Christian History Home > Issue 22 > To A Home in the Land of the Free
To A Home in the Land of the Free
The Waldensians in North America
Giuseppe Platene is pastor of the Waldensian Church of Angrogna, Italy, and vice-director of the weekly Waldensian magazine La Luce. | posted 4/01/1989 12:00AM
THE FIRST Waldensians in North America arrived in 1656. Having joined with recent Dutch emigrants who were settling “New Amsterdam,” these Waldensians were refugees from their native Piedmont after the terrible Piedmont Easter massacre of 1655.
Today there is inscribed on a plaque in Staten Island NY’s Borough Hall the words 1657 First Church Erected by Waldensians. Other witnesses are to be found at the Huguenot Church on Staten Island, where the names of Waldensian families occur in old inscriptions. One of these inscriptions records the work of Pastor David Jourdan de Bonrepos, who emigrated to America after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
Due to the lack of documentation it is hard to reconstruct the Waldensian emigration to the New World during the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1850 Mormon missionaries in Italy persuaded 72 persons of the Waldensian valleys to emigrate to Utah. Today hundreds of Mormons in Utah, Arizona, and California have Waldensian names.
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