Benjamin de Joux(d. 31 March 1703), Huguenot minister, was born in France, possibly in the province of Dauphiné during the early or mid-1630s. His father was most likely Philibert de Joux, a minister of the French Calvinist Protestant Church; the name of his mother is not known. De Joux served briefly with his father as co-pastor at Chaumont and then became the minister of a congregation at Fenestrelles, both in Dauphiné. On 2 October 1659 de Joux attended the Mission de Pragelas held at Fenestrelles and engaged in a heated religious debate with a Jesuit, Marc Anthoine Calemard. The following year a Geneva printer published his defense of his position. In 1674, while de Joux was ministering at Die, in Dauphiné, as rector of the School of Theology at the Protestant Academy, two Jesuit priests accused him of advocating that Catholic monks, as good-for-nothing parasites, be driven from France, and they took him to court. De Joux left Die in 1678, served at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux in Dauphiné for about a year beginning in 1680, and by 1682 had transferred to a church in Lyon.

Following the revocation in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which removed legal protections on Protestants in France and expelled all Huguenot ministers, de Joux traveled to Geneva and then to Zürich before going into exile in England, one of approximately 50,000 refugees who settled in that kingdom. With him in the summer of 1688, when he received denization and became a subject of the English Crown, were his wife Magdalen (maiden name unknown), one daughter, and one son; he also had at least two other sons. De Joux joined the Church of England and in 1687 became a founding minister of the London parish of Saint Jean Spitalfields, which served the French refugees. He was probably not fully ordained until 1700, not long before embarking for Virginia with 168 other Huguenots who sailed aboard the Peter and Anthony. De Joux then held an appointment from the bishop of London as minister to the new Huguenot settlement in Virginia. References to him in Virginia do not mention his family. Perhaps his wife had died before he left England, or perhaps she did not accompany him.

De Joux's party had reached Jamestown by 20 September 1700 and joined more than 200 other Huguenot immigrants who had arrived in July under the leadership of Olivier, marquis de la Muce, and Charles Perrault de Sailly. They resided above the fall line of the James River at Manakin Town (briefly known as King Williams Town), an abandoned Monacan site that later became part of Chesterfield County. Conflict arose almost immediately about governance and the shortage and distribution of supplies, and de Joux's party formed a separate town about four miles east of Manakin Town. Thirty-five French settlers complained to the governor that de Sailly had withheld land and supplies from the newcomers because they had not sworn fidelity to justices of the peace he had appointed. They sought permission to select their own justices from a list de Joux prepared and requested that de Joux negotiate with colonial authorities for more food and land. In December 1700 the governor called on Virginians to donate food and money to the struggling Huguenots, and that same month the General Assembly established King William Parish at Manakin.

By May 1701 the Manakin Town settlers had generally accepted de Joux's spiritual, and, to large degree, temporal, leadership, and his oversight of the settlement during the next two years proved effective. In 1702 the Manakin colony was described as prosperous and productive. De Joux built the first church, where he took up temporary abode in 1702 after his own dwelling burned. That summer the bishop of London's personal representative in Virginia informed the governor's Council that de Joux "doth possitively afirm that he constantly every Lords day reads the Service of the Church of England and administers the Sacramts as by the Liturgy is directed." Benjamin de Joux died at his residence on 31 March 1703 and was buried probably nearby. Two copies of the inventory of his possessions mentioned his substantial library—fifty-four books by one count, forty-nine by the other—but did not record the titles.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Eugène Haag and Émile Haag, La France Protestante: ou Vies des Protestants Français (1846–1859), 6:95–97, Alberto Clot, "Benjamin de Joux—A Waldensian Pastor in Virginia, 1700–1703," Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 8 (1916): 94–96, and David E. Lambert, "Beyond World's End: The Protestant International and the Huguenot Migration to Virginia" (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2008), esp. 184–196; age fifty-eight on 16 Nov. 1695 in petition of French ministers to William III, printed in Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London 1 (1885–1886): 164; de Joux, Le succès de la mission de Pragela, ou, Veritable recit de la conference tenuë à Fenestrelles, le deuxiesme octobre 1659. entre le sieur Benjamin de Ioux, ministre du S. Euangile, en l'Eglise dudit lieu, & le sieur Marc Anthoine Calemard Iesuite Missionaire, en presence de monsieur le President de Beau-Chesne (1660); authorization from bishop of London, June 1700, recorded in Corporation of London Records, MS 352, nos. 37, 38, 43, British Library; original Virginia records and contemporary copies in Rawlinson MSS A 271 and C 933, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, England, some printed in Robert A. Brock, ed., Documents, Chiefly Unpublished, Relating to the Huguenot Emigration to Virginia and to the Settlement at Manakin-Town (1886), and in Henry R. McIlwaine, Wilmer L. Hall, and Benjamin J. Hillman, eds., Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia (1925–1966), vol. 2 (quotation on 2:269); William A. Shaw, ed., Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700, Publications of the Huguenot Society of London 18 (1911): 211; Susan Minet, ed., Register of the Church of Saint Jean Spitalfields, 1687–1827, Publications of the Huguenot Society of London 39 (1938): xi, xxvii; James L. Bugg Jr., "The French Huguenot Frontier Settlement of Manakin Town," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 61 (1953): 359–394;Henrico Co. Deeds, Wills, Etc. (1697–1704), 362–363 (with death date), 420.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Raymond Pierre Hylton.

How to cite this page:
Raymond Pierre Hylton, "Benjamin de Joux (d. 31 March 1703)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2019 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=de_Joux_Benjamin, accessed [today's date]).

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