Elias Neau

Elias Neau (1662 – 7 September 1722), born Élie Neau, in Moëze, Saintonge, was a French Huguenot. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, he fled first to the French colony of Saint-Domingue, then to Boston, where he became a prosperous merchant. In 1692, he was captured by a French privateer near Jamaica, and for being a fugitive Protestant, was first sentenced to a life sentence as a galley slave, imprisoned in a castle dungeon in Marseille for two years, and then transferred to the Château d'If off the coast of Marseille for 50 days. He was released in 1697, following the intercession of King William III, whose ministers argued that Neau was an English subject.

Elias Neau, Elie Naud
Élie Neau in a Marseille prison, as illustrated in the 1749 edition of a book about his Protestant steadfastness.
Born	Élie Neau 1662 Moëze, Saintonge, France
Died	7 September 1722 (1722-09-08) (aged 59)
Nationality	French
Occupation(s)	merchant, missionary

Once back in North America, Neau's story made him "probably the most famous refugee in British America at the time" because his refusal to gain his freedom by converting to Catholicism attracted "a wide Protestant readership in both French and English."

In 1704, Neau cut his ties with the French Protestant church in New York and converted to Anglicanism. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel then appointed him as minister to black slaves in North America, and he established the first school open to African-Americans in New York City. In 1706, he secured passage of a bill in New York allowing slaves to be catechized.

References

Sources

• Agnew, David Carnegie Andrew (1886). "Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 6 - Section I". Protestant exiles from France, chiefly in the reign of Louis XIV; or, The Huguenot refugees and their descendants in Great Britain and Ireland (3 ed.). pp. 178–182. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
• Arber, Edward (1907). The torments of Protestant slaves in the French king's galleys, and in the dungeons of Marseilles, 1686-1707 A. D. London: Priv. print. pp. 259–270.
• Briggs, Charles, A. (1891). "Elias Neau, the confessor and catechist of negro and indian slaves". Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of America. 3: 103–116. Retrieved 27 June 2020.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Morin, J. (1749). A Short Account of the Life and Sufferings of Elias Neau: Upon the Gallies, and in the Dungeons of Marseilles; for the Constant Profession of the Protestant Religion. Newly Translated from the French, by John Christian Jacobi, Gent. This Treatise was Printed at the End of The New Book of Martyrs, Lately Published by the Recommendation of the Rev. Mr. Bateman, ... London: John Lewis. pp. 1–86. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
• Norton, John N. (1859). Life of Bishop Provoost, of New York. New York: General Protestant Episcopal S. School Union, and Church Book Society. pp. 120–127. Retrieved 27 June 2020.
• Leone, Mark P.; Potter, Parker B. (1999). Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publisher. p. 89. ISBN 030646067X.
• Southern, Eileen (1997). Music of Black Americans. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. ISBN 0-393-03843-2.
• Wheeler Carlo, Paula (1999). "Neau, Elias". American National Biography (online ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.0802386. (subscription required)
• Wheeler Carlo, Paula (2005). Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York: Becoming American in the Hudson Valley. Portland, Oregon: Sussex Academic Press. p. 61. ISBN 9781845190590.

Further reading

• Whelan, Ruth (2011). "The extraordinary voyage of Elie Neau (1662-1722) naturalized Englishman and French protestant galley slave". Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland. 29 (4): 499–527.
• Van H. Sauter, Suzanne (14 April 2012). "Elias Neau (c.1622-1722). Also known as Elie Naud: Huguenot, refugee, Ship Captain, Prisoner, Poet, Merchant, Catechist, Teacher". Presentation to the Huguenot Society of North Carolina.