HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 239

or Jan Mecklenburg became Johannes Megapolensis ; Evert Willemse Bogaert became Everardus, Bogardus; Jan Doris Polheem. became Johannes Theodoras Polhemius. The last was the founder of the Polhemus family of Brooklyn. The records here show that he was a minister at Meppel, in the province of Drenthe, and in 1637 went as such to Brazil under the auspices of the West India Com pany, whence he went to Long Island. Samuel Dries (who, by the way, was an Englishman, but who graduated at Leyden) was named Samuel Drisius. It may, therefore, be set down as a general rule, that the names of Dutch families ending in us have been thus latinized.

There were many persons who emigrated from Holland who were of Gallic extraction. When the bloody Duke of Alva came into the Spanish Netherlands in 1567, clothed with despotic power over the provinces by the bigoted Philip H., more than 100,000 of the Protestants of the Gallic provinces fled to England, under the protection of Queen Elizabeth, and to their brethren in Zeeland and Holland. They retained their language, that of the ancient Gauls, and were known in England as Walloons, and in Holland as Waalen, from the name of their provinces, called Gaulsche, or, as the word is pronounced, Waalsche provinces. The number of fugitives from religious persecution was increased by the flight of the Protestants of France at the same time, and was farther augmented, five years later, by the memorable massacre of St. Bartholomew. When the West India Company was incorporated, many of these persons and their descendants sought further homes in New Netherland. Such were the founders of the families of Rapelye, Cortelyou, Dubois, De Bevoise, Duryea, Crommelin, Conselyes, Montague, Fountain, and others. The Waalebocht, or Walloon's Bay, was so named because some of them settled there.

“In regard to Dutch names proper, it cannot fail to have been observed that they are of the simplest origin. They partake of the character of the people, which is eminently practical. The English, and, in fact, all the northern nations of Europe, have exhibited this tendency, more or less, in the origin of family designations, but none of them have carried it to so great a degree as the Dutch. We have in our country, both in Dutch and English, the names of