SOME PEOMINENT NAMES 267 



married Martha Blagge. From Connecticut, the little 

 State which has sent so many colonists out into the un- • 

 settled portions of the country, the De Forests spread un- 

 til to-day they are to be found in nearly every section of 

 the United States. 



Ill 



General Richard Montgomery 



This noble martyr to liberty, who fell at Quebec on the 

 last day of 1775, was descended from the Huguenots 

 through that Comte de Montgomerie who mortally 

 wounded Henry II of France, July 10, 1559, in a tourna- a Revolution- 

 ment in honour of the marriage of his daughter. Though and M^^rtyr 

 the King forgave the Count, the queen mother, Catherine 

 de Medicis, did not, but pursued the brave Huguenot with 

 implacable vengeance till she brought him to the scaffold. 

 May 27, 1576. His family fled to Ireland and won dis- 

 tinction. Richard Montgomery was third son of an Irish 

 baronet, and was born December 2, 1738, at his father's 

 country seat in the north of Ireland. Liberally educated, 

 young Montgomery entered the British army and served 

 under General Wolfe in the war between England and 

 France for supremacy in Canada. Thus he gained his 

 experience for the Revolutionary days, when he espoused 

 the cause of the American colonies, and was elected a 

 brigadier-general by the Continental Congress. He was 

 then living on his farm at Rhinebeck, having married 

 into the Livingston family. The distinction conferred Leaving the 

 upon him without his solicitation was accepted with ^^'"'^ ^°'' ^*' 

 characteristic modesty and a patriotic sense of duty. 

 Writing to a friend he says: ''The Congress having 

 done me the honour of electing me a brigadier-general in 

 their service, is an event which must put an end for a 

 while, perhaps forever, to the quiet scheme of life I had 

 prescribed for myself: for, though entirely unexpected 

 and undesired by me, the will of an oppressed people, 

 compelled to choose between liberty and slavery, must be 



