from 'importation duties and passport fees.' During this same year,
many, flying from France, were aided in their escape by English vessels
off the island of Rhe, opposite brave _La Rochelle_. According to
tradition, some of these were transported to this region, naming their
new settlement in honor of their

'Own Rochelle, the fair Rochelle,
Proud city of the waters.'

In the Documentary History of New York, vol. iii., p. 926, we find a
petition to Colonel Fletcher, Governor of the colony, signed by Thanet,
and Elei Cothouneau, in behalf of above twenty of these French refugees.
'Your petitioners,' they state, 'having been forced, by the late
persecutions in France, to forsake their country and estates, and flye
to ye Protestant princes * * *, wherefore they were invited to come and
buy lands in this province, and they might by their labour help the
necessityes of their families, and did spend all their small store with
the aid of their friends, whereof they did borrow great sums of money
[MS. torn]. They had lost their country and their estates, but saved
their good principles and a pure faith; and, in a strange land,
petitioned his Excellency 'to take their case in serious consideration,
and out of charity and pity to grant them for some years what help and
privileges your Excellency shall think convenient.' This is one of the
earliest authentic records (1681) we have met with concerning the New
Rochelle French refugees.

Pell, the lord of the manor, besides the 6,000 acres already obtained,
also granted 100 additional, 'for the sake of the French church, erected
or about to be erected, by the inhabitants of the said tract of land.'
This Huguenot church in New Rochelle was built about 1692-'93, of wood,
and stood in the rear of the present mansion house. It was destroyed
soon after the Revolutionary war. Louis Bougeaud, about the same time,
donated a piece of land forty paces square, for a churchyard to bury
their dead; and, subsequently, a house with three acres of land was
given by the town to the Huguenot church forever.

The Rev. DAVID BOUREPOS was the first minister of the New Rochelle
Huguenots; he had likewise served his French brethren on Staten Island.
The Governor requesting him to nominate 'some persons for the vacant
offices of justices of the peace,' he replies that 'he could not comply,
as none of his colonists at New Rochelle had a knowledge of the English
tongue.' Nothing now is known of B