Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/197

 Rachel Tacquelet A son of Pierre and Marie was Samuel Crommelin, of Haarlem, who married Marie, daughter of Cipricn Testart, a Huguenot refugee, at Haarlem, and their daughter Anne was married to her first cousin, Louis Crommelin, whom we call the great Crommelin of Ireland. A son of Jean and Rachel was Louis Crommelin, senior (born 2d December 1625, died 10th November 1669), who married, in 1648, Marie, daughter of Pasteur Jean Mettayer, and sister of Pasteur Samuel Mettayer, ministers of Hancourt. And a daughter of Jean Crommelin and Rachel Tacquelet was Rachel Crommelin, wife of Pierre Tcstard. Her daughter, Marie Madelaine Testard, was married, in 1681, to Jean Benezet, and had seven children — Jean-Etienne, Jaques, Jean, Ciprien, Madelaine, Melchier, and Pierre. Jean Etienne (alias John Stephen) Benezet was the father of Antoine, alias Anthony.

John Stephen Benczet set out for Holland with his family (including the infant Anthony) in 1715; his plan was to get out of France secretly, and in defiance of the arbitrary laws against Protestant emigration. “To accomplish this purpose (says the American biographer) he secured the services of a young man, upon whose attachment he could rely, to accompany him beyond one of the military outposts which then skirted the frontier of France. Nothing occurred to interrupt their progress until they approached the sentinel; when their adventurous friend presenting himself before him, displaying in one hand an instrument of death, and tendering with the other a purse of money, said, Take your choice; this is a worthy family, flying front persecution; and they shall pass. The guard accepted the gold, and their escape was safely accomplished.”

Their first retreat was Rotterdam; but in the course of a few months they sailed for England and settled in London. In that city, John Stephen Benczet lived for sixteen years, and was a prosperous merchant. In the register of Les Grecs French Church we find, on 11th July 1716, “Jean Estienne Benezet” and his wife “Judith” bringing their daughter Marianne for baptism. Other children may have been born with ordinary rapidity. But perhaps on account of their changing their place of worship, the next registration, which I have found, is in the year 1724. In that year Daniel was baptized (named after Mr. Daniel Charmier), in 1725, Madellaine, and in 1727, Gertrude, these three being registered in Berwick Street French Church.

Antoine Benezet received a good commercial education in London. At the age of fourteen “he was united in membership with the religious Society of Friends, called Quakers.” Having too scrupulous a conscience for trading speculations, he wished to be a mechanic, but could not persevere in his resolution from a want of muscular vigour; and he had not fixed upon any business or occupation in his eighteenth year, when he emigrated with his parents to America and made Philadelphia his home; this was in 1731. In 1736 he married Miss Joyce Marriott, a young woman of congenial principles and disposition.

At length, in his twenty-sixth year, desiring to engage in a profession which would itself be eminently useful to mankind, and also afford leisure for varied benevolence, he, from a sense of duty, became a schoolmaster. His first school was at Gcrmantown. But he returned to Philadelphia in 1742, having been elected to fill a vacancy in the English department of the Public School founded by a charter from William Perm. He quite revolutionised the system of teaching, which had been previously conducted with combined dulness and harshness. In 1755 he opened a female school, and was “entrusted with the education of the daughters of the most affluent and respectable inhabitants of the city.” One of these pupils was deaf and dumb; and without any of the advantages of the experience and theories of the nineteenth century, he educated her successfully; “she acquired, during two years under his tuition, such instruction as enabled her to enjoy an intercourse with society which had been previously denied to her.”

It was a great advantage to him as a teacher that, being a member of a refugee family, and yet by education an Englishman, he had a complete practical command of both the English and French languages.

It was in 1750 that his sympathy for the negro slaves brought him into notice as a public man. He opened an evening school for black people in Philadelphia. His professional experience and habits of observation entitled him to be heard in reply to the fashionable assertion that the blacks are, in their mental capacities, inferior to human beings born with a white skin. He testified deliberately, “I can with truth and sincerity declare that I have found amongst the negroes as great variety of talents as among a like number of whites.” In his unpaid services he exhibited the same patience and good humour as in his regular classes.

It was chiefly as an author that Benczet promulgated anti-slavery sentiments and statistics. His works were usually reprinted in England under the editorship of Mr.