the year 1625, reached the spot where
the great metropolis now stands, then a Dutch settlement. The first
birth in New Amsterdam, of European parents, was a daughter of George
Jansen de Rapelje, of a Huguenot family which fled to Holland after the
St. Bartholomew's massacre, and thence sailed for America. Her name was
Sarah. Her father was a Walloon from the confines of France and Belgium,
and settling on Long Island, at the _Waal-bogt_, or Walloon's Bay,
became the father of that settlement. In 1639 his brother, Antonie
Jansen de Rapelje, obtained a grant of one hundred 'morgens,' or nearly
two hundred acres of land, opposite Coney Island, and commenced the
settlement of Gravesend. Here most numerous and respectable descendants
of this Walloon are met with to this day. Jansen de Rapelje, as he was
called, was a man of gigantic strength and stature, and reputed to be a
Moor by birth. This report, probably, arose from his adjunct of _De
Salee_, the name under which his patent was granted; but it was a
mistake; he was a native Walloon, and this suffix to his name, we doubt
not, was derived from the river Saale, in France, and not Salee, or Fez,
the old piratical town of Morocco. For many years after the Dutch
dynasty, his farm at Gravesend continued to be known as Anthony Jansen's
Bowery. The third brother of this family, William Jansen de Rapelje, was
among the earliest settlers of Long Island and founders of Brooklyn.
Singularly, the descendants of _Antonie_ have dropped the Rapelje, and
retained the name of Jansen, or Johnson, as they are more commonly
called. On the contrary, George's family have left off Jansen, and are
now known as Rapelje or Rapelyea.

Most of the Huguenots who went to Ulster, N.Y., at first sought
deliverance from persecutions among the Germans, and thence sailed for
America. Ascending the Hudson, these emigrants landed at Wiltonyck, now
Kingston, and were welcomed by the Hollanders, who had prepared the way
in this wilderness for the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty.
Here was a Reformed Dutch church, and Hermanus Blomm, its pastor,
commissioned by the Classis of Amsterdam to preach 'both on water and on
the land, and in all the neighborhood, but principally in _Esopus_.'
This region, selected by the French Protestants for their future land,
was like their own delightful native France for great natural beauties.
Towards the east and west flowed the waters of the noble ever-rolling
Hudson,