Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York : Becoming American in the Hudson Valley

Drawing comparisons with the broader Huguenot diaspora, this book reassesses the prevailing view that Huguenots in North America quickly conformed to Anglicanism and abandoned the French language and other distinctive characteristics in order to assimilate into Anglo-American culture. Although the standard interpretation may still be true for Huguenots in heterogeneous urban communities, it should be modified for Huguenots in ethnically and religiously homogeneous rural settlements like New Paltz and New Rochelle, where the process was more akin to a gradual acculturation.