Jacques Caudebec was a member of a fairly well-to-do family in Bolbec, Pays de Caux, Normandy, France. He was born on May 31, 1664, the son of Guillaume Caudebec and Marie Lesueur. He was batized June 1, 1664 at Lintot, Pays de Caux, Normandy, France. As Protestants, the family was protected by a law known as the Edict of Nantes. The Protestant Huguenots were a small minority in France which was a Catholic country. In 1685, the King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, and many Huguenots were forced to flee the country or faced death if they did not convert. Caudebec and his sisters Nohemi and Marie fled to either Holland or England, leaving all their possessions behind. The sisters are found later living in London, England as members of the Huguenot Threadneedle Church.
Jacques and his then friend Pierre Guimar from Moëze, Saintonge, FR then sailed for America and landed in Maryland possibly in 1886. The ship on which they sailed is unknown. From there they moved on to New York where Jacques met members of the Hasbrouck and Provost families. Caudebec married Margaretta Provost, Guimar married Esther Hasbrouck. With members of the Swartwout family, they were encouraged to go up the Hudson River to what is now Kingston, then known as Roundout. From there they travelled with others, including a Swartwout, southerly along a natural low level valley to be the first settlers in what is now the Town of Deerpark (See topographic map.) They were also among the first in what is now Orange County. They were soon joined by Harmanus Van Inwegen to whom they gave some of their land. Van Inwegen was a strong and vigourous man who was needed to strengthen their defenses.
They had to be constantly ready for attacks from the Indians, other settlers and eventually the French and Indians from Canada and the British in the American Revolution. The first settlers soon sent Caudebec to the Governor of New York to obtain a patent to cover as much land as they needed. In 1697 the patent was granted for 1200 acres to the original settlers and included the best farmland in their section of the valley.
There is a Cuddebackville and a Huguenot in New York named for Cuddeback ancestors. Jacques Caudebec has a granite plaque in the Huguenot Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in honor of being one of the first Huguenot settlers in America. The original stone home still stands in Cuddebackville, New York.
It is the hope of Cuddeback Family, Inc. to someday own the home and establish a museum in honor of our family in the home. Information about the Cuddeback family is available in Caudebec in America by William Louis Cuddeback and Caudebec in France and England by Elwyn L. Simons. Caudebec in America is currently out of print. Visit (Amazon or Barnes and Noble for used copies. Caudebec in France and England may be purchased through the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
By Kenneth Durland Cuddeback, May 1979
Edited by Ann Elizabeth Marie Robitaille, April 2000
Further edited by "Jake" Jakoubek, September 2005.
An admirably prepared paper on the "Cuddeback Family" was read before the Historical Society Monday evening, February 11, 1935, by Clarence S. Cuddeback, of Syracuse. Note that this paper is dated in that it represents the state of knowledge concerning the ancestry of Jacques Caudebec prior to the publication of Simons' Caudebec in France and England.
History of the Cuddeback Family
"A most interesting and authentic book on the Cuddeback Family was written by William L. Cuddeback, M. D. of Port Jervis, N.Y. in 1919. He spent much time and money and even visited France for material for the book. Other facts in this history were taken from E. N. Leslie's History of Skaneateles, published in 1902.
"Jacob Caudebec, the emigrant, was born in 1666, in Normandy, northern France, in the town of Caudebec, located on the Seine River. It was a thriving commercial and manufacturing town. This section of France had been the battlefields of many wars back to the Roman invasion in 49 BC. The town of Caudebec was destroyed and rebuilt many times. It was then a seaport, but today it is noted for its old churches, ancient buildings, and is a popular summer resort of about 2000 population.
"The name Caudebec is of Norse origin; Kalt meaning cold and Bek meaning rivulet, Kaltbek (Caudebec) cold river. This is typical of St. Gertrude River, which flows down from the mountains and unites with the Seine at Caudebec.
"The Caudebecs were prosperous merchants and strong believers in the Protestant religion. At the beginning of the Reformation, Louis XIV of France, on October 17, 1685, revoked the "Edict of Nantes", which had permitted universal liberty of religious worship, and placed the Catholics in control. Many of the Protestant or Huguenots, as they were then called, fled from France because they were persecuted and their property destroyed. Among those to leave France in 1685, were Jacob Caudebec and Peter Gumaer, who became separated from their families. Failing to find them in Holland, they took ship for America and landed in Maryland. From there they went to New Amsterdam (New York City) and later to Kingston on the Hudson.
