Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 8

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926

USA > New York > New York County > Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 8

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On June 7th, 1625, Amiens witnessed a brilliant pageant. It

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was the city's generous welcome to a young queen, sister of the king, and child of Henry the Great, the beautiful Henrietta Maria, of scarce sixteen years,-who was on her way from Paris to Boulogne to meet her spouse, already wedded though but once seen, Charles I. of England, then but two months a king. A letter from King Louis, bespeaking for the youthful queen "une joyeuse entree," had led to ample preparations; so, on the set morning the city was all excitement, in every quarter was heard the sound of trumpets and drums to muster the military bands, with the noblesse, who were present from all the country round to take part in the grand reception.

The Duke De Chaulnes, with three hundred well-mounted cavaliers, rode out two leagues to meet the bride and her retinue (which last included the queen-mother and queen-regnant, be- sides dukes, earls and lords, English and French, with many noble dames and damsels, and withal a guard of soldiers), and escorted them to the city. Their approach thereto,-entrance through the Beauvais gate and march to the cathedral, where they were met and greeted by Bishop Le Fevre and the Chapter,- was one grand ovation; many complimentary addresses and the thunder of musket and arquebus bade the young queen wel- come. Just outside the city gate was a magnificent trium- phal arch, with a beautiful tableau and other devices, all in- tended to please the queen and courtly party. Six other principal pieces, replete with. designs drawn from classic and French his- tory, surprised them along the way to the cathedral. One repre- sented Jason and the Golden Fleece, a motto affixed declaring "Maria is the Fleece and Charles the Jason." In another, three belles personified the goddesses Juno, Minerva and Venus, con- tending before Paris as judge for the prize of beauty, the golden apple. But Paris, disallowing all their claims, turned and pre- sented the apple to Queen Henrietta as "the real beauty." At the cathedral Te Deum was chanted, the grand organ pealing forth eloquent music, followed by prayers. Then her majesty was escorted, to apartments in the episcopal palace, where were presentations and addresses to the queen, with gifts of some dozen of superb hypocras, besides a large variety of living birds and game of choice kinds, all in handsome cages. The queen- regnant and others of the royal party were sumptuously enter- tained at the citadel by the Duke and Duchess of Chaulnes for the nine days they were at Amiens; and then they departed, with many rich presents and kind wishes.

Amiens looked but coldly on another pageant, more signifi-

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cant, if less imposing. The occasions of the two were probably among the recollections of some who later. lived at Harlem, but the following was perhaps more firmly remembered, and with more heartfelt endurance. Betimes on Sunday morning, from that same Beauvais gate, called also the Gate of Paradise, ( from a legend that here our Saviour, in the garb of a beggar, once appeared to St. Martin), a human stream began to issue, repre- senting both sexes and all ages, sires and matrons, blooming youths and happy-faced children, all in best attire, which pro- ceeded along that well-trodden way, to the pleasant village of Salouel, on the Celle, two or three miles to the southward of Amiens. With decorum suited to holy time, but enlivening the journey by cheerful and pious conversation, the looker-on needed not to be told the all important errand upon which these devout people were going.

The Huguenot worship had been long banished beyond the gates of the city. Prohibited in express terms, as already seen. by the decree which restored Amiens with Peronne and Abbe- ville to obedience to Henry IV., this was also confirmed by the Edict of Nantes.

Taught also by experience that they could not meet for worship within the city walls, except at the risk of being molested, perhaps broken up by a mob, it in some measure reconciled the Reformed to what was felt to be a harsh and burdensome requirement. The privilege of meeting at Salouel had not been gotten without effort. By the edict two towns only in the en- tire government of Picardy were allotted the Huguenots, at which to build churches. These were Desvres, in the Boulon- nais, and Hautcourt, near St. Quentin. Of what advantage was this to those of Amiens? At first these were wont to hold their worship within the castle of the Seigneur d'Heucourt, at Haver- nas, five miles northerly from Amiens; but the distance was so far, and, in inclement seasons, very trying and often fatal,-es- pecially to infants taken thither for baptism, as well as to the infirm and the aged,-that M. De Heucourt in the year 1600 noti- fied the lieutenant-general at Amiens of his intention to have public worship for himself, his family, and the inhabitants of the city. within his fief of Hem, a village or suburb of Amiens, and where thirty-six years previous the Protestants had built a tem- ple. This privilege, to which he claimed a right under the edict, being denied him, an appeal was made to the king, who gave his sanction; but the opposition of the clergy and the civil author- ities was so violent as to nullify it. However, through the

