The man who contributed so much to American Presbyterianism from his exiled home by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, the French Huguenot pastor John Calvin, was born on July 10, 1509. He was the man who first sent Protestant missionaries to the New World (France Antarctique, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1557), and it was his compatriot French Huguenots who settled the first Protestant colonies in America in Parris Island, South Carolina (1562) and Fort Caroline, Florida (1564) - all of three of which colonies were planted by the French Calvinist Admiral Gaspard Coligny. From these early settlements to the Pilgrims' Plimoth Plantation to Jamestown, Virginia, to the War of 1776, the man who influence did so much to establish the American colonies and republic was John Calvin.
We give tribute to the man and his legacy with a list of resources on our site about this hero of the faith.
- Thomas Cary Johnson, John Calvin and the Genevan Reformation (1900);
- Thomas Smyth, Calvin and His Enemies: A Memoir of the Life, Character, and Principles of Calvin (1856);
- William Maxwell Blackburn, Young Calvin in Paris, and the Little Flock that He Fed (1865) and The College Days of Calvin (1865);
- Louis Fitzgerald Benson, John Calvin and the Psalmody of the Reformed Churches (1909);
- Charles Washington Baird, Huguenot Emigration to America, Vols. 1 & 2 (1885);
- Henry Martyn Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France, Vols. 1 & 2 (1879);
- William Henry Foote, The Huguenots, or, Reformed French Church (1870); and
- William Carlos Martyn, A History of the Huguenots (1866).
Take a look at these resources as we remember the birthday of a man raised up by God who did so much to further the kingdom of God in Europe, America and around the world.