The French

Although never large in numbers, French-speaking Protestants were an influential presence in almost every province in British America. Hundreds of Huguenots established communities at places such as New Paltz in New York in 1678 and Manakin town in Virginia in 1700. France's cession of Quebec to Great Britain following the Seven Years War, however, added new ethnic, religious, and security dimensions to the French presence with the introduction into the colonial population of an estimated 90,000 French Catholics.