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favor of the Lord of Guignemicourt, his chateau was also opened to the Reformed, being to the southwest of Amiens, and only half as far as Havernas. It was an important gain for those of Amiens; and this became for some years their principal resort. As the Count of St. Paul positively refused his consent to their meeting in Hem, they obtained permission in 1611 to remove their worship to Salouel, and there to build a temple. This, as already stated, was a small village on the Celle. It was within a fief appertaining to the widow of M. De Heucourt, before named; and there was nothing remarkable about it but a subterranean cavern, used as a refuge, it was said, as early as the ninth century. Strangely enough, the bishop and clergy assented to this measure, and on February 24th, 1612, half an acre of land was ceded to the Huguenots, upon which they erected their tem- ple. Here they long met for worship, under the pastorates of Le Hucher, La Cloche, Lauberan and Pinette; and to this day the by-road leading to it is known as the "Chemin du preche." These pastors also labored at Havernas. There was another large and flourishing church gathered at Oisemont, a market town twelve miles south of Abbeville, where the Huguenots were strong. It was some eighteen miles west of Amiens, to which its royal provost was subordinate. In the time of our refugees this church enjoyed the labors of Rev. Jacques De Vaux, a native of Compiegne. One of its elders, living at Oisemont at the date of the passage of the Edict of Nantes, was David Des Marets, Sieur du Ferets. In 1625 he represented the church in the Provincial Synod, held at Charenton, near Paris. Beyond question our David Des Marest, who came from Picardy, was of this family, but how related we cannot say.

Would we truly estimate the character of such men as Demarest, and Disosway, and Casier, and Cresson, and their real value to the community at Harlem, we should follow up the pageant last introduced, and admit the moral sublimity of that primitive worship, with its power to mould the life,-the fervid invocation, the holy song, set to the metrical psalms of Clement Marot; the simple Gospel, clothed in the warm, persuasive elo- quence of the times, which raised the soul heavenward. We would also note the activity and zeal which pervaded the Hugue- not churches, and the watchfulness over the walk of the mem- bers, which so contributed to soundness of faith and purity of life.

We might show, were it needful, how this active moral ele- ment was effectual for good upon the very society by which it

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was scorned and derided; how the trammels upon thought and speech had to a great degree been thrown off, in regard especi- ally to politics and religion,-subjects once tenderly touched upon, but now handled with an astonishing boldness. What latitude was taken in the doctrinal disputes between the Hugue- not pastors and Catholic prelates, so rife at this period! How the popular mind was awakening to the necessity of religious reform, and even showing itself among the old clergy, as in the earlier days of the Reformation! But alas! it now went little beyond efforts to render external rites more impressive, or to make the rules of monastic life more austere. A step in the right direction was taken at Amiens by Jean De Labadie, later an avowed Protestant and founder of the Labadists, of. Wieward, in Friesland, some of whom visited Harlem five years after his death, which took place in 1674. In 1640, Labadie, by invitation, preached at Paris. Among the crowds drawn to hear him was Bishop Le Fevre, who, charmed with his zeal and eloquence, made him a canon in the cathedral. Here Labadie, imbued with the evangelical spirit, urged upon his parishioners to read the Scrip- tures, and caused many copies of the New Testament in French to be distributed; while his sermons upon repentance, grace, and predestination awakened profound interest. But his views were severely censured by the clergy and by the Sorbonne; so, after a few years' service at Amiens, in which also he had not been sparing of the Jesuits, the clamors against him forced him to leave. The excitement stirred up by Labadie in the end reacted upon the Reformed, to whose "pernicious teachings" his "heresy" was imputed.

Picard society was always exceedingly impressionable and excitable. But at Amiens its good and bad elements assumed the most positive forms. It was a centre of political factions and sinister plots; and it was this spirit, long fostered among the nobility, that arrayed itself against the ministry of Concini; only just failed, in 1636, to assassinate Richelieu during the siege of Corbie : and, in 1649, plunged his successor, Mazarin, in the war of the Fronde: a war, by the way, in which the Huguenots, by keeping neutral, won praise from this minister.

