformed into names we think of as typically English (e.g. Bellamy, Bennett).[xxxiii] Why, then, does Ballou still look so “French”?

The proponents of the Norman theory never claimed that the name Belleau was transformed into Ballou in England . That is, they did not find any English Ballous who were demonstrably related to the Belleau/Bellew family. The implication is, therefore, that the spelling Ballou originated after Maturin Ballou arrived in America – that for some reason this, out of all the possible spellings of the name, was the one adopted by later generations of the Belleau/Bellew family in America .

It is certainly true that the name was spelled in an amazing variety of ways during the lifetime of Maturin Ballou. The early records of the town of Providence refer to him as Maturine Bello, Matturine Bellue, Maturine Bellu, Mattureene Belloo, and Maturian Balow. (Roger Williams in 1680 addressed a note to “ye Widow Belleau.”)[xxxiv] Significantly, perhaps, no one outside the family ever seems to have used the spelling Ballou or Bellou; whereas members of the family used these spellings consistently. Maturin Ballou himself, in the one place where his signature was recorded, spelled his name “Mathurin Bellou.” The 1646 quarter-rights agreement preserves this spelling, along with the information that Maturin Ballou was literate, or at least able to write his own name: of 27 signatories to this document, he is one of the 17 who used an actual signature rather than a “mark.”[xxxv] Beginning with the first generation born in America , the family consistently used the spelling Ballou.[xxxvi]

If the founder of the family had been an illiterate or semi-literate member of the Bellew family, we are faced with the task of explaining how the family came to settle on this peculiarly un-English rendering. If, on the other hand, Ballou is a French name carried by Huguenot migrants to England and/or America , there is nothing to explain. Indeed, persistently French spelling is typical of Huguenot surnames.[xxxvii]

Finally, let us consider the Christian name Maturin . As evidence of ancestry, first names are even less reliable than surnames, so this consideration is bound to be sketchy and impressionistic; but the impression is that Maturin Ballou was not far removed from his French roots. From the quarter-rights agreement, we know that he spelled his first name “Mathurin,” but, if we can judge by the attempts of his fellow-colonists to render it phonetically, pronounced it something like “Mattureen.” The fact that the spelling was anglicized to Maturin during the next generation suggests that this was when the link to a French community was definitively broken. It is not an English name, under either spelling.[xxxviii] Mathurin is a French name, the name of a French saint.[xxxix] The name may have had particular meaning for the sixteenth-century Huguenot community, since it is the name of Mathurin Cordier (1479-1564), a well-known schoolmaster in Geneva at the time of Calvin. He had taught the young Calvin in Paris , and later became an ardent disciple of his former pupil.[xl] Huguenot families may have honored Cordier in naming their children; for example, the wife of the pastor of the French church in Threadneedle Street , London , in 1600 was named Mathurine.[xli]

The Evidence of Huguenot History

Could the Ballous have been Huguenots? Adin Ballou thought not, for two reasons: Maturin Ballou arrived in America at least 40 years before the great Huguenot migration occasioned by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and F. M. Ballou found no record of such a family in the course of his correspondence with “intelligent Protestant clergymen in the southern districts of France .”[xlii]

As a self-taught man for whom European history was not a major concern, Adin Ballou was not familiar with the intricacies of the history of the Huguenots at home and in exile. He knew that they had been an oppressed minority, that they had been tolerated in France under the Edict of Nantes, and persecuted when it was revoked; there is no evidence that his knowledge went beyond this. He does not seem to have been aware that, by the time the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685, French-speaking Protestants had a 150-year history of persecution and emigration.