"Jacob Caudebec soon adapted himself to the different conditions of life in the new world and found employment in the family of a French Huguenot by the name of Benjamin Provost, a trader of New York and Kingston. In 1695 he married Marguerite Provost, daughter of his employer. Her brother, David Provost, was Mayor of New York in 1698-99.
"From Kingston to Port Jervis, on the Delaware River, is a natural valley between mountains. It is very similar to the Seine River flowing through France, and reminded the Caudebecs of their old home. A short distance north of Port Jervis, in this valley, Jacob Caudebec settled in about 1700 and raised his family of ten children. The place is now called Cuddebackville, and is on the Neversink River.
"For about 60 years they lived in peace with the Indians, until the French-Indian War in 1755 and the Revolutionary War in 1776, made life perilous and property uncertain. Houses were changed into forts, the Cuddeback "Stone House" was Fort Cuddeback, in charge of Capt. Abram Cuddeback, and was surrounded by a wooden stockade. It sheltered eleven families, totaling 113 persons, in the year 1778-79.
"After the Revolutionary War , peace again reigned in the fertile valley and the next generation, looking for new fields to conquer, began to scatter over New York and New Jersey. During a period of one hundred years, three generations of Cuddebacks lived in Orange county. Abraham A. Cuddeback, grandson of Jacob Cuddeback, the immigrant from France, hearing of the wonderful opportunities in Central New York, after the Indians had been driven out, left his home in Minisink, near Port Jervis, Orange County, on May 2, 1794, in a wagon, taking with him wife and six children, three yoke of Oxen, one two-year old colt and twelve cows. He was then forty years of age. They followed the old trail which their grandfather had used 100 years before, to Kingston, then to Albany and up the Mohawk River to Utica, which was then comprised of two buildings, and arrived at the outlet of Skaneateles Lake on June 14, 1794. He camped near what has since been known as the Furman Brook on West Lake St. near the E. Ruel Smith Property, where there was a spring of water and three Indian wigwams. There on the shore of the lake he constructed a raft of logs, loaded his two wheeled wagon and other things, and poled the raft along the shore to what was known as the Dr. Hurd place, and now owned by John C. Hazard, located on the ridge north of the present Skaneateles Country Club. Two of his children then drove the cattle and colt through the woods to the same location. Here he erected the first frame house in Skaneateles, clearing some woodland and raised wheat in 1796. He carried it to Albany on horseback and exchanged a pound of wheat for a pound of nails. There was no other settler in Skaneateles until the following fall.
"Abraham A. Cuddeback, later on, brought his father and mother from Orange County. They died and were buried on the farm, but when the Lake View Cemetery Was incorporated in 1830, they were removed to that place. Abraham's wife was Jane DeWitt. Her brother, Simeon DeWitt, was Surveyor-General of the State of New York and received his pay in land. He gave 600 acres to Abraham A. Cuddeback. "This section extended from the Lake shore west to the Onondaga county line."
"Of the thirteen children of the pioneer, six of them settled on farms on the west side of the lake within a few miles of the old homestead, and in each case, the farm was handed down from father to son for at least two generations.
"In tracing the children of Abraham A. Cuddeback, we find Esther, the oldest, married Richard Conklin, and their family of seven children settled around Owasco village. The next child, Isaiah, married three times and was the father of thirteen children. He settled on a farm, on the road parallel to West Lake Rd, that runs from Fords Corners to the R. M. Giles place. It is where Morris Baumgartner now lives. This farm was passed on to his son, Isaiah and next to his grandson, Frank L. Cuddeback, now in California. Isaiah Cuddeback's first child was DeWitt Clinton Cuddeback, and was no doubt born on the Baumgartner farm. After his marriage to Catherine LaFever, he and his family started on west with the pioneer spirit and first stopped at Pontiac, Michigan. From there he came north to Flint Township, and settled on a farm southwest of Flint, Michigan."