But with a people, or society, so irascible, it made an element in the dangers which beset the Reformed; dangers which were now daily thickening by reason of the cruel proscription de- signed to crush them. And religious antagonisms needed but slight incentive to leap forth into activity. If the Huguenots, when assailed by brute force dared stand and defend themselves,

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it often led to a bloody collision such as that which obliged one of our refugees to escape for his life. Daniel Tourneur, with other Reformed (according to Tourneur's version of it,-which we see no reason to question), had been attending a burial at Amiens, when some of the Catholics made a wanton attack upon them. The pretext we know not; but Huguenots were de- barred from using the common cemeteries. However, Tourneur, young and spirited,-in his veins the blood of the old Picard lords De Tourneur, one of whom had fought under William the Con- queror at Hastings,-drew his sword, as did others, in self-defense, when some of the assailants were slain. Tourneur being charged

Cathedral and Cemetery of St. Denis, at Amiens.

with the death of one Tilie Maire, he found it best to take a sudden leave. Marc Disosway, who seems to have known of this affair at its occurrence, made quite a stir about it at Harlem in after years, when he and Tourneur happened to be at variance.

The breaking out of war between France and Spain in 1635 caused a considerable influx of Protestant refugees into Eng- land, from Picardy, Artois, Hainault and Flanders. Involving these provinces in all the perils and disasters of a pitiless border

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warfare, and lasting nearly the fourth of a century, it resulted in the conquest of Artois, and parts of Flanders and Hainault, and their annexation to France. Begun by Louis XIII., jointly with the Dutch (these agreeing to divide the Spanish Nether- lands between them), this war opened adversely to the French, for the enemy at once invaded Picardy, overran Thierache, and captured Corbie, on the Somme, only nine miles above Amiens. In terror the inhabitants of the villages fled with their goods into the cities, while the Spaniards, marking their course by burnings and massacres, stopped only at the Oise, which they could not pass, as the bridges had been broken down. But the energy of Richelieu soon turned the tables; for, retaking Corbie, he drove the enemy back across the border, and began those aggressive movements which, followed up by Louis XIV.,- after the disasters of the Fronde were repaired,-added, as before said, a large domain to France, secured to her in 1659 by the treaty of the Pyrenees, and which she has ever since held.

Although hostilities were so soon transferred to the enemy's soil, Picardy was now called upon to maintain garrisons for the defense of her extended frontier, and to. marshal her forces for the seat of war, whence came almost daily some new and alarm- ing rumor; a state of things especially disheartening to the Huguenots, whose trials before were great enough. With no incentive to enter the army in a war waged only for conquest,- and to add strength to the despotic arm which was crushing them,-it naturally proved a turning point with those who now left the country. Their nearness to the Low Country border offered the Huguenots of Picardy every facility for escape, as (lid also their several seaports and the long range of coast, fre- quented only by fishermen, whose boats often aided fugitives to get away when obliged to sliun the publicity of the town. Num- bers, for sufficient reasons, took the weary and hazardous journey through Belgium to Holland; many going by way of the Ver- mandois forests, and resting at Bohain, a little city of wool- workers twelve miles northeast of St. Quentin, where were many Huguenots ; so fleeing across the Cambresis, or Hainault." Our Demarest and Cresson, Disosway. Tourneur. Le Roy, and others from the Amienois and Ponthieu, had the choice of those routes, but which they took is left to conjecture. Calais, then the extreme northern outlet of the kingdom, at an inviting prox-

. Jean Cottin, of New York, merchant, who died quite aged. in 1721, was a fugi- tive from Bohain, where he left a brother Daniel and sister Susannalı, married to Louis Libot. He intrusted by his will t.36 to Peter Van Oblinus and Samuel Waldron. of the town of Harlem; "the income thereof to be yearly employed for and towards the maintaining of their minister of the Dutch Protestant Church there."

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imity to the shores of England, and its people partly of that nation,-which had ruled it for over two centuries, till it was re- covered in 1558 by the French under the Duke of Guise,-was also strongly Protestant, and therefore a great resort for escaping refugees. Our Philip Casier was from this place, as was also his son-in-law, David Uzille.

While many left Picardy, the French advance and successes in Hainault and Artois were causing a larger migration of the Protestant Walloons; and among these also a number whose destiny led them to Harlem. We can make but brief allusion to such events, military or otherwise, in their respective localities, as seemingly influenced their removal.

Landrecy, on the Sambre, was the first place invested and taken by the French on beginning the invasion of the enemy's territory, in 1637, and which they held, with adjacent places, for ten years. It was during this domination, so odious to the Walloons, that Simon de Ruine, living near Landrecy, removed with his family to Holland, from which place, fifteen years later he found his way to America. Through daughters married to Demarests, he has many living descendants. Jean Gervoe, another of the Harlem settlers, was from Beaumont, to the east of Aves- nes, then a county seat of the Duke of Arschot, but an old appan- age of the princes of Hainault. From Mons, the rich capital of this province, seated to the north of Avesnes, and within the coal region called the Borinage, came David du Four, of the same name,-and not improbably the same blood, as the martyr of Le Cateau, but whose posterity, which became numerous in his country, changed the form of their name to Devoor and Devoe.

