Read Ebook: The Lutherans of New York Their Story and Their Problems by Wenner George Unangst

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The congregation, unmindful of Stuyvesant's fulminations against all who taught contrary to the Acts of the Synod of Dort, secured as their minister in 1662 a student by the name of Abelius Zetskoorn, whom the authorities soon transported to a charge on the Delaware, without the violence, however, shown in the case of Gutwasser.

In 1664 the island was captured by the English and the Lutherans succeeded in obtaining a charter with permission to call a minister and conduct services in accordance with the teachings of the Augsburg Confession. But prior to 1664 or even 1648 there were individual Lutherans here, "their charter of salvation one Lord, one faith, one birth." In spite of persecution, even to imprisonment, they sang "The Lord's song in a strange land," and in simplicity of faith sowed the seed from which future harvests were to spring.

The little trading station at the mouth of the North River now numbered about 1,500 people. The church of "The Augustane Confession" was still without a pastor. For a generation they had striven under great difficulties to maintain their Lutheran faith. They were plain, simple people, but they had refused to be cajoled or driven to a denial of their convictions. Over against Stuyvesant, the most dominant personality of the new world, they waited patiently for the time when they might have their own pastor and might worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences.

At last, in 1669, they obtained a minister in the person of Magister Jacobus Fabritius who served the congregation in New York and also one in Albany. The new pastor sorely tried the patience of a longsuffering people. In church he manifested a dictatorial and irascible temper. At home he was constantly quarreling with his wife. These eccentricities interfered somewhat with his usefulness as a pastor. With increasing difficulty he administered his office until 1671 when he accepted a call to congregations on the Delaware. Here he seems to have repented of his ways, for he left an honorable record as a devoted pastor, and the historian is glad to forget the infelicities of his career on the North River.

His successor was Bernhardus Arensius, who came with a letter of recommendation from the Consistory of Amsterdam. He is described as "a gentle personage and of a very agreeable behavior."

Those were troublous times in which he conducted his ministry. The war between the Dutch and the English caused a repeated change of government, but for twenty years he quietly and successfully carried on his pastoral work in New York and in Albany. He died in 1691 and the Lutheran flock was again without a shepherd. For the rest of the century appeals to Amsterdam for a pastor were all in vain.

In the Eighteenth Century 1701-1750

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the population of Manhattan Island had increased to 5,000 souls, chiefly Dutch and English. These figures include about 800 negro slaves. The slave trade and piracy were at this time perfectly legitimate lines of business.

For ten years the Lutherans had been without a minister. In 1701 they invited Andrew Rudmann to become their pastor. He had been sent by the Archbishop of Upsala as a missionary to the Swedish settlements on the Delaware. Rudmann accepted the call, but after a severe illness, as the climate did not agree with him, he returned to Pennsylvania, where in 1703 he ordained Justus Falckner to be his successor in New York.

Falckner was a graduate of Halle. It was a kind Providence that made him pastor of the Lutherans in New York at this time. Events had happened and were still happening in Europe that were destined to make history in America.

Germany, paralyzed by the results of the Thirty Years' War, and hopelessly divided into a multitude of political fragments, had become the helpless prey of the spoiler. The valley of the Rhine was ravaged from Heidelberg to the Black Forest. To this day, after more than two centuries, the ruins may still be traced. Upon the accession of the Catholic House of Neuburg to the throne of the Palatinate the Protestants were subjected to intolerable persecution. Their churches and schools were taken from them. Frequent raids were made upon the helpless border lands by the armies of Louis the Fourteenth. In a time of peace the Lutheran house of worship in Strassburg was wrested from its owners and transformed into a Catholic cathedral.

This devastation of the Rhine Valley caused an extensive emigration by way of London to New York. In the winter of 1708 Pastor Kocherthal arrived with the first company of Palatine exiles. In succeeding years many others followed, most of them settling on the upper Hudson and in the Mohawk Valley, but some of them remaining in New York.

The inhuman treatment which they received during the voyage, followed by hunger and disease, decimated their ranks. Of the 3,086 persons who set sail from London only 2,227 reached New York. Here they were not permitted to land, but were detained in tents on Governor's Island, where 250 more died soon after their arrival.

