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Every schoolchild in the United States knows--or should know--that the first European settlers of what is now Manhattan were employees of the Dutch West India Company. Less well known is the fact that most of the settlers arriving on the first two ships, Eendracht and Nieu Nederlandt, in the spring of 1624, were not Dutch at all. Most were Huguenots, French-born Protestants who had fled persecution at the hands of their government, which recognized but une foi, un loi, un roi (one faith, one law, one king).
The murder of some 100,000 Protestants during the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in 1572, was merely the most notorious of the sectarian pogroms that bloodied France in the latter half of the 16th century. Heresy was considered treason in Roman-Catholic France, punishable by death. One understands why the Huguenots fled their native land, en masse.
Many of the refugees were highly skilled artisans--silversmiths, jewelers, printers, glass makers, weavers and the like--who emigrated with the jealously guarded secrets of their respective guilds. Thus the diaspora enriched such Protestant-friendly nations as Switzerland, Germany, Britain and that part of the Netherlands not controlled by Spain. If many of the refugees resettled and prospered in the Old World, others--such as the families arriving in Manhattan in spring 1624--sought an even greater measure of freedom and opportunity in the wilderness of an alien continent. By the mid-18th century, some 5,000 to 7,000 Huguenots had made their way to America, concentrating their settlements in New England, South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. Today, their descendants are legion.
Huguenots emigrated, also, with the virtues of their race and other non-materials assets, including the legacy of religious pluralism that existed all-too-briefly in France after the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes in 1598. A dead letter long before its 1685 revocation, the Edict nevertheless remains a charter document in the history of civil and religious liberties. Indeed, the number of Founding Fathers of Huguenot descent, who include George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and Elias Boudinot, has fueled speculation about a causal link between the provisions of the Edict of Nantes and those of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. These notions need be subjected to the rigors of contemporary scholarship.
The ability to rapidly assimilate the prevailing politico-cultural milieu is counted as a distinguishing quality of all Huguenots. Their effortless absorption in America, however, has left something of a void in the U.S. chapter of their history. A gloriously distinct Huguenot strand in the national tapestry still exists, however, in New Paltz, New York, where in 1677 a Royal patent granted 12 Huguenot families 40,000 acres, a surprising degree of self-governance and the freedom to worship in their own tongue. Five of the fieldstone homes they built on a bluff overlooking the Wallkill River have survived intact, along with a fort and over thirty other Huguenot structures.
Today, the stone houses of Huguenot Street, since 1985 a National Historic Landmark District, "embody the most precious elements of the architectural heritage of the Hudson Valley," to quote Morrison Heckscher, Curator of Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. "It's absolutely remarkable and wonderful that a whole street of late 17th- and 18th-century houses has remained intact and so little changed."
In these house museums, administered by the Huguenot Historical Society of New Paltz, one finds so-called jambless fireplaces, which are not recessed into the wall and attached to external chimneys in the manner to which we are accustomed. Built flush against the wall, they funnel smoke through a broad hood into a tapered brick chimney (made of "Hudson Valley thins") that rises like a plume within the house. These drafty, smoky, space-inefficient wonders are a sight to behold. As are the alcove beds built right into the wall and equipped with cupboard doors to retain Huguenot body heat. Ditto the stone cellar kitchens and massive, over-engineered wooden joists. Most remarkable, perhaps, is the fact that these houses were preserved largely through the efforts of family associations comprised of descendants of the original patentees, some of whom were still living in their ancestral homes some two and a half centuries after their construction.
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About the Huguenot house museums
of New Paltz:
Huguenot Street, a National Historic Landmark, is located on a slight promontory above the banks of the Wallkill River at the western edge of the Village of New Paltz.
This unique site includes a collection of historic house museums with construction dates ranging from 1692 to 1894. The settlement was originally the focus of a 39,683-acre Royal Patent granted to 12 families of French refugees on September 29, 1677.
The homes are furnished with heirloom and period pieces that reflect their multi-generational family ownership. Huguenot Street consists of four Colonial-era stone houses, a Federal-period house, a late Victorian house, and a reconstructed 18th-century church. The site also offers a research library, exhibit gallery, gift shop and picnic facilities. A 3-mile Huguenot Path and a Wildlife Sanctuary are adjacent to the Landmarks District.
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RELATED LINKS:
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For more info about the house museums of Huguenot Street, go to:
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The Huguenot Historical Society
of New Paltz, New York
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Check out the Web site of:
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The National Huguenot Society
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To investigate Huguenot roots, click on Genealogy Forum's Internet Center on the:
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Huguenot Home Page
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Visit the Huguenot Church, Pelham Manor, NewYork at:
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Huguenot Church
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PHOTO CREDITS: G. STEVE JORDAN, TOM DALEY, BOB BABB
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