Elias Neau (1662 - 1722)

Born 1662 in Moëze, Saintonge, France

Died 7 Sep 1722 at about age 60 in Manhattan, New York County, New York Colony

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Biography

Elias Neau was a Huguenot emigrant (1540-1790).

Elias Neau is Notable.

Elias Neau was born in 1662 in the French province of Saintonge. He was a French Huguenot (French Protestant Christian) and fled France to escape religious persecution under France's Roman Catholic King Louis XIV.

He left France about 1679 at the age of twelve as a deckhand to Saint Dominique (now Haiti), and spent a few years in the Caribbean islands. As the french persecution of Protestantism seeped into that region, Elias went to Boston, Massachusetts. There he sent denization papers ^[1] to London, required to captain a ship and own property under British laws.

In his autobiography (published 1699 and 1749)^[2], Neau reveals few details about his French family. It is known that sisters Susan and Rachel immigrated to Boston, married and had children. His brother James died unmarried and without children in New York in 1712, naming Elias sole beneficiary and executor ^[3]. Boston is also where he married his wife Susanna Pare in 1688^[4].

He became a prosperous sea captain and merchant but in 1692 was captured at sea by the French and sentenced to a life of slavery and imprisonment as a fugitive Protestant. Elias spent nearly six years in deplorable conditions^[5], surviving by his unwavering and strengthening faith.

Finally gaining his freedom through his British denization, Neau returned to America and settled in Manhattan. In 1704 he left the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church for an Anglican (Episcopalian) one. A member of Trinity Church in Manhattan, he was an important social reformer who helped slaves, Native American and newly freed people receive basic civil rights such as being baptized and having church weddings and funerals (which contradicted the belief that such people possessed no souls)^[6]. He became the first teacher of people of color in New York (perhaps in all of the colonial states). Neau's school for slaves met in the belfry of Trinity Church and later in the third floor of his house. In 1706, Neau and his supporters succeeded in getting a law passed to assure those New Yorkers who enslaved Neau’s students that baptism and catechizing would not interfere with property rights. Neau’s classes were still blamed for what is called in many historical accounts the New York Slave Revolt of 1712. Neau and his wife had to hide in their home to avoid persecution. In 1713 a new law forbade enslaved persons from gathering in large numbers or walking outdoors at night without a lantern or candle, which made it more difficult to attend Neau’s school.

He passed away in 1722 in Manhattan, New York, New York. ^[7].

Research Notes

Neau, Elias (1662-Sept. 7, 1722). A successful “missionary vestryman” in colonial New York. He was born in France to Huguenot parents. He fled the country in 1679 and became an English citizen. He then came to the colony of New York. In 1692 his ship was seized by the French. He was made a slave and placed in a chain gang. When he was freed in 1698, he raised money in Europe for the Huguenots before returning to New York. While still a Presbyterian, he was licensed by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) on Aug. 4, 1704, as a catechist and became a missionary to the slaves in New York. In Oct. 1704 he resigned as an elder with the Huguenots and joined Trinity Church, New York City. From 1705 until 1714 he was a member of the vestry of Trinity Church. The chief factor in his becoming an Episcopalian was his regard for the Prayer Book. Neau's school for slaves met in the belfry of Trinity Church and later on the third floor of his house. After ten years he had 154 slave pupils, 44 of whom he presented for baptism. Neau died in New York City.^[8]

• Three daughters, need sources

Sources

1. ↑ Records of those who became a British subject by Letters of Denization which were granted by the Crown by Royal Charter or Letters Patent. Denization was essentially a scaled down version of naturalisation Denizens became a British subject without acquiring full citizenship rights, such as the right to vote or stand for election and inherit property. However, denizens were entitled to purchase land and property.
2. ↑ Elie Neau. An Account of the Sufferings of the French Protestant, slaves on board of the French king galleys. London, 1699. (available on Google Books) Histoire des souffrances du sieur Elie Neau, sur les galères, et dans les cachots de Marseille, Édition et présentation de Didier Poton et Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, Paris, Rivages des Xantons, Les Indes savantes, 2014 Translated into English as: Jean Morin, 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, 1749. (available on Google Books)
3. ↑ "New York Probate Records, 1629-1971," images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L99P-BHS6?cc=1920234&wc=Q75M-VZ9%3A213306101%2C226270401 : 28 May 2014), New York > Wills 1710-1716 vol 8 > image 345 of 545; county courthouses, New York.
4. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11062274/susanna-neau: accessed 30 June 2023), memorial page for Susanna Neau (1660–25 Sep 1720), Find a Grave Memorial ID 11062274, citing Trinity Churchyard, Manhattan, New York County, New York, USA; Maintained by Nikita Barlow (contributor 46508077).
5. ↑ https://stesprit.org/a-biography-of-elie-neau/ The galleys were floating royal prisons which rarely left the port and into which political and common law prisoners were crammed. Five of them per chiourme, the benches where they were chained. Their heads were shaved; they were malnourished, scantily clad, devoured by fleas and vermin. They suffered under the beatings and the continual violence of the guards. The Protestants who represented a relatively small number of these unfortunates were particularly harassed by the Catholic priests and friars. But aboard his galley, Neau encouraged his co-religionists to resist and even helped to convert a Catholic prisoner, earning him a beating and then a transfer, on May 3, 1694, to the dungeons of the Citadel of Marseilles, the Fort Saint-Nicolas. In his prison where he slept directly on the stones, without straw, the order was given that no one speak to him and he was forbidden to send letters. In this most total isolation, in his sufferings, he prayed and praised God while singing the psalms. And God visited and consoled him.
6. ↑ https://trinitywallstreet.org/stories-news/points-interest-elias-neau-and-trinitys-outreach-native-americans-and-enslaved
7. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11062527/elias-neau: accessed 29 June 2023), memorial page for Elias Neau (1662–3 Sep 1722), Find a Grave Memorial ID 11062527, citing Trinity Churchyard, Manhattan, New York County, New York, USA; Maintained by Nikita Barlow (contributor 46508077).
8. ↑ https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/neau-elias/

See also:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Neau

• MABEE, CARLETON. “SCHOOLS FOR SLAVES.” In Black Education in New York State: From Colonial to Modern Times, 1–16. Syracuse University Press, 1979.

• https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv9b2x9d.4.
• Van H. Sauter, Suzanne. Elias Neau (c. 1662-1722): Also known as Elie Naud: Huguenot, Refugee, Ship Captain, Prisoner, Poet, Merchant, Catechist, Teacher. Presentation to the Huguenot Society of North Carolina, 4/14/2012.

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv9b2x9d.4?seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents

• https://www.oxfordreference.com/search?q=Elias+neau&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: A Transatlantic Community of Letters, 1701-1720

• "Elias Neau to John Hodges (Treasurer),” USPG Online Exhibition , accessed July 1, 2023, http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/uspg
• “Elias Neau to John Chamberlayne (Secretary),” USPG Online Exhibition , accessed July 1, 2023, http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/exhibition/uspg/

• Katherine Gerbner, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World (Philadelphia, 2018).

• Travis Glasson, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford, 2012).