One of the men thus detained was destined to take a prominent place in the subsequent history of his countrymen, Johann Conrad Weiser. His descendants down to our own day have been filling high places in the history of their country as ministers, teachers, soldiers and statesmen. His great-grandson was the Speaker of the first House of Representatives of the United States. Another great-grandson, General Peter Muehlenberg, was for a time an assistant minister in Zion Church at New Germantown, N. J. He accepted a call to Woodstock, Virginia, where at the outbreak of the Revolution he startled his congregation one Sunday by declaring that the time to preach was past and the time to fight had come. Throwing off his ministerial robe and standing before them in the uniform of an American officer, he appealed to them to follow him in the defence of the liberties of his country. He became a distinguished officer in the army and subsequently rendered good service in the civil administration of the new republic.

Among the Palatine immigrants stranded on Governor's Island, unable to follow their sturdier companions to the upper part of the Hudson Valley, were widows, elderly men and 80 orphans. One of these orphans was Peter Zenger, who was apprenticed to William Bradford, at that time the only printer in the colony. When he grew up, he became the editor of The Weekly Journal, which made its first appearance on November 5th, 1733. Washington at this time was not yet two years old. Zenger was one of the earliest champions of American liberty. His arrest and imprisonment, his heroic defence and final acquittal, are among the milestones of American history and are a contribution to the story of New York of which Americans of German descent may well be proud.

It was a large parish to which Falckner ministered. There were no Home Mission Boards in those days. The New York pastor had therefore to care for many outlying stations. His diocese included Hackensack, Raritan, Ramapo and Constable Hook in the south, and Albany, Loonenburg and West Camp in the north. After the death of Kocherthal he visited regularly, not only the Dutch congregations of Claverack, Coxackie and Kinderhook, but also such German settlements as East Camp, Rhinebeck, and Schoharie.

New York itself was not neglected during these missionary journeys. Readers conducted the service while he was away. Such notices as "There will be no church today, the minister is out of town," did not appear on his bulletin board.

The care of a parish 150 miles in length left but little time for literary work, but in order that his people might be informed on the subject of their church's faith as distinguished from that of their Calvinistic neighbors, he wrote a book on the essential doctrines of the Lutheran confession. It was published by William Bradford, New York, 1708.

He must have been a pious man and a winning personality. The entries in the book recording baptisms and other ministerial acts abound in accompanying prayers for the spiritual welfare of those to whom he had ministered.

For twenty years he served the churches of New York and the Hudson Valley. When and where he died we know not. Early in 1723 he was in New York and in Hackensack. In September of the same year there is a record of a baptism at Phillipsburg . And then no more. "He was not, for God took him."

Falckner's successor, Berkenmeyer, a native of Lueneburg, arrived in 1725. He brought with him books for a church library and also funds for a new building, contributed by friends in Germany, Denmark, and London. The "old cattle shed" on the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector Street was torn down and a stone building erected which was dedicated in 1729 and named Trinity church.

The parish which Berkenmeyer inherited from Falckner, extending from New York to Albany, and including many Dutch and German settlements on both sides of the river, proved to be a larger field than he could cultivate. He therefore sent to Germany for another minister, and resigning at New York, took charge of the northern and more promising part of the field, making his home at Loonenburg , on the Hudson. For nineteen years he labored in this field. He died in 1751.

Berkenmeyer was a scholarly man, a faithful minister, and an impressive personality. He belonged to a different school from that of his great contemporary, Muehlenberg, and the rest of the Halle missionaries, and his correspondence with them frequently savored of theological controversy.

His successor in New York was Knoll, a native of Holstein, who spent eighteen years of faithful work in Trinity church under trying circumstances. He had to preach in Dutch to a congregation that had become prevailingly German. There was a growing dissatisfaction among the people. During the first half of the century Dutch influence gradually declined and German grew stronger. The ministers were all of them German, although they preached chiefly in Dutch, with occasional ministrations in German. At last the Germans, feeling the need of ampler service in their own language, took advantage in 1750 of the presence of a peripatetic preacher and instituted the first "split" in the Lutheran church of this city by organizing Christ Church. Knoll resigned soon after and removed to Loonenburg, where he again became the successor of Berkenmeyer.

In the Eighteenth Century 1751-1800

The resignation of Knoll and the difficulties of the mother congregation were the occasion of calling to New York the most distinguished minister the American Church has ever had.

Henry Melchior Muehlenberg came to America from Halle in 1742 to minister to the congregations in and near Philadelphia. The disordered condition of the American churches opened a wide field for his administrative ability, and for the rest of his life, in addition to his pastoral activity, he accomplished a great task in the planting and organization of churches. He is rightly called the Patriarch of the Lutheran Church in America.

