Thus intimately, by a common faith, friendship, and interest, did the Huguenots unite themselves with the people of Holland, who, about this period, commenced the establishment of New-Netherland in America.  We have traced this union the more fully for the better understanding of our general subject.  The Walloons and Huguenots were, in fact, the same people—­oppressed and persecuted French Protestants.  Of the former, as early as the year 1622, several Walloon families from the frontier, between Belgium and France, turned their attention to America.  They applied to Sir Dudley Carleton, for permission to settle in the colony of Virginia, with the privilege of erecting a town and governing themselves, by magistrates of their own election.  The application was referred to the Virginia Company,[1] but its conditions seem to have been too republican, and many of these Walloons looked, toward New-Netherland, where some arrived in 1624, with the Dutch Director, Minuit.

[1:  Lond.  Doc. 1, 24.]

At first, they settled on Staten Island, (1624,) but afterward removed to Wahle Bocht or the ‘Bay of Foreigners,’ which has since been corrupted into Wallabout.  This settlement extended subsequently toward ‘Breukelen,’ named after an ancient Dutch village on the river Veght, in the province of Utrecht; so that Staten Island has the honor of having presented the first safe home, in America, and on her beautiful shores, to the Walloons or Huguenots.  The name of Walloon itself is said to be derived either from Wall, (water or sea,) or more probably, the old German word Wahle, signifying a foreigner.  It must be remembered that this is a part of the earliest chapter in the history of New-Netherland, which the ‘West-India Company’ now resolved to erect into a province.  To the Chamber of Amsterdam the superintendence of this new and extensive country was committed, and this body, during the previous year, had sent out an expedition, in a vessel called the ‘New-Netherland,’ ’whereof Cornelius Jacobs of Hoorn was skipper, with thirty families, mostly Walloons, to plant a colony there.’  They arrived in the beginning of May, (1623,) and the old document, from which we quote, adds: 

’God be praised, it hath so prospered, that the honorable Lords Directors of the West-India Company have, with the consent of the noble, high, and mighty Lords States General, undertaken to plant some colonies,’[2] ...  ’The Honorable Daniel Van Kriecke-beeck, for brevity called Beeck, was commissary here, and so did his duty that he was thanked.’

     [2:  Wassemaer’s Historie Van Europa, Amsterdam, 1621-1628.]