Delavan : The Guyon House 135 



1762. March 6. — Executors of will of Jacob Vanderbilt to his son, John 



Vanderbilt. 

 1764. May I. — John Vanderbilt, Elizabeth, his wife, and Heletia, his 



mother, to Christian Jacobson, who was killed in the house during 



the Revolution. 



E. The Presbyterian Church of 1729 



Nathaniel Britton, in 1696, received a patent for one hundred acres of 

 land lying at the head of New Dorp Lane. The westernmost twenty acres 

 he sold in 1701 to Richard Curtis, in whose family it remained until sold 

 to James Rue in 1714. 



Nathaniel Britton, son and heir of the patentee, sold the remaining 

 eighty acres, more or less, to Jacob Vanderbilt in 1719, describing the 

 parcel so conveyed as bounded on the west by the land of Jacques Cor- 

 telyou and raising the presumption that the latter had previously acquired 

 title to the twenty acres sold to Rue. 



Jacques Cortelyou, being so possessed of the twenty acre parcel, on May 

 13, 1729, by deed recorded October 30, 1744, in Liber D of Deeds, page 149, 

 conveyed a part thereof, being a lot fifty by fifty feet, to the officers of 

 " The Presbyterian Society," this deed reciting that the members of the 

 Presbyterian Society, " being destitute of A public Meeting House now 

 have built and erected (but as yet not furnished) a House for that end 

 & intent on a piece of ground . . . belonging to Jacques Cortelyou," being 

 the lot so conveyed. A copy of this deed may be found in Morris' History 

 of Staten Island, volume 2, page 284. 



The church so built seems later to have been removed to Richmond, for 

 a deed dated May i, 1769, recorded in Liber E of Deeds at page 64, made 

 by Jacob Rezeau to the officers of the Dutch Protestant and English Pres- 

 byterian Churches, contains the recital that " Whereas, the aforesaid Dutch 

 Protestants and English Presbyterians in the said County of Richmond, 

 in order that the Worship of Almighty God may be statedly administered 

 among them. Have by a Voluntary compact agreed, to unite in removing 

 The Presbyterian Church now standing at Stony Brook to Richmond 

 Town & in re-building the same And Whereas they are at present destitute 

 of a Commodious Lott of Land in Richmond Town for erecting the Pres- 

 byterian Church intended to be removed as aforesaid . . .," and conveys 

 accordingly a lot in the northwest part of the Rider patent. 



After the Piedmont massacre of 1655, a fleet of three or four vessels 

 loaded with Waldensian refugees left the Texel for the South or Dela- 

 ware River. (i Baird, 183). There is no evidence that any of this com- 

 pany settled on Staten Island. Stuyvesant referred to the settlers at Old 

 Town as " Dutch and French from the Palatinate " ; this was erroneously 

 quoted by Brodhead as " French Waldenses and afterwards many Hugue- 

 not's from Rochelle." Out of this error seems to have grown the Walden- 

 sian myth. The claim that a Waldensian Church existed at Stony Brook 

 or elsewhere on Staten Island is unsupported by any tangible evidence. 



