The Huguenot Church welcomes you here, the only remaining Huguenot congregation in the United States that holds regular services. The congregation was founded in 1687 by French Protestant refugees — Huguenots — who had fled France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. That royal decree ended decades of protected Protestant worship in Catholic France, triggering a mass exodus of nearly 300,000 Huguenots who scattered across Europe, South Africa, and the Americas.
Many of the most skilled craftsmen, merchants, and professionals among them came to Carolina, where the Lords Proprietors actively recruited them with land grants and religious freedom. Huguenot names became deeply embedded in South Carolina history: Manigault, Laurens, Prioleau, Gaillard, Ravenel. The Manigaults became among the wealthiest families in colonial America, their fortune built largely on the enslavement of others.
The current church building, a Gothic Revival structure completed in 1845, replaced earlier buildings on the same site. Services are held in English today, though the congregation once worshipped in French, gradually transitioning over generations as the community assimilated. The church is a monument to the waves of religious refugees who found shelter in Charleston — and to the complicated legacies of the wealth they built here.