The Huguenots in France

Persecution of Protestants in France dates from the earliest days of the Reformation. French Protestants were being arrested, exiled, and burned at the stake by 1530. John Calvin’s brother was executed for heresy in 1534; Calvin himself left France for Switzerland in 1535. Between 1562 and 1598, there were eight separate outbreaks of civil war between French Protestants and Catholics.[xliii]

Each of these Wars of Religion was followed by a settlement – some more favorable to the Protestants, some less, but all unstable. The Edict of Nantes, in 1598, which granted liberty of conscience and full civil rights to the Protestant minority, was the last and most successful of these settlements. Though it did not prevent further conflict (including the siege of La Rochelle in 1627-28), it gave a measure of protection to the Huguenots for about sixty years. After 1660, their privileges were gradually withdrawn; they were subjected to increasing harassment and finally outright violence. In 1685, on the pretext that the Huguenot communities no longer existed, the Edict was officially revoked. Although they were forbidden to emigrate, many did –perhaps 250,000 of them, or about 1% of the population of France .[xliv]

As Adin Ballou rightly noted, the migration which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes could not have had anything to do with his ancestor. However, the emigration of French Protestants began much earlier than 1685. Huguenots emigrated to England , the Low Countries , Switzerland , and other destinations throughout the sixteenth century. Unsuccessful attempts were made to found Huguenot colonies in Brazil in 1555, and in Florida in 1562.[xlv]

The Huguenots in the Low Countries

The Huguenot migration was more extensive than Adin Ballou imagined, geographically as well as temporally. For the term “Huguenot” includes not only Protestants from France , but Protestants from the Walloon, or southern, provinces of what was then the Spanish Netherlands (now Belgium and northern France). The Walloons, who spoke a dialect related to French, had close cultural ties to France . With the support of Protestant communities in France and Switzerland , Protestantism grew rapidly in the Walloon towns in the 1550s and 1560s.[xlvi]

Both Protestants and Catholics participated in a revolt against Spanish rule in 1566, but the reprisals fell most heavily upon the Protestants. Philip II of Spain , in addition to being the feudal overlord of the Netherlands , was a champion of Catholicism who had declared that he would rather die than be king over heretics. The suppression of the rebellion became the occasion for a determined effort to exterminate the Protestants of the Low Countries .[xlvii]

A combination of religious, economic, and nationalistic circumstances, and a more defensible terrain, enabled the Dutch-speaking northern Netherlands to win independence, after decades of struggle, in 1609. In the Flemish and Walloon provinces of the south, however, the nobility – who tended to be politically conservative, Catholic, and anti-French – made common cause with the Spanish against the Protestant communities of the cities. Thousands of Protestant refugees fled to the northern Netherlands , Germany , or England .[xlviii]

The Huguenots in England

In following the fortunes of the Ballou family, we must look at the Huguenot refugee community in England . Most sources agree that Maturin Ballou came from England , though Whittemore, as we have seen, mentions a tradition that he “sailed hitherward from some part of the continent.” However, given the early date of Maturin Ballou’s arrival in Providence (at a time when all settlers in Rhode Island, as far as we know, came from the English colonies in Massachusetts), and the fact that no one in Providence seems to have perceived him as foreign, I think we can concentrate our attention on England.

England was the destination of many French and Walloon Protestants. A French Reformed Church in London was chartered by King Edward VI in 1550. During Edward’s reign, when the Reformation in England was at its height, the French refugee congregations enjoyed a privileged position as a model of a truly reformed church. Under Queen Mary (who was married to Philip II of Spain ), Catholicism was re-established, and it was the turn of English Protestants to go into exile. But Elizabeth had succeeded Mary by the time the Wars of Religion broke out in France in 1562, and large numbers of refugees fled to England .

By 1568 there were at least four French-speaking Reformed congregations in England . Foreign (mostly French) Protestant churches in England had over 10,000 members in 1573, and 15,000 at their peak in the 1590s. By 1660 there were French-Walloon churches in London , Norwich , Southampton , Winchelsea, Rye , and Canterbury , and “Dutch” (Flemish) churches in London , Norwich , Maidstone , Sandwich , and Colchester .[xlix] The records of the Huguenot churches in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show a pattern of occasional peaks of immigration following especially traumatic events overseas (the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, the fall of La Rochelle in 1628), superimposed on a gradual decline in membership as the refugees and their children began to take advantage of the wider range of religious options available in England.[l]

The years between about 1600 and 1625 were relatively peaceful ones for the Reformed churches in both France and England . In France , Huguenot fortunes were at their peak in these early days under the Edict of Nantes. In England, as the Anglican compromise stabilized under Elizabeth I and James I, the position of the foreign churches stabilized as well: neither persecuted nor privileged, they were tolerated and allowed, by virtue of the royal charter of 1550, “freely and peacefully to enjoy, use and practice ... their own manners and ceremonies, and their own particular ecclesiastical discipline, notwithstanding that they are not in conformity with our own manners and ceremonies used in our kingdom.”[li]

