s of their industry and agricultural taste long remained;
to this day many of the pears retain their French names, and the region
is celebrated for its excellence and variety of this delicious fruit.
The Huguenots erected a church at Boston in 1686, and ten years
afterwards received as pastor a refugee minister from France, named
Diaille.[H] The Rev. M. Lawrie is also mentioned as one of their
pastors. But from official records we learn more of the Rev. Daniel
Boudet, A.M. He was a native of France, born in 1652, and studied
theology at Geneva. On the revocation, he fled to England, receiving
holy orders from the Lord Bishop of London. In the summer of 1686 he
accompanied the Huguenot emigrants to Massachusetts; and Cotton Mather
speaks of him as a faithful minister 'to the French congregation at New
Oxford, in the _Nipmog_ (Indian) counties.' This was New Oxford, near
Boston. He labored for eight years, 'propagating the Christian faith,'
both among the French and the Indians. He complains, as we do in our
day, of the progress of the sale of rum among the savages,'_without
order or measure_' (July 6, 1691). We shall learn more of him at New
Rochelle, where he removed, probably, in 1695, and could preach to both
English and French emigrants. Soon after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, Joseph Dudley, with other proprietors, introduced into
Massachusetts thirty French Protestant families, settling them on the
easternmost part of the 'Oxford tract.'[I]
Massachusetts, peopled in part by the rigid Protestant Dissenters,
naturally favored these new victims, persecuted by a church still more
odious to them than that of England. Their sympathies were deeply
excited by the arrival of the French exiles. The destitute were
liberally relieved, the towns of Massachusetts making collections for
this purpose, and also furnishing them with large tracts of land to
cultivate. In 1686 the colony at Oxford thus received a noble grant of
11,000 acres; and other provinces followed the liberal example. Every
traveler through New England has seen 'Faneuil Hall,' which has been
called the 'Cradle of Liberty,' and where so many assemblages for the
general good have been held. This noble edifice was presented to Boston,
for patriotic purposes, by the son of a Huguenot.
Much of our knowledge concerning the Huguenots of New York has been
obtained from the documentary papers at Albany. Some of the families,
before the revocation, as early as
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