Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/334

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HUGUET-LATOUR
HUIDEKOPER

prepared an expedition against Hugues; but he decreed conscription in the island, raised 15,000 men, armed the coast with floating batteries, and sent out privateers, which in two years captured over 150 merchant vessels. But they also attacked vessels of the United States, which complained to the French government. Hugues's corsairs were among the chief causes that brought about, in 1798, the rupture between the United States and France. In the spring of 1798 Hugues met an English invasion of 20,000 men under command of Gen. Abercrombie. The latter took Sainte-Lucie, but his army suffered such losses in the action that he could only hold his position. The directory, which had succeeded the convention, recalled Hugues, who left the government of the colony to Gen. Desfourneaux in December, 1798. In the following year Gen. Bonaparte appointed him governor of Cayenne, but gave him instructions to deal with the inhabitants in a milder way than he did in Guadeloupe. Hugues held that office ten years, till 12 Jan., 1809, when he signed a capitulation, and surrendered the colony to the English fleet. He was accused of incapacity and treason, and tried in France by a court-martial, which acquitted him (1814). In 1817 Hugues was sent again to Cayenne as special commissioner of Louis XVIII., and governed the colony for two years more. At the expiration of his term of office he remained as a private citizen in the colony, and devoted his time to his immense estate. In the beginning of 1826 he returned to France.


HUGUET-LATOUR, Louis A., Canadian author, b. in the province of Quebec about 1830. He has been identified with the cause of temperance for many years, and is distinguished as a naturalist. He was constituted a chevalier of St. Gregory the Great in 1877, received the medal of the Montreal natural history society in 1881, and the same year was appointed by the pope representative in Canada of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem. He is the author of "Annales de la temperance" (Montreal, 1854); and "Annuaire de Ville Marie."


HÜHNE, Bernhard, German navigator, b. in Heidelberg in 1547; d. in Nuremberg in 1611. He entered the Spanish service, and was chief pilot attached to the colony of New Spain in 1599. Philip III., believing in the fabulous strait of Anian, where legend placed an immensely rich city, and dissatisfied with the preceding explorations of Viscaino and Alarcon, ordered the Count of Monterey, governor of New Spain, to send out a new expedition. Monterey gave the mission to Hühne and Juan Fernandez, and they sailed from Acapulco in May, 1660, with two vessels, touching at Zalagua, where they separated. Juan Fernandez sailed to Cape Mendocino, and promised to wait there for Hühne, who resolved to enter the country and obtain information from the natives. But the Indians of California attacked the Spanish, killed a great number of them, and obliged Hühne to re-embark. He despatched a small schooner to Fernandez to call him back, and together they sailed for Acapulco, arriving in September. In March, 1661, Hühne sailed again, but was more cautious. He spent nine months at sea before sighting Cape San Sebastian, January, 1602, on the Bay of Monterey, where he resolved to winter. He succeeded in establishing friendly intercourse with the aborigines, and was soon convinced that the city of Anian was fabulous. Although the clever pilot could not realize the object of his mission, he nevertheless resolved to render it useful in some way, and he set to work to correct the chart made by Alarcon, and construct an exact one of the Gulf of California. He consumed two years in the work, and performed it so well that future navigators, using his charts, were able to go from Acapulco to Monterey in two months, when before ten months was considered a quick passage. The charts made by Hühne were in use for over a century. They were published in Acapulco in 1661, and reprinted in Lisbon (1667) and Seville (1670). The “Allgemeine Encyklopaedie” of Ersch and Grüber says he left an undiscovered manuscript.


HUIDEKOPER, Harm Jan, philanthropist, b. in Hoogeveen, Holland, 3 April, 1776; d. in Meadville, Pa., 22 May, 1854. After studying two years at a high-school in Crefeld, he came to the United States in 1796, and resided four years at Olden Barneveldt, now Trenton, N. Y. During four years following he was clerk in the office of the Holland land company at Philadelphia. On 1 Jan. of 1805 he took charge of the agency in what now constitutes the four counties of Erie, Crawford, Venango, and Warren, and by his judgment saved this part of the country from the disturbances that were experienced in western New York. Mr. Huidekoper organized the Unitarian church in Meadville, and issued, during two years, a monthly religious publication, "The Unitarian Essayist." He also purchased and gave to the Meadville theological school the building which it first used, and subsequently, by his subscription of $10,000, prompted the endowment of $50,000 that enabled it to employ two salaried professors. — His son, Frederic, b. in Meadville, Pa., 7 April, 1817, entered, in 1834, the sophomore class of Harvard, but had barely begun the next year's studies when failing eyesight forced him to leave. He worked four years on a farm, devoting ten minutes daily to study, travelled in Europe in 1839-'41, and after his return pursued a private course in theology in 1841-'3. At the request of a friend he agreed to take students, a plan which was enlarged by the formation, in 1844, of the Meadville theological school, in which he took gratuitous charge during five years of the New Testament, and from 1845 till 1877 of ecclesiastical history, being also librarian and treasurer of the school. In 1853 Mr. Huidekoper was consulted by Joshua Brookes, of New York, as to the benevolent application of some money. He sketched a plan, and received in answer a draft for $5,000, to which, six months later, an additional $5,000 was added, an amount that was subsequently augmented by a bequest of $10,000. The income of this fund (vested in the trustees of the Meadville theological school) has, since 1854, been applied, under the care of Mr. Huidekoper, chiefly in distributing nearly 3,800 small libraries to ministers, exclusive of 825 added from other sources. Mr. Huidekoper has also devoted much time during twenty years of his life to redeeming a square half-mile of his native town from unsightliness, substituting wide and beautiful streets, bordered by lawns. He was, moreover, active in laying out Greendale cemetery. A painless diminution of sight, beginning probably with illness in boyhood, has imposed upon him, since 1883, the need of a guide when in the street. His writings have, on many points, been regarded as presenting and proving entirely new views of ancient history. His argument for the gospels is new, and has been deemed unusually convincing. His works are "Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning Christ's Mission to the Underworld" (Boston, 1854); "Judaism at Rome, B. C. 76 to A. D. 140" (New York, 1876); and "Indirect Testimony of History to the Genuineness of the Gospels" (1879). He also had printed the "Acts of Pilate," that had been copied