08/09/2026
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Frances LβEscott Villepontoux (1705β1747) was a member of one of colonial South Carolinaβs prominent French Huguenot families. She was the daughter of Reverend Paul LβEscott, pastor of the French Protestant Church in Charles Town, and grew up within the close-knit Huguenot community established by French Protestants who had fled religious persecution following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
A rare glimpse of Francesβ childhood appears in a July 5, 1710, letter written by Commissary Gideon Johnston. Johnston reported that a legacy of Β£30 had been left to Frances, then a young girl, with the provision that the money would revert to her mother should Frances die. The letter also reveals something of her family's circumstances: her father, Reverend LβEscott, did not understand English, and Johnston noted that correspondence with him would need to be conducted in Latin or French. This small episode provides an unusually personal record of Frances as a child in early eighteenth-century Charles Town.
In 1723, Frances married Peter Villepontoux, a wealthy French Huguenot planter and entrepreneur. Peter owned extensive property, including a plantation on James Island, town property in Charles Town, a lot at Trottβs Point, and a plantation in Christ Church Parish. He was also an agricultural innovator. In 1733, he received a patent for a rice-threshing machine reportedly capable of processing approximately 2,000 pounds of rice per day using four horses.
Frances and Peter had seven children, although Peter's will names only one daughter and four sons, suggesting that two children may have died young. Frances was more than a planter's wife; surviving records indicate that she participated in managing the family's considerable property, including signing deeds in 1741. The family also suffered losses in the devastating Charlestown fire of 1740.
Frances died in 1747, shortly before her husband, who died on April 25, 1748. Peter's estate, valued at approximately Β£3,925, contained extensive lands, agricultural equipment, household furnishings, and enslaved people, illustrating the considerable wealth accumulated by the Villepontoux family through plantation agriculture.
Frances is particularly significant to South Carolina history because her life bridges three important aspects of the colony's early history: the establishment of the French Huguenot community, the development of South Carolina's rice economy, and the emergence of a wealthy colonial planter class. Her surviving childhood story and property records also provide a rare glimpse into the life of a Huguenot woman in early eighteenth-century South Carolina.
One particularly fascinating detail: Frances would have been only about five years old when Johnston wrote about her Β£30 legacy in 1710, and approximately eleven years old when Henrietta Dering Johnston painted her portrait in 1716. That makes the portrait especially remarkableβit preserves the likeness of a young Huguenot girl growing up in colonial Charles Town at a formative moment in South Carolina's history.
Image:
Frances LβEscott (1705-1747)
Henrietta Johnston (1674-1729)
Charleston, South Carolina
1716
Pastel on paper
Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (964)
Henrietta Johnston (1674-1729) is the earliest known female professional artist who worked in the American South. Her pastel portrait of Frances LβEscott reflects her considerable skill. But for Johnston, this painting was more than an expression of her talent: it was a means to ensure the survival of her family.
The portrait is now on loan to the DAR Museum from the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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