The Huguenot Families Build A Community

Huguenot Street Historic District, a National Historic Landmark, was created to preserve the oldest 

continuously inhabited street in America with its original houses, a wonderful collection exhibiting 

Dutch vernacular architecture and furnishings. The principle houses on Huguenot Street were built

surrounding the turn of the 17th into the 18th centuries, from 1680's through the first decades of the 

18th century. Descendants of the first families lived in them for hundreds of years and some were 

adapted for their changing needs. Today, each house is presented in a different  time period from the 

18th through the mid 20th century.


Huguenot Street is a unique collection of early colonial houses open to the public for you to explore 

and discover. Both New York City (New Amsterdam) and Albany (Beverwyck) were founded by the 

Dutch, but their old structures have been razed for later building booms.


Kingston, (Wiltwyck), the third of the original Dutch settlements, and Hurley (Nieu Dorpf) were 

burned by the British in the Revolution destroying their structures. What's left is houses scattered in 

the woods and lanes of the Hudson Valley and New Paltz, a small back water settlement that has 

survived the tides of war, boom, depressions and neglect.


New Paltz is one of the very few places left in America where you can quite literally go back 300 years 

in time and touch the original emigrants to America.  Founded in 1677, New Paltz represents one of 

the earliest periods of exploration and true settlement in our history. The band of French


Huguenots that trekked off into the dark and dangerous woods were gambling not just on turning the 

potential of the land to profit, they were  gambling on themselves and their stamina as well.


New Paltz was a rough outpost of European civilization set well off into the wilderness. In picking 

this place the Huguenot had searched for, and found, a site where they could be alone with their 

different culture, their different religion and their different traditions. And in picking this place,


the Huguenot had paid very close attention to the mistakes of earlier colonists in seizing the land from 

the native inhabitants. The arrogance of the Dutch led them to the discovery of the Wallkill Valley.


In the Dutch colony through the mid 17th century there had been a series of conflicts, known as the 

Esopus Wars, between the Esopus Indians and the Dutch arising over the Esopus' continuing   

resentment over the Dutch seizure of property rights and the taking of Indians as slaves to Barbados. 

In 1663 the Esopus rose again attacking Wiltwyck and taking captives. A party of colonists was formed 

to go out and rescue their women and children from the Indians, the party including Louis DuBois 

and Antoine Crispell, two Huguenots, both of whom had members of their families taken as hostages. 

It was on this expedition that they first saw the Wallkill Valley and determined to establish a settlement 

of French Huguenot there. Having learned the bitter lessons earlier colonists they first negotiated with 

the Indians for the purchase of the land. Only after purchasing the land did they go to the Crown, at 

that point English, seeking permission and was granted a tract of land comprising roughly 39,000 

acres, the land they had already purchased.


In the spring of 1678 eleven Huguenot families arrived on the promontory and established the 

settlement of New Paltz. Within 10 years they had began building their permanent stone houses, 

erecting their stone church and expanding their farms and families.


I suggest you go to this location for all the Pictures and more information on this community.


http://www.hvnet.com/alist/alist_ulster_huguenotstreet.htm