t were used
for fuel, and eight hundred American prisoners were incarcerated within
its old walls, without fuel or bedding, and here many died from cold and
starvation. The 'Brick Meeting,' in Beekman street, was also used at
first for a prison, and afterward changed into an hospital. The
Rose-street Friends' Meeting-house and the Wall-street Presbyterian
church became hospitals also, and Du Saint-Esprit was made a depot for
military stores. The Middle Dutch, the present Post-Office, stripped of
its sacred furniture, was the abode of three thousand American
prisoners. 'Here,' says John Pintard, himself a most respectable member
of the Protestant French Church near by, and an eye-witness of the
disgusting sight, 'the prisoners taken on Long Island and at Fort
Washington--sick, wounded, and well--were all indiscriminately huddled
together by hundreds and thousands, large numbers of whom died by
disease, and many were undoubtedly poisoned by their inhuman attendants,
for the sake of their watches or silver buckles.' The suffering inmates
were afterward transferred to other places of confinement, and the
venerable building turned into a riding-school for the British dragoons.
Its floor was taken up, the ground covered with tan-bark, and the
window-sashes removed for this sacrilegious purpose. The French Huguenot
church remained in its original form one hundred and thirty years, until
1834, when it was taken down, the grounds sold, and its dead disinterred
and removed to other resting-places. In their native lands, the ashes of
the Huguenots would sometimes be dug up, burned, and scattered by
persecuting hands to the winds of the heavens; but in ours--Protestant
and more favored--their sainted dust, wherever buried, is watched and
preserved with pious care and affectionate fidelity. It would be a
pleasant but an impossible duty to trace the histories of thousands of
our most excellent New-Yorkers, whose pious ancestors worshiped God in
the old sanctuary of Du Saint-Esprit, and whose ashes reposed, in
Christian hope, alongside of its humble and venerable walls. But records
are scarcely to be found. Still we may love their characters and strive
to imitate their noble and generous virtues. Hallowed be those precious
memories!

The remains of many Huguenots repose among the innumerable dead of old
Trinity church-yard, that vast home of the departed; and where can be
found their memorials of honor, patriotism, and exalted piety.