M 



INTRODUCTION 



ANY surprises are in store for the reader who surprises of 



^ Later History 



comes to these pages possessed merely of the 

 ordinary knowledge as to who the Huguenots 

 in America are and what they have done. More than 

 one Puritan and Pilgrim tradition has had to be given up 

 in the light of later historical research. But as the true 

 character of the people is disclosed, there will be no be- 

 grudging of the full meed of praise belonging to those 

 French Protestants who, when driven from France, found 

 in our land a home and that religious liberty denied them 

 in their own, and in return gave of their best to their 

 adopted country. 



The whole number of the Huguenot emigrants to selected Men 

 America was relatively small. Numerically, they occu- ^""^ women 

 pied a position of comparative insignificance among the 

 founders of the Republic. But, as John Fiske says, " In 

 determining the character of a community one hundred 

 selected men and women are more potent than a thousand 

 men and women taken at random." And the Huguenot 

 refugees were "selected," if ever a body of men and 

 women had the right to be so called. For two hundred 

 yeai-s France had been like a vast furnace ; the fires of 

 persecution had been refining and testing until only the 

 pure gold was left. For two hundred years the persecu- 

 tion which had sought to destroy, had been cultivating, 

 instead, those heroic virtues which enabled the small 

 band of Huguenot refugees to America to write their 

 names so large upon the honour roll of the Republic. 



15 



