We begin another year of the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge. I originally planned to participate only occasionally, joining in when a prompt particularly interested me, but it just so happened that the very first prompt sparked an idea.
Many of the colonial ancestors we learn about—and are often taught to revere—were people of their time. As the New World was settled, land was taken from Indigenous peoples, and slavery was an accepted practice. In telling these stories, we try to acknowledge positive contributions while also confronting the realities of the past, rather than hiding its warts away. We look to the ideals, but we also learn from the errors. With that in mind, I turn to the story of my 8th-great-grandmother, Catherine Matthyse Blanchan.
Catherine was born on October 27, 1637, to Mattheus and Magdeleine Blanshan in Armentières, Artois, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France (then part of French Flanders, sometimes described as Belgian territory). As Huguenots, the family moved in search of religious freedom, eventually settling in Mannheim. Mannheim lies in the Palatinate (Pfalz), and it was there that Catherine met and married Louis DuBois, also from French Flanders, on October 10, 1655. In 1660, they emigrated to New Amsterdam with two of their sons, Abraham and Isaac. The couple ultimately had twelve children, eight of whom lived past infancy.
The DuBois family was part of the migration into Ulster County, and in 1663 their settlement was attacked by the Esopus Indians. Catherine and three of her children—though it is unclear which ones, as they then had four children, with Jacob and Sarah having been born in the colonies—were taken captive along with other women and children. After some time in captivity, they were to be killed, but according to family tradition, they began singing Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion” (King James Version). Perhaps they were thinking of their own captivity. Their captors, perhaps charmed by the music, relented long enough for a rescue party, which included Catherine’s husband Louis, to locate them and secure their release.
After hearing this story, I became curious and began to dig into what song they might have been singing. As Reformed Protestants, these Huguenots were restricted in the types of music permitted in worship, though congregational singing was encouraged. Following John Calvin’s desire to emulate the practices of the early Christians, they sang only texts found in Scripture—specifically, the Psalms, often described as the songbook in the middle of the Bible. To support worship, composers set the Psalms to music, resulting in the Genevan Psalter. Some tunes were newly composed, while others may have adapted melodies already in use. From this tradition comes the well-known “Old Hundredth,” still widely used in worship today. Given this context, it is likely that the captives sang a tune from the Genevan Psalter, “Estans assis aux rives aquatiques.”
A modern English translation reads:
Along the streams of Babylon, in sadness
We sat and wept, rememb’ring Zion’s gladness,
And on the willows there we hung our lyre,
For there our captors did our songs require;
While we lamented, joy and mirth they wanted.
“Sing for us one of Zion’s songs!” they taunted.
What became of Catherine and her children after their release? She and Louis went on to have eight more children, continuing their biblical naming pattern. In addition to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Sarah, they had David, Solomon, Rebecca, and Rachel. Fourteen years after the conflict with the Esopus, Louis—nicknamed “Louis the Walloon”—along with some of his sons and others, received a patent and purchased land from the Esopus, founding the village of New Paltz. The village was named for a place of refuge familiar to them, and today it commemorates its Huguenot heritage through the Huguenot Street Historic District.
Catherine outlived Louis and, after his death at age seventy, married another Huguenot, Jean Cottin. Reflecting the complexities of colonial America, the DuBois household included enslaved individuals. However, at her death in 1713, Catherine’s will called for the manumission of her two enslaved people. Her family went on to include many notable descendants, among them the scholar W. E. B. Du Bois, whose lineage traces back to a Loyalist descendant of Louis and Catherine who received land in the Bahamas after the American Revolution.
Here, then, is a complicated history—and a lesson in perseverance. Through her faith under extreme stress and her actions later in life, Catherine lived a remarkable life and remains someone we can admire.
Photos:
DuBois Fort: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93550776 from Ralph Le Fevre, History of New Paltz, New York and its old families (from 1678 to 1820): including the Hugenot pioneers and others who settled in New Paltz previous to the revolution, Fort Orange Press, 1903.
Pidoux, Pierre, Le Psautier Huguenot du XVIe Siècle, Edition Baerenreiter, 1962. https://archive.org/details/lepsautierhuguen01pido/mode/1up
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