Family-histories and genealogies : containing a series of ...

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handwriting of the best educated English settlers of the period, as is shown
by autographs in the Colonial Records of Connecticut 1636-1665 ; and
are unlike the autographs of early Dutch and Huguenot settlers of New
York, given in the second volume of O'Callaghan's " History of New
Netherland." Neither in the handwriting nor the spelling is there a trace
of anything continental. Nor is there any such trace in the baptismal
names, which are those found in our English Bible, and in common English
usage— Balthasar, Alice, Edward, Simon, Stephen, Mary, and Susannah.
We have made our investigations with more care, and make our state-
ments with more precision and detail, because the name De Wolf, in its
form and sound, has given rise to many theories, pointing to a continental
origin of our family, though no two branches of the family agree in any
one of them :
for instance, different branches of the descendants of
Balthasar have supposed that he was a Huguenot ; that he was Dutch ;
that he was German ; that he was a Jew ; one that he was a Pole ; and
one, giving his family-tradition in more detail, says : " I have always under-
stood that the origin of the De Wolf family was Russian—from Russia
into Germany, thence into Normandy, and from Normandy into England
with William the Conqueror !" We are ready to accept this tradition so
far as to believe that Balthasar's family was well established in England
before he came over with other English settlers ; though
they were with
little doubt of more or less remote continental ancestry, as were a great
part of the English people.^
Of Balthasar De Wolf and his wife AHce we find but two or three
' The writer inquired of the late Rev. Dr. Charles W. Baird, author of History of the Huguenot
Emigration to America, whether Balthasar De Wolf was probably a Huguenot. In his reply, dated Rye,
N. Y., May 14, 1885, he says :
"
Have j'ou not been misled by the prefix De, common to both French and
Dutch cognomens, and meaning, as you know, 'of or 'from' in the former language, and, as you
may not know, 'the' in Dutch? Thus you will find, in the Dutch nomenclature of old New York,
De Graffs, De Hooges, De Milts, De Riemers, and so on. . . . I have a strong impression that the
De Wolfs were Dutch, and I see no ground whatever for the surmise that they may have been of Hugue-
not extraction." Dr. Baird, knowing nothing of the facts concerning Balthasar De Wolf, of course
refers only to the form of the family-name.
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