| |
This unique book examines two rural New York communities that were settled by Huguenots in the late-seventeenth century.
 |
Utilizes wills, census materials, manuscript sermons, church records, SPG letters, and private documents to explore church and family life |
|
Provides a fascinating insight into colonial America, the Atlantic world, and religious history |
|
Challenges the idea that Huguenots in North America abandoned French language and culture in favour of Anglo-Americanism |
|
A unique volume that follows on from other successful Sussex Academic Press Huguenot titles, Huguenot Heritage and The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange |
“Paula Wheeler Carlo has produced
a concise, richly detailed, and thoroughly researched account of
rural New York Huguenots that gives us a more nuanced understanding
of this group’s role in colonial America… Essential
reading for anyone studying the Huguenot experience in colonial
America, and an important reminder that much of rural colonial America
consisted of ethnic and religious communities that resisted, with
varying degrees of success, the forces of homogenization.”
Journal of American History
“In 1983 Jon Butler published
his groundbreaking study of the Huguenot migration to British North
America. His main argument was that the French refugees, who were
fewer than previously estimated, vanished wherever they settled
leaving no ethnic or religious mark on American history. Two decades
after the publication of this work a new wave of Huguenot scholarship
in the United States has challenged this thesis. Paula Carlo’s
Huguenot Refugees in Colonial
New York is part of this new
orientation in the historiography of the Refuge in North America.
… The originality of Carlo’s work lies in her comparative
study of two little known rural communities, New Paltz (partly Walloon
and Huguenot) and New Rochelle instead of the traditional focus
on urban refugee centres such as New York City, Boston, and Charleston.
The author follows the history of these settlements from their foundation
in the 1670s and 1680s until the Revolutionary War, which provides
a real historical perspective on these communities and allows her
to gauge to what extent Huguenot distinctive ethnicity became extinct.
… Using genealogies, probate and church records, tax lists,
and censuses, the author also presents a thorough socio-economic
and demographic study of these two highly literate communities over
four generations of refugees and their descendants, accompanied
by very useful tables, and devotes a chapter to the Huguenots’
testamentary practices. This type of work, which can be hindered
by a lack of sources especially in South Carolina, is a much needed
contribution to the historiography of North American Huguenot communities
which have rarely been studied in such detail. Like many other settlers
the Huguenots owned slaves and they did so also in the rural north.
Carlo devotes a chapter to Huguenot slave ownership in the two settlements
and to the position of the churches and pastors towards the Christianization
of the slaves. The Huguenots turned out not to be specifically benevolent
masters but they showed much less resistance to Christianizing slaves
in New York than in South Carolina.
… The book is richly illustrated with sixteen colour plates
and contains three interesting appendices (an inventory of Stouppe’s
sermons and two lists of New Paltz and New Rochelle Huguenots with
the number of slaves they owned). Carlo’s original and thorough
study of these two New York Huguenot communities is a welcome addition
to the growing – yet still small – body of academic
literature on the Refuge in British North America. Her thesis of
gradual and incomplete assimilation, which parallels findings in
South Carolina, is compelling.” Proceedings
of the Huguenot Society
“Carlo observes a gradual
process of acculturation in these tow rural areas – not a
quick assimilation – and bases her observation on the continued
use of French in the private sphere, such as manuscript sermons,
church records, and business and family records. … Chapters
on family structure, inheritance patterns (testators in both communities
adhered to French and Dutch practices rather than English), slaveholding,
and the run-up to the Revolution (both were pro-Independence) are
full of interesting detail that places these two communities squarely
into the context of other colonial communities, while also establishing
some differences.” De Halve Maen
“In 1983 Jon Butler published his
groundbreaking study of the Huguenot migration to British North
America. His main argument was that the French refugees, who were
fewer than previously estimated, vanished wherever they settled
leaving no ethnic or religious mark on American history. Two decades
after the publication of this work a new wave of Huguenot scholarship
in the United States has challenged this thesis. Paula Carlo’s
Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York is part of this new orientation
in the historiography of the Refuge in North America.
… The originality of Carlo’s work lies in her comparative
study of two little known rural communities, New Paltz (partly Walloon
and Huguenot) and New Rochelle instead of the traditional focus
on urban refugee centres such as New York City, Boston, and Charleston.
The author follows the history of these settlements from their foundation
in the 1670s and 1680s until the Revolutionary War, which provides
a real historical perspective on these communities and allows her
to gauge to what extent Huguenot distinctive ethnicity became extinct.
… Using genealogies, probate and church records, tax lists,
and censuses, the author also presents a thorough socio-economic
and demographic study of these two highly literate communities over
four generations of refugees and their descendants, accompanied
by very useful tables, and devotes a chapter to the Huguenots’
testamentary practices. This type of work, which can be hindered
by a lack of sources especially in South Carolina, is a much needed
contribution to the historiography of North American Huguenot communities
which have rarely been studied in such detail. Like many other settlers
the Huguenots owned slaves and they did so also in the rural north.
Carlo devotes a chapter to Huguenot slave ownership in the two settlements
and to the position of the churches and pastors towards the Christianization
of the slaves. The Huguenots turned out not to be specifically benevolent
masters but they showed much less resistance to Christianizing slaves
in New York than in South Carolina. The book is richly illustrated
with sixteen colour plates and contains three interesting appendices
(an inventory of Stouppe’s sermons and two lists of New Paltz
and New Rochelle Huguenots with the number of slaves they owned).
Carlo’s original and thorough study of these two New York
Huguenot communities is a welcome addition to the growing –
yet still small – body of academic literature on the Refuge
in British North America. Her thesis of gradual and incomplete assimilation,
which parallels findings in South Carolina, is compelling.”
Proceedings of The Huguenot Society
Drawing comparisons with the broader Huguenot diaspora, this book
reassesses the prevailing view that Huguenots in North America quickly
conformed to Anglicanism and abandoned the French language and other
distinctive characteristics in order to assimilate into Anglo-American
culture. Although the standard interpretation may still be true
for Huguenots in heterogeneous urban communities, it should be modified
for Huguenots in ethnically and religiously homogeneous rural settlements
like New Paltz and New Rochelle, where the process was more akin
to a gradual acculturation.
 |
| |
List of Contents to follow |
Publication Details
| |
ISBN: |
|
978-1-84519-059-0 h/b |
| |
|
|
|
| |
Page Extent / Format: |
|
324 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
| |
Release Date: |
|
March 2005 |
| |
Illustrated: |
|
Pictures of Colonial life, Huguenot churches and settlements |
| |
Hardback Price: |
|
£55.00 / $67.50 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
