216 THE FRENCH BLOOD IN AMERICA 



Knicker- 

 bockers a 

 Mixed Blood 



Stuyvesant's 

 Wife a 

 Huguenot 



Bedloe's 

 Island Named 

 After Isaac 

 Bethlo 



$720 ; it was situated on Eighth Avenue between Ninety- 

 third Street and the Harlem River. He named it '^ Vre- 

 dendal " or " Valley of Peace." Its value to-day is high 

 in the millions. 



Ill 



The French and Dutch mingled together harmoniously, 

 setting each other off to great advantage. How excellent 

 was the result produced by the infusion of the facile 

 French blood with that of the stolid Dutch may be seen 

 in the great Knickerbocker families. Nearly every. New 

 Yorker who can trace his ancestry back to the founders 

 of New Amsterdam will find traces of Huguenot blood in 

 his veins, for both in the earlier and later days the inter- 

 mixture of races was the almost constant rule. So evenly 

 matched were the two nationalities in point of numbers 

 by the year 1656, that all government and town procla- 

 mations were issued in French as well as in Dutch. 



Peter Stuyvesant, the famous director-general, had a 

 Huguenot wife, Judith Bayard, daughter of a refugee 

 minister ; and during his administration he had living 

 with him his sister, who was the widow of a Huguenot, 

 Samuel Bayard. It was her son who founded the illustri- 

 ous Bayard family of America. For these reasons, if for 

 no others, he took much interest in the French exiles 

 who sought refuge within his dominions. He not only 

 kindly received those who came, but went further, and in 

 1664 offered flattering prospects to a company of Protes- 

 tants in La Rochelle who were on the point of emigrating, 

 carrying out his promises by presenting them with grants 

 of land. Small bodies of French colonists kept coming, 

 mostly from the northern provinces of France and Nor- 

 mandy. Among them was Isaac Bethlo, a native of 

 Calais, who arrived in 1652, and gave his name to the 

 island in New York harbour known as Bedloe's. It is 

 among the strange coincidences that this island, named 

 after a French Huguenot refugee, should become the 

 site for that colossal statue, "Liberty Enlightening the 



