The Bevier Family
All research to date has failed to uncover the ancestry of Louis Bevier. This
is not uncommon in the study of New Paltz Patentees. The records which may have
at one time existed were either destroyed by fire by officials in France during
the Huguenot persecutions, or else members of the families themselves chose to
eliminate all evidence of their ties with France.
There is evidence of a family of Beviers twenty miles from Speyer, in the
German Palatinate, in 1664. It is possible that this was the same group of
Beviers, as we know that Louis married his wife, Marie LeBlanc, in Speyer in
1673.
Louis may have joined the group of patentees in the summer of 1677; he and
his wife and family settled in New Paltz with the others in 1678. They may have
built a log cabin until the stone and lumber had been gathered to build a more
permanent structure. The last five of their eight children were born during the
first years of the settlement. Louis’s wife Marie died before the stone house
was completed, leaving him with five sons and a daughter. In 1714, Louis was
taxed at 350 pounds, the largest amount on the New Paltz tax list.
His son Louis married the daughter of Jean Hasbrouck , the Patentee. The
couple moved to Marbletown and lived in the house incorporated into the Bevier
House, now used as the headquarters of the Ulster County Historical Society. His
sons Jean and Abraham also removed to Wawarsing and Marbletown while his
daughter Esther maintained the household for her father and her brother Andries,
who was described as "simple." When Esther married in 1714 she made a
home for Andries as well. Her brother Samuel and his family moved into the
homestead to live with their father.
The Patentee died in 1720. He left the house to his son Samuel, saying in his
will that "he has moved and come to dwell with me." He is said to have
been buried in the churchyard on the Street of the Huguenots beside his wife
Marie. A memorial stone now marks the place where he is thought to have been
buried.
