Book Review

Lands of True and Certain Bounty: The Geographic Theories and Colonization Strategies of lean Pierre Purry

by Arlin C. Migliazzo with Translations by Pierrette C. Christianne-Lovrien and BioDun J. Ogundayo

Lands of True and Certain Bounty: The Geographic Theories and Colonization Strategies of lean Pierre Purry . Edited and annotated with introductions to the texts by Arlin C. Migliazzo. Translations from the French by PierretteC.Christianne-Lovrien and 'BioDunj.Ogundayo. ( Selinsgrove , Pa. : Susquehanna University Press, 2002. Pp. 201; $39.50, cloth.)

This book introduces students of South Carolina history to the life and mind of one of colonial Carolina 's most adventuresome and intriguing characters. Jean Pierre Purry (1675-1736) was a Swiss entrepreneur, adventurer, and sometime "philosopher" As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, he sailed to the Dutch East Indies ( Indonesia ) in 1713 and the following year ventured to the Wild West coast of Australia . These travels convinced Purry that the ideal location for human habitation and agronomy on the globe was at or near 33 degrees north or south latitude. It was this curiously rationalist eighteenth-century conviction that brought Jean Pierre Purry and several hundred Swiss immigrants to the banks of the Savannah River in modern Jasper County , South Carolina , in 1734.

This thoroughly researched and heavily annotated volume presents the geographic theories of Jean Pierre Purry as published in memorials to the directors of the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam in 1718 and to the Duke of Newcastle in London in 1724. Purry hoped that these documents would convince one of these groups to finance his colonial schemes. The Dutch rebuffed Purry's first attempt, but the British government, anxious to protect its rich colony of South Carolina from encircling enemies in Spanish Florida and French Louisiana, agreed to donate land, money, and transportation for 600 Swiss immigrants to settle along the Savannah River . Many of the French and German surnames that populate the south-east corner of South Carolina today descend from the Swiss settlers of Perrysburg. This book is important to anyone interested in the colonial origins of Beaufort, Jasper, or Hampton Counties .

Arlin Migliazzo's lengthy introduction is probably the closest we shall get to a biography of the elusive Jean Pierre Purry for several years. The very complete footnotes and bibliography should be consulted by any students or scholars interested in this unique chapter of South Carolina 's frontier history.

The colonial town of Purrysburg has long since disappeared, and Purry left no descendants in America . His eldest son, Charles Purry, was murdered in Beaufort in 1754. His other son, David Purry (1709-1786), became a wealthy and generous merchant in Lisbon , Portugal . A statue in the square of the Purrys' hometown of Neuchatel , Switzerland , honors him. Only the lonely granite cross of the Huguenot Society marks the spot of Purrysburg , South Carolina , today.

Lawerence S. Rowland
University Of South Carolina at Beaufort
The South Carolina Historical Magazine, April 2004 Volume 105, No. 2, p. 139