NEW ROCHELLE 235 



sage cut through the rock to convey water to a mill not 

 far off. Here are three fine taverns within call of each 

 other, and very good provision for travellers." 



Very early in ita history New Rochelle became a place a Resort 

 of some resort, "not only for the acquirement of the 

 French language, but on account of the hospitality and 

 politeness of its inhabitants." And although there were 

 no regular schools in the town for some time after its es- 

 tablishment, the children receiving their instruction at 

 home, New Rochelle became rather famous for the number Good schools 

 of sons of well-to-do citizens who sent them there to be 

 educated. The most illustrious of the boys who were 

 thus trained in the homes of New Rochelle were John 

 Jay, who is treated of elsewhere in this volume. General jay 

 Philip Schuyler, the Revolutionary soldier, and Wash- schuyier 

 ington Irving — three pupils whom the lay schoolmaster Irving 

 of New Rochelle might well have been proud of. When 

 we remember that, in spite of their poverty for a short 

 period during the first trying days of settlement in the 

 New World, these founders of New Rochelle were not 

 mere fortune seekers, but men of birth and breeding and 

 of good estate in France — of a far higher average of Centre of 

 wealth and culture than the English and Dutch of New 

 York — we need not be surprised that the little village on 

 the Sound soon gained a reputation for elegance and cul- 

 ture which far surpassed that of its neighbours. 



IV 



The settlere of New Rochelle were not able to build a 

 church for themselves at once. For the first three years church Going 

 they attended communion service at the French church in 

 New York which stood on Marketfield Street. From 

 New Rochelle to New York was a distance of twenty-three 

 miles by road, and the refugees admirably evinced their 

 devotion to their faith by walking the entire distance 

 there and back in order to take part in the Lord's Sup- Genuine 



^ Devotion 



per. Some of the women and the weaker children were 