The situation changed drastically with the renewal of religious warfare in France in 1625, and the attempt to suppress the Puritan element in the Anglican church during the years 1629-1640. Both English Puritans and foreign Reformed churches were affected. Under the leadership of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633 to 1645, a rigid uniformity of worship was enforced in the English Church . As a result of the anti-Puritan campaign, some 80,000 people left England between 1629 and 1640, bound for Ireland , the Protestant regions of Europe , the West Indies , and New England . About 20,000 of them settled in Massachusetts . Among other measures, Laud revoked the special privileges of the foreign Calvinist churches, and decreed that the Book of Common Prayer and the English liturgy (translated into French) be used in these churches, and that all “born-subjects” (second-generation immigrants) must join the ordinary English parish church. The refugees appealed to King Charles I, but an ecclesiastical court decided against them in 1635.[lii]

A closer look at the relevant history, therefore, tells us that Adin Ballou’s historical objections to the Huguenot theory are entirely without substance. It is speculative, but perfectly plausible, to conjecture that Maturin Ballou’s ancestors were French or Walloon Protestants who fled to England between 1550 and 1600; that he was born in England and brought up within either the French or the English Calvinist tradition; and that he came to New England as part of the Puritan migration. This scenario is consistent with French and English history, as well as with the traditions that the family were of Huguenot origin, that they had lived in England for some generations, and that Maturin Ballou came to America around 1640. Maturin Ballou’s birth date is unknown, but judging from the birth dates of his children (all born between 1650 and 1660), Adin Ballou estimates that he was born between 1610 and 1620:[liii] too young to have been part of the first wave of Huguenot emigration between 1550 and 1600, but just the right age to have been the son (or the “born-subject” grandson) of Huguenot refugees in England.

The Documentary Evidence

Adin Ballou’s second reason for rejecting the Huguenot theory was that no record of the Ballou family had been found in Huguenot sources. Although we may question the efficacy of F. M. Ballou’s research methods, the fact remains that an additional century’s worth of research – using Huguenot materials far more extensive than those available in the 1880s – has failed to uncover any definitive information on the ancestry of Maturin Ballou. Must we then, like Adin Ballou, abandon this theory, however reluctantly? In other words, how significant is the absence from these records of any trace of Maturin Ballou?

The Huguenot émigré community in England is extremely well documented today, thanks to the efforts of the Huguenot Society of London, founded in 1885. The pre-1640 material published by the Society includes records of baptisms, marriages, and burials from French Protestant churches in London , Canterbury , Norwich , and Southampton . These records do not, of course, amount to a complete listing of the membership of these churches. A particular person will only appear in church records if he was baptized, married, had children baptized, or was buried under the auspices of the church, or perhaps if he served as a witness or held a leadership position in the congregation.

The Society has also collected information about foreign nationals living in England from tax rolls, records of naturalization, and listings of “aliens” or “strangers” residing in particular localities.[liv] Here again, these records do not provide anything like a complete listing of foreigners in England . The wealthiest and most ambitious foreigners might obtain Patents of Denization (granted by the crown) or Acts of Naturalization (enacted by Parliament) – a costly process which made them English subjects and entitled them to own land. Others remained as alien “friends,” permitted to reside and do business in England upon payment of a special tax. Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tax lists have of course been lost; in any case, these would only apply to aliens with sufficient taxable property. Those in humbler circumstances would leave no records at all, apart from local enumerations of “strangers,” generally carried out only during periods of particular hostility toward foreigners.[lv]