Passing to the west of the Scheldt we find the homes of other of our refugees along the banks of the river Lys. The noble Scheldt, the boast and pride of Belgium,-rising in the edge of Picardy, behind the abbey of Mont St. Martin, and flowing to the north, or rather to the northeast, but upon several zigzag reaches or courses,-waters the western parts of the Cambresis and Hainault, and then, eastern Flanders, forming for some dis- tance the barrier between the latter and Brabant. It has passed in the meantime Cambray, at the head of navigation; Valen- ciennes, Conde, Tournay,-all Walloon cities,-Ghent and Ant- werp. At the latter, a hundred and twenty-five miles from its head,-swollen by many tributaries, chief of which is the Lys,- the now puissant Scheldt turns northwest for fourteen miles, when it divides into two mighty arms, each of which rolls on still forty miles to the German Sea. These two broad estuaries,

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taking the names of the East and West Scheldt,-the latter also termed the Hond,-form, in conjunction with the left arm of the Meuse, here called the Maas, the fertile Dutch islands of Schouwen and Walcheren, in Zeeland, both of interest to us as the home or place of sojourn of some of the Harlem colonists.

Running parallel with the coast, and uniformly thirty miles or so therefrom, in a course very direct, the Lys parted Flemish from French, or Walloon, Flanders. It was navigated by light vessels all the way from Aire, in Artois, to Ghent. About cen- trally of the fertile plains between it and the Scheldt lay the city of Lille, with its teeming and busy population, the capital of French Flanders, and the great city and centre of the Wal- loons. Owing its origin to Lideric du Buc, the. first Grand Forester or Count of Flanders, who, in 640, here built a castle, (only the shapeless ruins of which remained), but growing into significance as a town in the eleventh century,-when enlarged and walled by other of these counts,-Lille had become to the Walloons what Ypres, its great rival, which lay but fifteen miles northwest, was to the Flemings,-the chief emporium of their cloth manufacture. Round about it, and all in Walloon Flan- ders, were the large and handsome cities of Douay and Tournay, the small cities of Orchies, Armentieres, La Basse, St. Amand, etc., besides 193 boroughs and villages. Old towns, and famed for their industries, they formed the heart of the great woolen and linen country of preceding centuries : enjoying a prosperity almost fabulous, till Spanish tyranny and French conquest brought blight and ruin. The cruel expatriations thus caused gave to Harlem at least four families, who came from neighbor- ing places on and near the Lys .* Richebourg, a small city scarce noticed by gazetteers or maps, but seated fourteen miles west of Lille, on a small branch of the Lys and in the district of Bethune, within Artois, was the birthplace of our Glaude le Maistre, or Delamater. Delamater's family was from France, his immediate ancestor probably from Picardy, whence many families seem to have worked up into Artois; and it is pretty cer- tain that Glaude, on leaving Richebourg, took the previously re- ferred to course of the Walloon migration to England. We doubt if many of these Walloons from Artois went to Holland at that

* It is said ("Du Bois Reunion," pp. 32, 33) that the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, by maintaining the Catholic religion in the Austrian dominions, caused the emigration from Artois. But this emigration began years before, and at the date of that treaty, which did not restore peace between France and Spain, the former was in military possession of Artois. Nor could this province be affected by the pacification of 1648, in which the Spanish Netherlands were not included. It is plain that the emigrations referred to were not due to that treaty, but to the French invasion. (See "Burn's Refugees," London, 1846, p. 42.)

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time,-for which there was poor inducement for these Spanish subjects,-seeing the Dutch were then in league with their enemy the French, while the English held a neutrality, but leaned strongly to the Spanish side. In fact, by the threats of Eng- land, the Flemish ports were left unmolested till 1644, and from these that country was much nearer and more accessible than was Holland. Naturally enough, some of these fugitive Walloons retired at first into Flanders, hesitating, perhaps, to quit the country, as the state of the Protestants was somewhat improved under the more humane rule of Philip IV. The family of Oblinus, one well known in the early history of Harlem, fled from Houplines, two leagues northwest of Lille; and that of De Prc, from Comines, a few miles below Houplines. Kortryk was a Flemish town yet further down the Lys, which within the previous century had witnessed cruel persecutions, and during the existing war, with its calamities, had changed hands four times in five years. But one of its families had escaped these last troubles by leaving some years before: we refer to the an- cestors of the Kortright, or Courtright, family, in its day one of the most wealthy in landed possessions in Harlem .*

