6/21/26 - From Refugees to Patentees: The Migration Path of New Paltz's Founding French Families

They are names carved into the landscape of the Hudson Valley — DuBois, Bevier, Crispell, Hasbrouck — familiar to us as founders, landholders, and pillars of colonial life. But before they were patentees, they were refugees. Driven from their homelands by war, religious persecution, and political upheaval in seventeenth-century Europe, the French-speaking Walloon and Huguenot families who settled Hurley and New Paltz traveled a long and harrowing road before they arrived here. Ulster County Historian Eddie Moran retraces their migration paths across Europe and colonial North America — examining the displacement, resilience, and adaptation that brought them to a land already long inhabited, adding their chapter to Ulster County's deep story of arrival and belonging. You'll never read a historic marker the same way again.

Eddie Moran is the appointed Historian for Ulster County, NY. A lifelong resident of the Wallkill River Valley, he began his career as a tour guide at Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz while still a student at SUNY New Paltz, where he earned his B.A. in History in 2020. He managed historical interpretation full-time at Historic Huguenot Street beginning in 2022 before being appointed Ulster County Historian in September 2024. He brings a rare personal dimension to this subject: he is himself a descendant of New Paltz's founding French colonizers — which is to say, a descendant of the very refugees whose journey he will trace.

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