If Maturin Ballou was in fact the son of a Huguenot family living in England , what kind of record might we expect to find? Considering that he came to America as a young man, was married and buried in America , and left almost no trace even in the tiny and intimate community that was seventeenth-century Providence , the only mention of him we could possibly hope to find would be a record of his baptism. His name does not appear in the baptismal registers of any of the four foreign churches which existed in England before 1640. This is disappointing, but hardly invalidates the whole theory. He might have been born and baptized in France , and brought to England as a small child. Alternatively, his parents might have been in England long enough to have drifted away from the émigré community by the time of his birth. Both of these patterns are found in the records of other Huguenot families of this period.[lvi] In London , some immigrants never affiliated with a foreign church, but attended the English church from the start. Unlike the self-contained French and Flemish communities in Norwich and Canterbury, immigrants to London came into a metropolis made up in large part of “foreigners” (in the sixteenth century, the term was applied to migrants from other parts of England as well as to those born under a different sovereign). Such conditions encouraged rapid assimilation.[lvii]

If Maturin Ballou himself did not – and perhaps could not have been expected to – leave a trace in the records of the Huguenot community in London , what about other members of the Ballou family? If the Ballous were a Huguenot family, should not some evidence have survived?

It turns out that there is abundant evidence showing that foreign families and individuals with names similar to Ballou did indeed live in London during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that some of them attended a French Protestant church. For strict genealogical purposes, this evidence is useless, since it is impossible to establish a relationship between any of these people and Maturin Ballou himself. It is more than sufficient, however, to establish that Ballou could have been a Huguenot name.

The registers of the French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street , London , show that at least three families with names similar to Ballou had children baptized between 1606 and 1626. Their surnames are variously spelled Baileu, Bailleu, Baillieu, de Baillieu, Baleau, Balieu, Balieux, Balleu, Ballew, Ballieu, Baylleu, Belleeau, Belleuall, Belo, Belot, Beluat, and Beluau; but perhaps we can call them Balieu, as being the simplest and most commonly found form, and to indicate that we do not know that they are the related to the family we know as Ballou. Jean Balieu, then, and his wife Marie Letienne (also variously spelled) had nine children baptized in the Threadneedle Street church between 1607 and 1621. Jacques Balieu and his wife Ester or Effre had a son baptized in 1622 and a daughter in 1626. Jacob Balieu and his wife Alis or Alix Andreu had children baptized in 1606, 1613, and 1615. None of these couples is listed in the marriage register, so presumably they were already married, and perhaps had older children, before they arrived in London . We can surmise, though we cannot be sure, that these people were related to each other. The record hints at the existence of a larger extended family: Catherine Ballieu and Jean and Madeleine Belot were witnesses at Balieu baptisms. [lviii]

The civil records document the presence in the London area, from the mid-sixteenth century on, of several “aliens” or “strangers” with names similar to Ballou. These records are a good supplement to the church registers, as they contain information not available in church records, such as occupation and place of origin. Between 1567 and 1622, individuals or families with names recorded as Balieu, de Bailleul, Ballew, Ballieu, Balliewe, Balliowe, Ballowe, Beleve, Belewe, Belewes, Bellewe, Bellow, de Bellowe, and Below appeared on 15 different censuses of foreign residents in the London area.[lix] I will call these Bellow families, a common spelling used by the English census-takers, to distinguish them from the Ballous of New England and the Balieus of the French church records.

The inconsistency of spelling makes it difficult to tell exactly how many people are represented, but there seem to be 10 or 11 different individuals listed as heads of families. Besides the similarity of their names, the occupations of the Bellows support the conjecture that they were related to each other in some way. Of the eight for whom occupation was recorded, five are listed as silkweavers, and three as merchants or haberdashers. In addition, it is possible that the Peter Balliowe who was listed as a silkweaver in 1571 is the same person as either Peter Belewes the haberdasher or Peeter Belewes the merchant in the 1583 census. These records, scanty as they are, suggest an extended family specializing in the silk-weaving trade, resident in England over several generations, maintaining their ethnic identity through their churches (eight of the Bellows, including at least one who was born in England , are noted as belonging to foreign Protestant congregations).

The Bellows disappear from the lists of foreign residents after 1622, just as the Balieus disappeared from the records of the Threadneedle Street church after 1626. What happened to them? Most likely, assimilation, or emigration. Some Huguenots named Ballou certainly emigrated to America in the seventeenth century: a Pierre Ballou is listed among the Huguenot refugees who settled in New Jersey in 1683.[lx]

The Evidence of Family Tradition

Although Adin Ballou was convinced that his family was of Norman origin, he remained puzzled by the existence of the family tradition asserting the Ballous’ Huguenot origin.

