Nicholas Dupuy, First Settler of Shawnee

In seventeen twenty-seven, a Huguenot descendant named Nicholas Dupuy became one of the first European settlers in what is now Shawnee-on-Delaware in the Pocono Mountains. His family story ran three generations deep: his grandparents Nicholas and Catherine De Vos had fled religious persecution in France and settled in New Amsterdam. The younger Nicholas purchased three thousand acres from the Minsi band of the Lenape, including land along the river.

His settlement sat at a crossing of the Delaware River that travelers and traders depended on for decades. In the early seventeen fifties, a church was built nearby for the congregation that became the present-day Shawnee Presbyterian Church. Dupuy's settlement anchored European presence in the upper Delaware Valley through the colonial era.