and French Huguenots followed these noble streams. Their descendants now enjoy the rich and glorious patrimony secured by the industry, frugality, and piety of their ancestors. A copy of their treaty with the Indians exists, and was exe- cuted May 26, 1677. They were three days on their journey from Kingston to New Paltz. Soon, however, they selected a more elevated site upon the banks of the beautiful Wallkill, where the ancient village now stands. Kingston was then their only trading village. The French church, of which Louis DuBois was the first elder, was established in 1683. For fifty years the language they used was French; subsequently for seventy years succeeded by the Low Dutch ; since the beginning of the nineteenth century Eng- lish has been their church vernacular. Rev. Mr. Dallie, from New York, visited New Paltz, January 26, 1683, and occasionally conducted services for them. Their then house of worship was a stone edifice, where they worshipped eighty years, when it was demolished. . . . The Huguenots finally, by intermarriages and intercourse with the Dutch, adopted their language, manners, and customs, and finally gave up their French church and accepted and joined with the Re- formed Dutch denomination, and worshipped with the Dutch in the same church edifice. Digitized by Microsoft® Chapter XXVIII Saugerties and its Neighbours IN old descriptions of county boundaries the Hmits of Ulster are set at Murderer's Creek on the south, and Sawyer's Creek on the north. The Sawyer's Creek, or Sawkill of local maps, was the scene of an unaccountable activity on the part of a man whose name, antecedents, residence, mode of life, and fate are all unknown, yet from whom a populous town derives its appellation. The "Little Sawyer," who established himself on the bank of a stream some ten miles above Kingston and antedated the earliest set- tlers whose names are recorded, has been referred to in old accounts as de Zaagertje and his mill as Zaar- gertje's, of which Saugerties is a simple corruption. What the object of the sawyer's coming was, for whom his logs were sawn, or where they were shipped, are questions to which no answers have been suggested. The Indians, in a transaction the record of which was ofificially preserved, acknowledged definitely that they had sold and conveyed to this mysterious man a tract of several thousand acres of land on the banks of the 471 Digitized by Microsoft® 472 The Hudson River stream, but he was never known to have had the pur- chase confirmed by royal grant. In course of time this region, well watered, fertile, and abounding in game, attracted settlers. The pleas- ant meadows that bordered the mouth of Esopus Creek drew, first of all, Cornelius Lambertsen Brink, who built a stone house at the junction of the Platte- kill and Esopus Creek, in witness whereof the house stands to this day. There are also descendants of the pioneer Brink, in the seventh and eighth generations, whose filial piety keeps his memory green. Brink had been a prisoner among the Indians after the horrible Esopus massacre in 1663 ; but, with twenty- two fellow- captives, he managed to escape from the hands of the savages. A few other hardy Dutch frontiersmen took up land between the great Hardenbergh patent and the river. A large holding to the north of Saugerties was known as FuUerton's tract, upon which afterwards the West Camp of the Palatines was established. This at that time was included in the county of Albany, of which the southern boundary was then Esopus Creek. North of Saugerties were fruitful plantations of maize, cultivated by the Indians, from which, at a time when the savages had assumed a hostile attitude, some white men took a quantity of corn. But it may be said that the people of Saugerties generally escaped broils with their redskin neighbours. As early as 1618, a treaty was made between one Eelkins, com- mander of the trading-post at Albany, and the repre- Digitized by Microsoft® Saugerties and its Neighbours 473 sentatives of the Five Nations, by which the latter pledged themselves to friendship for the white men, and it is stated that that treaty was never broken. The Indians that harassed Kingston and other set- tlements, tomahawking the men and carrying away women and children, were of the Esopus and Catskill tribes, who finally allied themselves with the Mohegans against their greatly dreaded enemy, the Mohawks. We read of the subjugation of the Mohegans and their allies by the Mohawks and the establishment of their overlordship or suzerainty, and we can understand how the latter compelled the adversaries of the Dutch to surrender prisoners that they had taken. Near the beginning of the eighteenth century, at the same time that a purchase (elsewhere referred