Historical Notes of the Family of Kip of Kipsburg and Kip’s Bay, New York
By William Kip Excerpt

The De Kype family was originally settled for a long period near Alencon in Bretagne. The first of whom there is any notice in history is: I. Ruloff de Kype. In the sixteenth century, he was a warm adherent of the Guises, and took prominent part, in that section of the country, in the civil war between the Catholics and Protestants. On the triumph of the Protestants, under Conde, in 1562, his chateau was taken and burned, and he was forced to fly. He took refuge in the Low Countries with his three sons, w here they lived for several years under an assumed name. In 1569, with his son Henri, he reentered France, joined the army of the Duke of Anjou, and on the 13th of March, fell in the battle fought on the banks of La Charante, near Jarnac. By the care of his son, Jean Baptiste, who was a priest, he was buried in a small church in the neighborhood of Jarnac, where an altar tomb was erected to his memory, which was destroyed with the church during the French revolution, at the close of the last century. the inscription on the tomb mentioend him as ruloff de Kype, Ecuyer, and was surmounted by his arms, with two crests, one a game cock, the other a demi-griffin holding a cross, both of which crests have been used by different branches of the family in this country. He left issue: Henri, who after his father’s death, entered the army of one of the Italian princes where he spent his life; Jean baptiste, priest in the Church of Rome; Ruloff, of whom, next following. II. Ruloff had remained in the Low Countries, where he became a Protestant and settled at Amsterdam. He seems to have dropped from his name the French prefix De. He was born in 1544 and died in 1596, leaving issue: Hendrick, of whom next following. III. Hendrick (in Eng. Henry), b. in 1576. We copy the following account of him from Duyckinck: On arriving at manhood he took an active part in the ‘Company of foreign Countries, ’ an association formed for the purpose of obtaining access to the Indies, by a different route from that pursued by Spain and Portugal. They first attempted to sail round the northern seas of Europe and Asia; but their expedition, dispatched in 1594, was obliged to return on account of the ice, in the same year. In 1609, they employed Henry Hudson to sail to the westward, in the little Half Moon, with happier results.

Henry Kype came to New Amsterdam in 1635. He returned to Holland, but his sons remained, and rose to important positions as…

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