A Huguenot on the Hackensack is not a genealogy but a historical narrative about the life and times of David des Marets (Demarest), his European origin, and his settlement in New Netherland, first at New Harlem and later on the French Patent in in Bergen County, New Jersey. It also contains some material on his descendants through the Revolutionary War and into the early nineteenth century. Mary and William Demarest wrote a family history in 1938, and Voorhis D. Demarest wrote second and third editions in 1964 and 1971, both published by The Demarest Family Association. The mother of the authors of A Huguenot on the Hackensack, who are brothers, was a Demarest. Both were raised in the area of the old French Patent, near Dumont, New Jersey.
A Huguenot on the Hackensack does not provide the reader with any information about David Demarest other than what has already been uncovered in Europe, and that is very little. The first, and most important, of those records is of David's 1643 marriage in the Walloon Church in Middleburg, Zeeland, The Netherlands (Walloons were French Protestants from the area of present-day Belgium who were driven into exile by the Spanish). The record indicates that David's father's name was Jean des Marets and that David's place of origin was Beauchamp, presumably a place in the province of Picardy, France. His wife was called Marie Sohier.
Additional baptismal records are in Middleburg and in Mannheim, Germany, where the family moved about 1650. Other persons in the records have the same surname, but their relationship to our David Demarest has not yet been established. The family stayed in Mannheim until about 1663, when they immigrated to New Netherland and settled in the village of New Harlem among other French-speaking Huguenots and Walloons. David's time at New Harlem is well-documented in church, legal, village, and property records and was written about in James Riker's Revised History of Harlem, published in 1904 after Riker's death. Unfortunately, these records do not reveal David's personality.
David Demarest recieved the deed to the French Patent on the Hackensack River on June 5, 1677, but he did not move his family there until the following year. Many of his descendants lived on this track of land until the first half of the twentieth century, but housing developments in the nineteenth century had reduced the family to a minority of the population. The area now encompasses present-day Bergenfield, Dumont, and Haworth, New Jersey, and is bordered on the west by the Hackensack River.
Because so few records exist, especially in Europe where David Demarest lived, the authors have had to conjecture as to David's activities, based on the history of the Huguenots and their activities in Mannheim and other places. As a result, the book reads more like a history of these places.
This attractive book has 178 pages of text, including maps and illustrations. It includes several appendixes that discuss the Demarest surname, David's father, David's birthplace, records, and the Demarest house on the French Patent as well as a glossary of terms. There are extensive endnotes and a bibliography. The book will particularly appeal to David Demarest's descendants and to persons interested in the activities of Huguenots in Middleburg, Mannheim, New Harlem, and The French Patent in Bergen County, New Jersey.
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