How the old and wide-spread tradition originated among our American Ballous North and South, that their immigrant ancestors were French Huguenots, we know not, and can only conjecture. Possibly it may have started with some early statement of those ancestors, that they held essentially the cardinal principles of the Huguenots and sympathized with them.[lxi]

The existence of this “old and wide-spread” tradition is a strong piece of evidence in favor of the Huguenot theory. Some information uncovered during the preparation of the Genealogy emphasizes how old and how widespread the tradition is.

So far we have dealt only with the Ballous of New England, the descendants of Maturin Ballou. But Maturin was not the only Ballou to immigrate to America during the 1640s. The Genealogy mentions two others: Robert Ballou, who owned land in Portsmouth , Rhode Island in 1643; and William Ballou, a former officer in the British Army, who owned land in Boston and New Hampshire in 1644 and later settled in Virginia . The relationship between Maturin , Robert, and William Ballou has not been established, though, according to Adin Ballou, “there is some reason for conjecturing that [William] was an uncle of our ancestor Maturin .”[lxii] The Genealogy notes that “there are numerous families of Ballous scattered through Virginia , North Carolina , Tennessee , Kentucky , Missouri , and other Southern States, all originating in Virginia .” Their genealogy has not been extensively researched, and they may or may not be related to the William Ballou who moved from New England to Virginia in 1651.

In the 1870s, Ira Ballou Peck corresponded with some of these Southern Ballous, hoping to establish a connection between them and the Ballous of New England. In this effort he was unsuccessful. He did, however, find out that “these distant cousins ... have a tradition that [their ancestors] were persecuted French Protestants, and came directly from France . Also that they were all relatives of the New England Ballous.”[lxiii]

It is not credible that two distinct branches of a family, out of contact with each other for two hundred years, should hold the same incorrect belief about their family’s origin. If the Virginia Ballous are, as their tradition has it, related to the New England Ballous, then the rest of the tradition must also be true: the Ballous, North and South, are of Huguenot ancestry.

Conclusion

At the very least, this re-examination of the evidence shows that it is entirely plausible that the Ballou family is of Huguenot origin. It is certainly not the case, as implied in numerous secondary sources (though not in the Genealogy itself), that this theory has been utterly disproved and discredited. I believe that the evidence goes beyond this. Not only does the Huguenot theory seem to me plausible, I think it is much the more likely of the two.

The evidence of the surname, which seemed so conclusive at the time the Genealogy was compiled, now seems to point in the Huguenot direction. The direction taken by the nineteenth-century investigation appears to have been driven by the genealogists’ familiarity with the Belleau/Bellew family, and their relative ignorance of French names and families, rather than by any actual evidence pointing in that direction. They assumed that Ballou must be a variant spelling of Bellew. Now that we know that Ballou is an actual name – an actual French name, and an actual Huguenot name – why should we ignore the obvious possibility that our Ballou family bore this name?

The history of the Huguenot people, far from disproving the Huguenot theory as Adin Ballou believed, is completely consistent with the idea of a Huguenot origin. Whether (as seems most likely) the Ballous fled to England a generation or so before Maturin Ballou’s arrival in America, or whether Maturin Ballou came directly from France, as the tradition of the Virginia Ballous asserts, or from the continent of Europe, as per Whittemore’s biography of Hosea Ballou – the fact is that Huguenots would have had ample reason to leave France at any time in the century and a half preceding the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

The family tradition itself is the most unanswerable argument in favor of the Huguenot theory. The tradition of Huguenot ancestry in both the Northern and Southern branches of the family is compelling evidence. So is the repeated assertion – repeated even by those who support the Norman theory – that Maturin Ballou’s family was somehow “essentially French.” If the family were of Norman origin, it would be quintessentially English. “Essentially French” suggests recently arrived from France – within a generation or two – and retaining ties to a French ethnic community. It does not suggest an ancestor having arrived from France six hundred years previously. (By way of comparison, it has been little more than 350 years since Maturin Ballou arrived in America .) Those who make these claims do not seem to realize how long a time six hundred years is, or how many ancestors one has in that amount of time.

