About the Authors:
David C. Major, PhD, and John S. Major, PhD, are brother. They are descended from David Demarest, the early French Huguenot settler in the middle Hackensack Valley who is the subject of this book. The Major brother are co-authors of 100 One-Night Reads: A Book Lover’s Guide (2001), co-editors of The Future of Africa (2003), and, with their elder brother William Demarest Major, co-authors of a biography of their father, William P. Major: A Bergenfield Life (1999). The Majors are also authors and editors of many books in their professional fields: natural resources and the environment for David, and East Asian history for John.

A Huguenot on the Hackensack explores the life and legacy of David Demarest, a seventeenth-century French Protestant who, in middle age, emigrated to New Amsterdam and became one of the earliest settlers of the Hackensack Valley. There he founded a prosperous family that for nearly three centuries retained local influence and high status before being eclipsed by post-WWII economic and demographic changes. Transcending the narrow genealogical antiquarianism and filial pietism of traditional family history, the authors carefully set Demarest and his descendants in the context of their times.