themselves.'

To Staten Islanders it must be a pleasant reminiscence, that among their
earliest settlers were these pious Waldenses.

Like their brethren in Utrecht, the descendants of the Huguenots on the
Island sometimes occupy the same farms which their pious ancestors
obtained more than a century and a half ago. The Disosways, the Guions,
the Seguines, on its beautiful winding shores, are well-known examples
of this kind. The Hollanders, Walloons, Waldenses, and the Huguenots
here all intermarried, and the noble, spiritual races thus combined,
ever have formed a most excellent, industrious, and influential
population. Judges, Assemblymen, members of Congress, and ministers,
again and again, in Richmond county, have been selected from these
unions. During the Revolutionary struggle, the husband of Mrs. Colonel
Disosway had fallen into the hands of the common enemy; she was the
sister of the well-known and brave Captain Fitz-Randolph, or Randell, as
commonly called, who had greatly annoyed the British. When one of their
officers had consented to procure her husband's release, if she would
persuade her brother to quit the American ranks, she indignantly
replied: 'If I could act so dastardly a part, think you that General
Washington has but one Captain Randolph in his army?'

The early history of some of the emigrants is almost the reality of
romance. Henri de La Tourette fled from La Vendee, after the Revolution,
and to avoid suspicion, gave a large entertainment. While the guests
were assembled at his house, he suddenly left, with his wife, for the
sea-coast. This was not far off, and reaching it, he escaped on board a
vessel bound for Charleston. The ship was either cast away upon the
shores of Staten Island, or made a harbor in distress. Here La Tourette
landed, and a long list of exemplary, virtuous people trace their origin
to this source, and one of them has been pastor to the 'Huguenot,' a
Dutch Reformed church on the Island, and is now a useful minister among
the Episcopalians of the Western States. A branch of this family still
exists at the chateau of La Tourette, in France, and some years since,
one of them visited this country to obtain the 'Old Family Bible.' But
he was unsuccessful, as the holy and venerable volume had been sent long
before to a French refugee in Germany. But few of such holy books can
now be found, printed in French, and very scarce; wherever met with,
they should he carefully perused