How, then, could a theory so deeply flawed become so universally accepted? This seems to have occurred in two stages: first, Adin Ballou accepted the theory and incorporated it into the Genealogy; then, it was repeated as a fact in the secondary literature.

In the case of Adin Ballou, we must remember that he did not have access to all the information available today. He may also have been predisposed to accept the Norman theory, despite the lack of real evidence, by a wholly natural and human desire to inflate the importance of his ancestors. We see this phenomenon at work in his repeated use of the term “co-proprietor” to describe Maturin Ballou’s status in Providence . I think we can see it again in his eagerness to believe that his ancestors were aristocrats and associates of William the Conqueror. As a modern guide to family history ruefully notes, “The majority of English people are unlikely to be able to trace a continuous line beyond the sixteenth century, yet how common it is to hear the unfounded boast that a person’s ancestors fought at the Battle of Hastings.”[lxiv]

After the publication of the Genealogy, the general acceptance of the Norman theory was almost inevitable. The case of the word “co-proprietor” provides an instructive parallel. In the case of Maturin Ballou’s status in the Providence colony, there is no real disagreement about the facts, and the information is readily available. Yet in the retelling of the story, a less accurate description has driven out a more accurate, just because it is confidently asserted in a source considered authoritative. How much more easily this could happen in the case of the family’s European origin, which is truly unknown.

Every writer of history must depend on the work of others, more expert in their own areas of specialization. Writers of biographies of Hosea Ballou, or compilers of biographical dictionaries, have little choice but to accept the assertions of the Genealogy. For them, the ancestry of Maturin Ballou is the sort of peripheral detail about which they must defer to the accepted authority. I first became interested in the origin of the Ballou family while doing research for a biographical study of Adin Ballou, so perhaps I too should have treated it as peripheral; as Thomas Whittemore said, it is not “essential for our purpose to know” where Maturin Ballou came from. And of course, I have not done original research either – I may have questioned Adin Ballou’s genealogical conclusions, but in order to do so I have relied upon the work of scholars in the fields of the study of surnames, the early history of Rhode Island, the Reformation in France and England, the peopling of British North America, and so on. If we could not do this, the writing of history would be not only impossible, but useless.

Yet no conclusions are meant to be forever unquestioned. Every once in a while, we must look at some “well-known fact” and wonder: how do we know this? by whose authority? what is it based on? And when we do, we will sometimes find ourselves in the position Adin Ballou described so memorably over a century ago:

We are in danger of having this favorite legend exploded. Critical investigation finds no proof of its truth. The evidence is against it. We shall have to abandon it, however reluctantly.

[i] Horatio Rogers, George Mouton Carpenter, and Edward Field, eds., Early Records of the Town of Providence ( Providence , 1893), 2:29 -30. The date of the document is “The 19th of the 11th Month 1645,” reckoning March as the first month and thus corresponding to 19 January 1646 .

[ii] Edward Field, ed., State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: A History ( Boston , 1902), 31-33; Irving Berdine Richman , Rhode Island : Its Making and its Meaning (New York, 1908), 91-96.

[iii] Richman , Rhode Island , 5, 242-43.

[iv] Early Records, 2:112.

[v] Adin Ballou, Elaborate History and Genealogy of the Ballous in America ( Providence , 1888), 1. Adin Ballou was fond of this phrase; he also used it on the first page of his autobiography. Autobiography of Adin Ballou, (Lowell, Mass., 1896), 1.

[vi] Ballou, Genealogy, 2.

[vii] Early Records, 15:73.

[viii] Early Records, 2:52 , 2:104, 3:16 , 3:74.

[ix] The text of the letter as it was read in the documentary may be found in the companion book to the series: Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns, The Civil War: an illustrated history (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1990), 82-83. The full text of the letter is in the entry on Sullivan Ballou in the Genealogy. Ballou, Genealogy, 1056-1059.

[x] Ballou, Genealogy, v.

[xi] Ballou, Autobiography, 3.

[xii] Adin Ballou, History of the Town of Milford , Worcester County , Massachusetts ( Boston , 1882), 553. Maturin Ballou could not have “formed a marriage connection” in England – at least not with Hannah Pike, who was born in 1632. Genealogical information about the Pike family is found in Hosea Starr Ballou, “Nath’ Patten of Dorchester, Massachusetts, Early Planter and Boston Merchant,” New England Historic Genealogical Register 87 (1933), 270-279.

