of ours, when many gloried in
ignoring the fact that they came from distinguished stocks, as the
spirit of our democratic institutions opposed the notion of family
histories. We were all born of an honest, industrious race, for several
generations back, and that is enough; and so it may be. Still, a man,
when asked if he had a grandfather, would logically infer he had one,
but he could not historically, unless there was some record of the fact.
This indifference is happily passing way, and an interest of late is
manifesting itself in such researches. No American, in whose veins runs
Huguenot blood, need be ashamed of his origin. His ancestral history is
most honorable, brave, and proud.

In 1705, Colonel Heathcote thus speaks of M. Boudet, the Huguenot
preacher at New Rochelle: 'A good man, and preaches very intelligibly in
English, which he does every third Sunday in his French congregation,
when he uses the Liturgy of the Church. He has done a great deal of
service since his first coming into this country. * * * He has thirty
pounds a year settled on him out of the public revenue here, as the
French minister in York hath; but that is paid with so much uncertainty
that he starves, for the use of it.' During the year 1710, Governor
Hunter permitted his congregation to build a new church of England, as
by law established, and the 'Venerable Propagation Society' presented
the new church with 'one hundred French prayer books of the small sort,
and twenty of a larger impression; and in consideration of the great
learning and piety of Monsieur Boudet, and his long and faithful
discharge of his office, they augmented his salary from L30 to L50 per
annum.' At this period we find the following excellent record of this
excellent French minister: 'M. Boudet is a good old man, near sixty
years of age, sober, just, and religious.' One hundred more French
prayer books were sent to his church, 'for the edification of the French
youth who have learned so much of that language as to join with him
therein.' During the year 1714, M. Boudet took the spiritual charge of
the Mohegan or River Indians, at which period he is called 'minister of
the French colonistic congregation at New Rochelle.' In 1714 he reports
fifty communicants in his church, and asks for an English Bible, with a
small quantity of English Common Prayers, because 'our young people, or
some of them, have sufficiently learned to read English for to join in
the public servic