Jean Chadeayne
Jean Chadeayne was a Huguenot, a French Protestant, from Hiers in Saintonge, on the Atlantic coast of France. Hiers stood on a marshy delta beside the seaport town of Marennes and near the walled port of Brouage. He was a maître de barque, the master of a bark, a small sailing vessel of the coast. His name is also written Chadaine, Chadene, Chadyne and Cheadeayne.
In the early 1680s the Protestants of these marsh villages were under heavy persecution. The curate of nearby Soubise boasted that he waged perpetual war on the Huguenots, who dared not say one word. "They are taken like pheasants by the beak," he said, "and at the slightest sound, off we pack them to the prisons at Rochefort."
In 1682 Jean fled. The French crown kept lists of the Protestants who escaped, and his entry reads: "Jean Chadaine, Me de barque, sa femme, sa belle-mère, quatre enfants et une nièce, fugitifs de Hiers près Brouage en 1682. Lieu de retraite, Corp." In English: Jean Chadaine, master of a bark, his wife, his mother-in-law, four children and a niece, fugitives from Hiers near Brouage in 1682; place of refuge, Cork. Cork is a port in the south of Ireland. His mate, Pierre Arondeau, went to Cork with him, taking his own wife and a daughter. They left three years before Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and outlawed Protestant worship in France altogether.
Other seafaring families of Hiers went in the same years. Pierre Rusland, a sailmaker, escaped with his wife, three boys and two girls in 1682 and went to London. Jacques Rembert, a salter, took his wife and four children to Cork that year. Elie Rembert, a seaman, left for London in 1683. Pierre Rusland and both Remberts ended in New York or New Rochelle.
After some years in Cork, Jean crossed to America. By 1686 he was one of the French planters at Frenchtown, a Huguenot settlement in the Narragansett country of Rhode Island. From 1686 to 1691 he signed the acts of the French church there as "Jean Chadeayne." The Narragansett settlement broke up in the early 1690s, and its families scattered to New York and New Rochelle.
By 1693 he was in New York. On 16 July 1693, before evening prayer, the minister Peyret blessed the marriage of his daughter Marie to Josué Mercereau, a refugee from Moeze, at the French Church of New York. The entry calls her "Marie Chadaine de yers en St onge," Marie Chadaine of Hiers in Saintonge. Jean Chadeayne and Henri Chadeayne signed as witnesses. So did Marie Bouchris, Jean La Tourette, Elie Boudinot, J. Barberie, Elie Vanbert and Pierre Masse. On the same day the same minister married Jean La Tourette to Josué's sister, Marie Mercereau.
On 19 May 1695 Jean Chadene and Elizabeth Mercereau presented his granddaughter Marie, daughter of Josué and Marie, for baptism at the French Church as her godparents.
He settled on Staten Island and worked as a ship carpenter. On 27 March 1708 he made his will as "John Chadyne, Sr., of the County of Richmond, ship carpenter." Richmond County is Staten Island. He left his wife Mary all his estate, "with full power to sell, during her widowhood." After her death it was to go to his children John, Henry, Martha and Elizabeth, "except that John is to have £5 more than the rest." He left "my daughter Mary, wife of Joshua Mesereau, £20." He signed it in the French form, "Jean Cheadeayne." Johanes van Eyselam, Barent Schlect and Abraham Cole witnessed it. It was proved on 27 October 1708, so he died between those two dates. His children settled on Staten Island and in New Rochelle.
His wife in 1708 was Mary. Whether she was the wife who fled with him in 1682, and the mother of his children, is not known. A Marie Boucherie stood beside the family at Narragansett in 1688, at the wedding of 1693 and at a grandson's baptism in 1696, and she may have been that wife.
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Cite: Heirology, "Jean Chadeayne (d. 1708)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jean-chadeayne-1708-a3733c.