ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Dutch Culture Area of the Mid-Hudson Valley by SOPHIA GRUYS HINSHALWOOD, Ph.D. Thesis Director; Professor John E. Brush Several existing studies focus on the establishment of culture hearths in Colonial North America and on the influence of the initial settlers on the cultural landscape which evolved. The three accepted culture hearths of what is now the eastern United States were the New England, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Eastern Pennsylvanian hearths. This study proposes the existence of a Dutch culture area in the Hudson Valley and questions the absolute dominance of the initial ethnic group of settlers proposed by the earlier studies. The major hypothesis presented is that a Dutch culture area existed through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was then supplanted or overwhelmed by the migration of New Englanders into the area and the diffusion of their culture throughout the Hudson Valley. Research focused on (1) Relics of Dutch culture in the existing landscape, (2) Historic founding and distribution of churches, (3) ethnic and racial population statistics, (4) Documents concerning early settlement. Field research centered on early housetypes and barns in the study area using the Canadian Inventory of Historic Buildings in order to isolate those building types and locations which are characteristic of the early Dutch culture and those which are products of the later New England settlers. Study of the distribution of early Dutch Reformed churches and Dutch toponyms and mapping of these items as well as the locations of Dutch houses and barns shows the existence of a distinct Dutch cultural landscape through the latter part of the eighteenth century. Analysis of lists of early settlers, census of freeholders, militia rolls and finally the First Census of the United States in 1790, shows the Dutch-Huguenot-German component of the early settlement. It also shows the late eighteenth century growth of English, Scots and Irish population as migration from these areas and from New Eng-land accelerated after the American Revolution. Changes from Dutch to English language worship in the Dutch Reformed churches and the establishment of Anglican, Presbyterian, Quaker and Congregational churches occurred with the in-migration of English speaking people. The houses and barns built after the Revolution are generally New England types as are the church buildings. Toponyms also reflect the change to English in a reduction of Dutch terms. Thus, the concept of the dominant influence of the initial settlers cannot be accepted without some qualifying statements.