[sr4402]

My father told me we were from the Huguenots (Merrill), but did not talk of the persecution. Our family came over in the early 1700s. I suspect it was because of the religious persecutions common in those days.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The fact that half the settlers in Nieuw Nederlands were Huguenots speaks to the scale of the Huguenot diaspora. The clockmakers of Switzerland were Huguenot gunsmiths gone pacifist. Every country in Europe has Huguenot populations. (E.g., the top Luftwaffe fighter General, Adolf Galland, was a Huguenot descendant.) There is still a Huguenot historical association in the Hudson Valley. New Rochelle, NY was named for the Huguenot stronghold of Rochelle France, and to this very day its library is called the Huguenot Library, although the current population is latter day minorities.