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 £30 to £50 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 service, when read in English.'

M. Boudet died in September, 1722, aged sixty-nine years, nearly twenty-seven of which he had been the minister of the New Rochelle church. He was eminently useful in keeping his congregation together amidst its adverse circumstances, and was greatly beloved. He was interred beneath the chancel floor of the old church; and for whose use he bequeathed his library.

The Rev. Pierre Stouppe, A. M., succeeded M. Boudet. He was also a native of France, and said to be a son or nearly related to the Rev. M. Stouppe, pastor of the French Protestant church in London, who was sent to Geneva, in 1654, by Oliver Cromwell, to negotiate there in the affairs of the French Protestants. He was born 1690, studied divinity at Geneva, and accepted a call to the Huguenot church at Charleston, S. C. Here he continued to preach until 1723, when, resigning the charge, he conformed to the Church of England, crossing the Atlantic for ordination. He was admitted to holy orders in 1723, and licensed to officiate as a missionary in the colony of New York, and to the French Protestants of New Rochelle, with a salary of £50 per annum. To this latter flock he proved very acceptable, from his ability to preach in French, the only language which most of them understood. His elders, or anciens, as sometimes called, were then Isaac Quantein and Isaac Guion. The new Huguenot pastor soon found trouble, as his predecessor had, with the dissatisfied M. Moulinais and his followers. Still he was useful: in 1726 he writes that he 'baptized six grown negroes and seven negro children, fitted eight young people for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to which they have been accordingly admitted,' and 'the number of communicants at Easter was thirty-three.'

In a letter of December 11, 1727, he presents some important information concerning the early settlement of New Rochelle: 'The present number of inhabitants amounts to very near four hundred persons. There is a dozen of houses near the church, standing pretty close to one another, which makes the place a sort of a town; the remainder of the houses and settlements are dispersed up and down, as far as the above 6,000 acres of land could bear. Nay, besides these, there were several other French families, members of New Rochelle, settled without its bounds.' Such was the commencement of the present picturesque and beautiful village of New Rochelle. More than a century and a half has passed away since its founders, the French refugees, emigrated to the spot; but their noble and holy principles have left good, undying influences, now seen in the refinement, morals, and religion of their descendants, in this entire region.

M. Stouppe further states that there were in the settlement two Quaker families, three Dutch ones, four Lutherans. 'The first never assist on assemblies; the Dutch and Lutheran, on the contrary, constantly assist when divine service is performed in English, so that they may understand it; and their children, likewise, have all been baptized by ministers of the church. Only the French Dissenters have deserted it, upon M. Moulinais, formerly one of the French ministers of New York, coming and settling, now a year ago, among us; and it is also by his means and inducement that they have built a wooden meeting-house within the time they were unprovided for, that is, from my predecessor's death to my arrival here. * * *

'There is no schoolmaster as yet in New Rochelle: the parents take care to instruct their own children, and that they do generally pretty well, besides what instructions are given them in the church during summer by the minister. * * * The number of slaves within New Rochelle is seventy-eight: part of them constantly attend divine service, and have had some instruction in the Christian faith by the care and assistance of their respective masters and mistresses, so that my predecessor did not scruple to baptize some, and even admit them to the communion of the Lord's Supper; and I myself have, for the same consideration, baptized fifteen of them within these three years, some children and some grown persons, without the least prejudice to the rest of my flock.' It would be well, in our boasted day of zeal and philanthropy, if all ministers of the blessed gospel manifested the same commendable interest for the spiritual welfare of the negroes, as this Huguenot pastor.

About the period of the French war, he writes, June 5, 1758, 'that since the war broke out, there have been great alterations in his congregations, which have lost many of their members by removals, and by enlisting in the king's service, and by death; nevertheless, the number of his communicants is seventy-four, and he has baptized, within the present half year, fifteen white and five black children.'

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