“M” is for Manigault, Judith Giton (ca. 1665-1711)

“M” is for Manigault, Judith Giton (ca. 1665-1711). Immigrant, matriarch. Manigault was born Judith Giton in La Voulte, Languedoc, France, a stronghold of southern French Protestantism. In 1685 with the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, many Huguenots (including Judith, her two brothers, and mother) were forced to flee France through Holland to England. From London they boarded a ship for the colony of Carolina. Her mother died enroute and she and her brother forced into several years of indentured servitude. Most of what we know comes from a letter Manigault wrote in 1688 to her brother in Europe and details the harshness of life in early South Carolina. In 1698 she married fellow Huguenot Pierre Manigault. Judith Giton Manigault died in 1711, leaving behind a son, Gabriel, and a daughter, Judith.