[xiii] Ballou, Genealogy, v-vii.

[xiv] Allen Johnson, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928), 1:556.

[xv] Representative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island ( Chicago , 1908), 3:1781.

[xvi] Maturin M. Ballou, Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou ( Boston , 1852), 16.

[xvii] The entry for Hosea Ballou in the Dictionary of American Biography states that Maturin Ballou “came from England to Rhode Island in 1638.” I have not been able to trace the source of this date; it is not in any of the works listed in the bibliographical note for this entry. It may or may not reflect a piece of authentic family tradition in the Hosea Ballou line. Dict. Amer. Biog., 1:557-59. Another example, including an interesting early use of the term “proprietor,” comes from John Farmer’s Genealogical register of the first settlers of New-England (1829). Maturin Ballou is not included in the main body of the work, which deals primarily with settlers in Massachusetts , but he is listed in the appendix as “one of the proprietors of Providence as early as 1639.” The source for this is given only as “Coffin,” presumably Joshua Coffin of Newbury, whom Farmer cites in his preface as one of the contributors to the register. Genealogical Register, 336.

[xviii] Thomas Whittemore, Life of Rev. Hosea Ballou ( Boston , 1854), 1:14 -15.

[xix] Ernest Cassara, Hosea Ballou: The Challenge to Orthodoxy (Washington: University Press of America, 1961), 1.

[xx] Ballou, Genealogy, v.

[xxi] Ballou, Genealogy, vi.

[xxii] Ballou, Genealogy, vi.

[xxiii] Ballou, Genealogy, v, vii, 496.

[xxiv] Elsdon C. Smith, New Dictionary of American Family Names (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), xxi-xxiv.

[xxv] Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 28.

[xxvi] Hanks and Hodges, Dict. of Surnames, 28.

[xxvii] P.H. Reaney, The Origin of English Surnames (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 73.

[xxviii] Samuel L. Brown, Surnames are the Fossils of Speech (n.p., 1965), 13.

[xxix] Smith, New Dict. Amer. Family Names, 19.

[xxx] Hanks and Hodges, Dict. of Surnames, 44; Brown, Surnames, 21; The Norman People: and their existing descendants in the British dominions and the United States of America (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1975), 156.

[xxxi] Bellows as a variant of Bellew/Belleau: The Norman People, 156; Smith, New Dict. Amer. Family Names, 31. Bellows as a variant of Bellou: Smith, New Dict. Amer. Family Names, 31. Bellows as an occupational surname: Reaney, Dict. Brit. Surnames, 29. This source lists Belewe as an archaic form of Bellows.

[xxxii] The connection between Ballou and Bellew was made in the 1956 edition of the Dictionary of American Family Names, but not in the revised edition published in 1973. Ballou is identified with Bellou in both editions. In 1956 Ballou and Bellou were lumped into a single entry with Bellows and Bellew, all considered alternate forms of Belleau. The 1973 edition has a new entry for Bellou, described as a French name meaning “watercress” or “place where watercress grew,” and no longer identifies this name with Bellew/Belleau. Elsdon C. Smith, Dictionary of American Family Names (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 9, 15; Smith, New Dict. Amer. Family Names, 19, 31.

[xxxiii] Smith, New Dict. Amer. Family Names, , xxiii; The Norman People, 156-157.

[xxxiv] Early Records, 2:30, 2:52, 2:104, 3:16, 3:74, 15:73.

[xxxv] Early Records, 2:30. The actual document bearing Maturin Ballou’s signature is no longer extant, but the compilers of the Early Records were careful to transcribe the spelling and punctuation of the original documents.

[xxxvi] Ballou, Genealogy, 8.

[xxxvii] “The French surnames which these migrants [the Huguenots] brought with them were only lightly Anglicized if at all, and remain to this day distinctive types of British, American, and South African surnames.” Hanks and Hodges, Dict. of Surnames, xxix.

[xxxviii] It is not listed in the Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, which attempts to include all names in common use in England between the end of the 14th century and the recent decades of the 20th. E.G. Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), vii.