On the Flemish seaboard between Calais and the Hond, lay, distant a few miles apart, the several old strongly intrenched towns of Gravelines, Dunkirk, Furnes, Nieuport, Ostend and Sluis, the latter seated ten miles south of the Hond, within a

. Family names were the exception and not the rule among our early Dutch colonists. The mass of people in Fatherland used only a patronymic, formed by adding to the child's Christian name that of the father, with the affix sen, or son; by which originated all names so terminating, as for example, Jan Jacobsen (meaning Jan, son of Jacob), or Pieter Jansen (Pieter, son of Jan), and the like. In correct usage in writing, the affix was often shortened to se or z, and always in the case of females to s. This custom necessarily produced among the male descendants of the same progenitor a great diversity of surnames, if we may, for convenience, so call them. Thus, Pieter, Willem and Hendrick being sons of Jan Jacobsen, would be known as Pieter Jansen, Willem Jansen, etc., while their children would be named respectively, Pietersen, Willemsen and Hendricksen, and these names, in turn, each afford other varieties in the next generation. On the other hand, this use of the patronymic caused a frequent recurrence of the same name where no family connection whatever existed. The incon- venience thus arising, and particularly the liability of confounding persons of similar name, was partially obviated by the practice in vogue in Fatherland, and kept up by our colonists, both in familiar speech and in formal writings, of distinguishing persons by their birthplace (not, as is now the usage, by the residence, except the one and the other were the same); as, for example, Jan Jacobsen Van Amsterdam, that is, J. J. from Amsterdam. This valued link connecting the colonists with his former home, it was in many cases directly to his interest to preserve. In Holland, as with us, the name of the place thus used often became the permanent family name, of which instances abound. But it sometimes resulted that two or more brothers, born in differ- ent places, and from these deriving their respective surnames, gave rise to as many families, whose common origin, after a few generations, none would ever suspect. In many cases the Van has been dropped; and often the name so changed as to disguise its origin, as those of Oblinus and Kortright. The first of these derived from Houplines; after emigration, probably in conformity to English utterance, became Oblinus, and by the usage before mentioned, was then, if not before, written Van Oblinus. The Kortrights at first also used the Van.

The subject of our Dutch family names is a curious one, as will be abundantly verified in the coming pages; and should be first well studied by those who undertake to compile Dutch genealogy. See other remarks and a list of Dutch baptismal names, with their English equivalent, in "Annals of Newtown," page 265.

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harbor on the German Sea, called the Paerdt-markt (Horse- market), from the noise of the elements during a storm sound- ing very like the neighing of horses. During this century it cost the kings of Spain dearly to hold these seaports. Ostend, in particular, was taken by the Spaniards from the Hollanders, September 14th, 1604, after a terrible siege of over three years, in which there perished 80,000 of the former and 50,000 of the latter. A few days previous (August 19th) Sluis surrendered to Prince Maurice, after an investment of four months, the Spaniards having made vain efforts to relieve it. Peace reigned from 1069 to 1621 ; when Spain and Holland resumed hostilities. In 1635, as we have seen, France took part with Holland; but England interposed to keep these ports,-of so much benefit to her trade,-open for some years. However, the French, aided by the Holland fleet under Admiral Tromp, took Gravelines in 1644, and Dunkirk and Furnes in 1646. Mardyk was a rural hamlet midway between the first two places, three miles from either, where once stood a city claiming to be the famous Portus Issius, but, sacked and burned by the Normans, and, in 1383, by the English, now consisted only of a church and a few cottages, which could hardly excite envy, looking out so unpre- tendingly upon the sand dunes and the sea. But, in common with all that border region, it was to suffer much from the con- tending forces. Fort Mardyk, in the vicinity, was seized by the French on their taking Dunkirk. After six years they were driven out of the fort and both towns by the Archduke Leo- pold, Governor of the Low Countries; but the French again became masters of all in 1658, conferring Mardyk, with Dunkirk, upon the English, now their allies, who, in 1662, restored both to the French, whence Mardyk fell under the iron rule of Louis XIV. Meynard Journee, a young man born here, withdrew during these troublesome times, and after wandering up and down the Rhine, appears at Harlem, and finally on Staten Island, found- ing there the reputable family of Journeay.

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Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 8

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889 Publication date: 1904 Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub. Number of Pages: 926

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926