The Founding of New Paltz, NY

In 1675 Abraham Hasbrouck joined his brother Jean and the small band of Huguenots living in Hurley N.Y. Some in the group knew one another while living in Mannheim (in the Palatinate region of Germany). Soon afterward this group was able to fulfill its 10-year dream for a French settlement of its own.

New Paltz was unique at its very inception. Five years before William Penn’s treaty with the Indians in what became Pennsylvania, this group of Huguenots first approached the Esopus Munsee Indians, the true owners of the land they desired. The purchase price of sturdy tools, good cloth, and horses, was hardly a bargain by Dutch or English standards.

The contract of sale, signed by five Esopus chiefs, and the confirmatory deed by 21 Esopus braves, preceded the royal (patent) grant given under the hand of British Governor Edmund Andros on September 29, 1677. All three documents are kept at the Huguenot Historical Society Museum.

The 12 Patentees built the “Redoute” (The DuBois House), required by the governor as “a place of Retreat and Safeguard upon Occasion”. But never, even during the troubled Revolutionary period, was this settlement in danger of attack by Esopus or any other tribe.

In 1678, the twelve Patentees and their families, numbering about 60, proceeded to their new community. Upon reaching their destination on the east bank of the Wallkill River, they built simple wood houses, which were replaced by stone dwellings in the early 1700’s. They named the place New Paltz in honor of Pfalz-am-Rhein (the German state including Mannheim) where they had found refuge from the persecutions of Louis XIV. The families owned the land in common, and by that arrangement the product of their labors went into the common store.

For the first fifty years the heads of the twelve families met in legislative and executive session to administer the affairs of New Paltz.

In 1728, with the community population increasing in number, the twelve men were elected by popular vote of all the property owners in the community. The council was called “DUZINE”, meaning twelve. They apparently exercised rather wide powers, so that their enactments had to be ratified by an Act of the Legislature and signed by Governor Clinton, particularly when the twelve families divided the common land into private ownership in 1785. The Duzine continued to function until 1826.