Amongst the very first settlers in Guernsey County, Ohio, in the heart of Appalachia in the United States, were the two groups of Guernsey people who arrived there in 1806 and 1807, from whom the district takes its name. They were soon followed by other enterprising island families, and this is the story of one of them.
Ralph Durand (1876-45) came from an important Guernsey Huguenot family and was the Librarian at the Priaulx before and during the Second War. He was an explorer and author whose family history, described here, is full of interest, and includes refugees, soldiers, ministers, a provost of Eton, an actor-manager, and politicians.
Insight into the 17th-century parent's mind, from Pierre Le Roy's MSS notebook. Published in 1893, it was edited by the Reverend George Lee, who gives the original French and a translation. Pierre was the schoolmaster of St Martin's parish.
From the De Lisle family file in the Library (No. 9). 'Articles of agreement made in the Island of Guernsey, on the Sixth day of October, In the year of our Lord 1832, by and between Hirzel Frederick de Lisle Esquire, son of the late Hirzel De Lisle Esquire, of the said Island, of the one part, Mary Carey, Spinster, daughter of John Carey Esquire, son of John, of the said Island, of the second part, and the said John Carey Esquire, of the third part. Bear witness.' The illustration is of Hirzel de Lisle's house, Hirzelbourne, now Swissville. The woodcut is by Dr Thomas Bellamy and was published in 1843 in his Pictorial Directory and Stranger's Guide to Guernsey.
From The Guernsey Free Churchman, January 1925 p. 7. The life of the Methodist preacher, by George Rabey.
From The Guernsey Free Churchman, February, 1924, and written by the Editor, the Reverend George Rabey. The Sarchet family emigrates to Ohio in 1806.
From the Magasin Methodiste, LIV, 1880, pp. 28-9.
By H D Olivier, from The Guernsey Free Churchman, March 1932, p. 23. 'Not honesty in the abstract but Honest is my name. And I want the kind of person I am to match what I am called.' The portrait is of a sympathizer, Etienne Gibert, Rector of St Andrew, the frontispiece of his biography, published in Toulouse in 1889, by Daniel Benoît, Les Frères Gibert, du désert et du refuge. This book includes the life of his brother Louis, also a Protestant minister, who emigrated to South Carolina.
Once one of the very favourite places to visit on a Sunday and eat pancakes, and subject of a poem in Guernsey French by George Métivier. The illustration, entitled 'Stacks of seaweed at Alexander's Hotel' is from R. Ellis' Rambles among the Channel Islands, by a Naturalist, 1854.
C. Hettier, Les Relations de la Normandie et de la Bretagne avec les Iles de la Manche pendant l'émigration, 1885.
