WALLOONS. Of these descendants of the ancient Gauls, of whom Ca.sar wrote Thorum omnium fortissimi sunt Belga-D (the bravest of all these [tribes] are the Belgians) we write only in their relations to American history. In modern geography, the people speaking the old French, or Romaic language, with many added elements, the Walloons (first so-called in Holland Dutch) inhabit the southern half of bi-lingual and di-ethnic Bel gium and portions of France, Luxembourg and Rhenish Prussia. The home of the Belgic Walloons being a tract of country which has been the eternal battle ground of Celt or Frank and Teuton, not being militarily de fensible, they have suffered from the invasions or Cesar, Alva and the German Emperor Wil liam of our day. When in 1567 the Spanish army entered with fire and sword, 100,000 of the Protestant people of the Belgic Nether lands fled to England. An equal or greater number were refugees in the Dutch Republic, —here called ((foreigners° (Walloons); where, besides several regiments of Walloon soldiers, 70 Walloon churches were formed, whose history is knovm. In Leyden, hundreds of these refugees who spoke French were neighbors of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England. Led by Jesse de Forest, they applied to King James of England for help to settle as a body in Virginia; but could get no en couragement, except as they would agree to scatter. When tire Dutch West India Com pany was formed, a new ship, the New Nether land, was freighted with seeds, cattle and other things necessary in a colony and Jesse de Forest's company of Walloons, that is, French speaking refugees from the Belgic Nether lands, toolc passage across the Atlantic. They were under the protection of the arnred ship Mackerel. Besides daily worship, song and prayer, these people had with them an officer of the Reformed C,''hurch (his title being °Comforter of the Side)) by whom four couples were joined in wedlock on the ship, which arrived in the Mauritius (Hudson) River in time to prevent a settlement by and to nullify the claims of the French. On Man hattan, which was named New Avesnes, eight families were left; several at the Walloon's Bocht, or Cove (the Wallabout), on the East River (Brooklyn); and others at the head of navigation in the Iroquois country (Albany); while the four newly-wedded couples were sent on a yacht around the Boompjes Hoelc.(or Little Tree Corner, now Bombay Hook) into the South, or Delaware River and settled at Gloucester, N. J. These \Valloons were the first real colonists or homemakers in the Middle States and the first to till the soil of New Netherland, introducing the peach, pear, quince and the Marguerite, flower or daisy.
The first white children born in any of the four States between Delaware Bay and Canada were their offspring. The Dutch women in New Netherland previous to 1624 were wives or kin of hshermen or fur traders, who were not farmers .or settlers; there being no mili tary occupation or civil government in New Netherland until 1624. After tire first large company of Dutch immigrants, nearly 300 in number, had arrived, tne first of several congregations of the Reformed Church in America was organized on Manhattan, with pastor, consistory and administration of tire sacrament, in 1628. During two generations the donunes, or pastors, were required to preach in French as well as Dutch. When New Netherland first received a civil govern ment, in 1624, Peter Minuit, who had been a church officer in the Walloon Church at Wesel, was appointed governor. Then the official name of Nova Belgica, or New Belgium, or what is now the known area of Middle States, then under one administration, was bestowed. In a few generations, the Walloons were swallowed up by intermarriage in the body of the Dutch; or, after 1685, among the Hugue' nots; but the first homemakers of our four Middle States were the same stock as the Walloons of 1914-18, who fled so numerously to Wales, England and Holland, because of the German invasion. At Amersfoort, in 1918, they erected a handsome edifice as a me morial of gratitude to the Dutch. The first white child born under the flag of the Dutch Republic in America, 6 June 1625, was Sarah, daughter of Simon de Rapallo, or in Dutch Ra pelje. Thousands of Americans, who imagine themselves descendants of the Huguenots from France, could trace their lineage direct from the Walloon refugees of 1567. In the old Belgic Netherlands and in Belgium almost every one of the movements for reform, or revolution, has been led by the Walloons. In Scott's novels, several of his °Flemings° were, as their language showed, Walloons. Consult Griffis, 'The Story of New Nether land' (1909) ; (Belgium the Land of Art) (new ed., 1919); Leslie's (History of Greater New York) (1898) ,• De Forest, (The De Forests of Avesnes' (1900); and De Forest, 'A Walloon Family in America) (2 vols., p. 705); Poujou, D. j., (Histoire et Influence des Eglises Wallonnes dans les PaEs-Bas) (1902).