414 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



This portion of Throckmorton's Neck, together with Dorman's Island 

 formerly constituted the old Bayard estate, as noticed in the early part 

 of this town. 



One of the most ancient and noble families of the County of Dauph- 

 ing in France, is that of Bayard; and well have those who have sprung 

 from it maintained the honor of their house. For at the battle of Poic- 

 tiers, the great-great grand-father of Pierre Bayard, the good knight with- 

 out fear and without reproach, fell by the side of the French King John. 

 At the battle of Agincourt, was slain his great-grand-father ; his grand- 

 father was left on the field of Montlerey with six mortal wounds, not to 

 speak of lesser ones ; and at the battle of Guignegaste, his father was so 

 severely wounded, that he was never afterwards able to leave his house, 

 where he died at the age of eighty." 



Pierre du Terrail Signeur de Bayard was born in 1476, at the Chateau 

 de Bourg in the valley of Graisivudun, a few leagues from Grenable, the 

 principal city of Dauphiny. For more than thirty years he served in the 

 armies of France. For valor and skill as a leader he was unsurpassed, 

 in an age when chivalry was still honored. He was killed by a gun-shot 

 at Biagrassa on the 13th of April, 1524, at the age of forty-eight years 

 ami died unmarried, and without issue. 



During the religious troubles which distracted the kingdom of France 

 in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries, some of the family descend- 

 ants from a branch of the Chevalier Bayard's house, emigrated to Hol- 

 land ; among these was Balthazar Bayard, a Huguenot clergyman and 

 professor of languages in Paris, who early in the seventeenth century left 

 France to escape persecution on account of his religion. There is a 

 tradition in the family that he was shipped from Rochelle in a hogshead. 

 He soon rallied around him a congregation of Huguenot refugees, whose 

 pastor he continued until his death. He married, in Holland, Anna 

 Stuvvesant, sister of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Governor of New 

 York. Madame Anna Bayard, her husband being then dead, accom- 

 panied her brother, Peter Stuyvestant, to New York with her three 

 children, all sons — Balshazar, Peter and Nicholas — where they landed on 

 the fourteenth of May, 1647. From these three brothers are descended 

 all who bear the name of Bayard in the United States. Peter purchased 

 lands on the Bohemia Manor, in 1684 — a portion of which were in Del- 

 aware, and a portion in Cecil County, Maryland; he married Blandinas 

 Corde, a lady of fine talents and great culture. From them the Del- 

 aware, the Philadelphia, and the Pittsburgh Bayards, came. Nicholas, the 

 youngest of the three sons of the first Balshazar Bayard, was many years 

 a member of the Council of State for the Colonial Government of New 