[xxxix] Joseph L. Weidenhan, Baptismal Names, (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1968), 152. On the history and lore of St. Mathurin, see Eugène Thoison, Saint Mathurin: Étude historique et iconographique ( Paris : Librairie Alph. Picard, 1889).

[xl] On Mathurin Cordier, see Florence Alden Gragg, “Two Schoolmasters of the Renaissance,” Classical Journal xiv no. 4 (Jan. 1919) 211-223; E. A. Berthault, Mathurin Cordier et l’enseignement chez les premiers Calvinistes ( Paris , 1876).

[xli] The Registers of the French Church , Threadneedle Street , London (London: Huguenot Society of London, 1896).

[xlii] Ballou, Genealogy, v, vii.

[xliii] Lewis W. Spitz, The Protestant Reformation 1517-1559 (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), 192-231; Thomas M. Lindsay, A History of the Reformation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 146-223.

[xliv] G.A. Rothrock, The Huguenots: A Biography of a Minority (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979); A.J. Grant, The Huguenots (Archon Books, 1969); Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), ch. 1.

[xlv] John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 331.

[xlvi] Spitz, The Protestant Reformation, 230-31. Alistair Duke, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London, The Hambeldon Press, 1990), 93-98.

[xlvii] Duke, Reformation and Revolt, 72; Lindsay, History of the Reformation, 193.

[xlviii] Duke, Reformation and Revolt, 181-194; Pieter Geyl, History of the Low Countries : Episodes and Problems (London, Macmillan & Co Ltd, 1964), 4-22.

[xlix] Irene Scouloudi, “The Stranger Community in the Metropolis 1558-1640” in Irene Scouloudi, ed., Huguenots in Britain and their French Background, 1550-1800 (Totowa, NH: Barnes and Noble Books, 1987), 45.

[l] Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 10-21; Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 29-33.

[li] Cottret, Huguenots in England , 273.

[lii] Cottret, Huguenots in England , 107.

[liii] Ballou, Genealogy, 3-4.

[liv] For a listing of the publications of the Huguenot Society during its first hundred years, see Charles F. A. Marmoy, General Index to the Proceedings and the Quarto Series of Publications of the Huguenot Society of London 1885-1985 ( London , 1986).

[lv] Irene Scouloudi, Returns of Strangers in the Metropolis, 1593, 1627, 1635, 1639: A Study of an Active Minority, Huguenot Society of London Quarto Series LVII ( London , 1985).

[lvi] For example, three children of the Tahourdin family were baptized in the French church in London during the 1680s. There was at least one older child born in France . The family disappeared from the church records after the baptism of the last child. Further research revealed that “the family had moved out of the French milieu and was marrying into English families in English churches... only one daughter in the first few generations married a Frenchman.” Jean Tsushima, “The Tahourdin Family: How to Use Old Sources to Put New Flesh on Dry Bones,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London XXIII (1982), 405-413.

[lvii] On immigrants to London : Irene Scouloudi, “Alien Immigration into and Alien Communities in London , 1558-1640,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London XVI (1937), 27-49. On immigrant communities in provincial English cities: Douglas L. Rickwood, “The Norwich Strangers 1565-1643: A Problem of Control,” Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London XXIV (1984), 119-128.

[lviii] Registers of the French Church , Threadneedle Street , London .

[lix] Census data is from Returns of Aliens in the City and Suburbs of London, 1523-1625 (London: Huguenot Society of London, 1900) and Lists of Foreign Protestants and Aliens Resident in England 1618-1688: From Returns in the State Paper Office (n.p., 1862).

[lx] Timothy Beard, “Complexities in New Jersey ,” in Huguenot Refugees in the Settling of Colonial America (New York: Huguenot Society of America, 1985), 188. The appendix to this book lists several other early Huguenot settlers with names similar to Ballou, including a Jean Belloe and a Pierre Billiou, whose name appears in various alternate spellings, including “Ballew.”

[lxi] Ballou, Genealogy, vii.

[lxii] Ballou, Genealogy, vii-viii, 1220-21.

[lxiii] Ballou, Genealogy, 1220-21.

[lxiv] David Hey, The Oxford Guide to Family History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 2.

The Origin of the Ballou Family in America