Huguenots, and had he perished on that
perilous occasion, his family name would also have perished with him;
still there were seven females of the same house, called the _seven
zuisters_, all of whom married among the most respectable French
Protestant families. To no stock do more families in Ulster County trace
their origin than that of Dubois. Some antiquarians deny this tradition
of the seven sisters, but contend that they were _Lefevres_.

There were two Le Fevres among the Ulster patentees. Their progenitors
it is said were among those early Protestants of France who
distinguished themselves for intellectual powers, prominence in the
Reformed Church, with enduring patience under the severest trials, and
death itself. Le Fevre, a doctor of theology, adorned the French
metropolis when Paris caught the first means of salvation in the
fifteenth century. He preached the pure gospel within its walls; and
this early teacher declared '_our religion has only one foundation, one
object, one head, Jesus Christ, blessed forever. Let us then not take
the name of Paul, of Apostles, or of Peter. The Cross of Christ alone
opens heaven and shuts the gates of hell_.' In 1524, he published a
translation of the New Testament, and the next year a version of the
Psalms. Many received the Holy Scriptures from his hands, and read them
in their families, producing the happiest results. Margaret, the
beautiful and talented Princess of Valois, celebrated by all the wits
and scholars of the time, embraced the true Christianity, uniting her
fortune and influence with the Huguenots, and the Reformation thus had a
witness in the king's court. She was sister to Francis the First, the
reigning monarch. By the hands of this noble lady, the Bishop of Meuse
sent to the king a translation of St. Paul's Epistles, richly
illuminated, he adding, in his quaint and beautiful language, 'They will
make a truly royal dish of fatness, that never corrupts, and having the
power to restore from all manner of sickness. The more we taste them,
the more we hunger after them, with desires that are ever fed and never
cloyed.'

Abraham Hasbroucq, which is the original orthography of the name among
the patentees, was a native of Calais, and the first emigrant of that
family to America, in 1675, with a party of Huguenot friends; they
resided for a while in the Palatinate on the banks of the Rhine. To
commemorate their kindness, when they reached our shores the new
set