In response to an urgent appeal, Muehlenberg came over from Pennsylvania in 1751 and assumed the pastorate of Trinity church. Although he spent but a short time in 1751 and again in 1752 on the ground, he was for two years pastor of the mother church. His was a fruitful ministry. He succeeded to a considerable extent in reconciling the warring elements in the congregation, not only by his gifts as a preacher and spiritual leader, but also by his ability to preach in Dutch and in English as well as in German.

The Episcopalians, who worshipped in the Trinity Church on the opposite corner, complained of the stentorian tones in which he delivered his sermons.

The congregation continued to be Dutch, although Weygand preached also in German and in English as occasion required. For the use of his English congregations he published in 1756 a translation of German hymns that had appeared in England under the title, "Psalmodia Germanica."

From 1750 to the time of the American Revolution we had two Lutheran churches in New York, the German Christ church, popularly known as "The Old Swamp Church," on Frankfort Street, and the Dutch Trinity church on Broadway and Rector Street.

In the Swamp church the first preacher, Ries, remained for a year. He was followed in quick succession by Rapp, Wiessner, Schaeffer, Kurz, Bager and Gerock. Only the last named served long enough to identify himself with local history. He was followed by Frederick Muehlenberg, a son of Henry Melchior, an ardent patriot, who had expressed himself so freely in regard to English rule that when the British army marched into New York in 1776 he found it expedient to retire as quickly as possible to Pennsylvania. Here he labored in several congregations; as supply or as pastor, until 1779, when the exigencies of the times compelled him to take an active part in the political affairs of the country.

The partial reconciliation that had been brought about by Muehlenberg between the Dutch and the German congregations was occasionally disturbed by a pamphletary warfare conducted by their respective pastors, Weygand and Gerock.

Weygand died in 1770. He was succeeded by Hausihl , a native of Heilbronn, who had served congregations in Maryland and in eastern Pennsylvania. Tradition reports that he was a brilliant preacher of distinguished appearance and of courtly manners. He succeeded in maintaining a large congregation.

But a serious change was going on in the church in the matter of language. In spite of the secession in 1750 other Germans kept coming into the Broadway church to such an extent that they outnumbered the Dutch eight to one, and finally the use of the Dutch language in the Lutheran Church of New York came to an end. Houseal had the distinction of conducting the obsequies at the preparatory service on Saturday, November 30, 1771, and at the administration of the Lord's Supper on the following day.

But the death of the Dutch language by no means put an end to the language difficulties of our Lutheran ancestors. In the midst of the original contestants a new set of combatants had sprung up in the persons of the children of both parties. These spoke neither Dutch nor German. They understood English only and demanded larger consideration of their needs.

Events, however, were impending which soon gave the people something else to think about and caused a postponement of actual hostilities for another generation.

The church on Broadway was destroyed by fire in 1776, and was never rebuilt. The congregation worshipped for a time in the Scotch Presbyterian Church on Cedar Street.

The American Revolution broke out. On political questions our ancestors differed almost as widely as do their successors on synodical questions. Some of them were for George the Third, others were for George Washington. In this respect, however, they were not unlike other inhabitants of New York.

Frederick Muehlenberg, the pastor of the Swamp Church, was an ardent patriot. At the beginning of the war, as we have seen, he fled to Pennsylvania.

During the war the services were conducted by the chaplains of the Hessian troops. The Hessians were good church-goers and also generous contributors, so that the financial condition of the congregation at this time was greatly improved.

Houseal, the pastor of Trinity Church, was a tory, and when in 1783 the American troops marched into New York, he with a goodly number of his adherents removed to Nova Scotia and founded a Lutheran church in Halifax.

Both churches were now without pastors. Tribulation must have softened the spirits of the two contending congregations, for when Dr. Johann Christoph Kunze came to this city from Philadelphia in 1784, he became pastor of the reunited congregations, worshipping in the Swamp Church.

Before closing this chapter and taking up the account of Kunze's pastorate, let us follow the steps of Frederick Muehlenberg, the former pastor of the Swamp Church. We recall his unceremonious flight from New York. We cannot blame him. The British had threatened to hang him if they caught him.

We remember too that in Pennsylvania he was called upon to take an active part in political affairs. He was a member of the Continental Congress, also a member of the legislature of Pennsylvania and Speaker of the Assembly. He was President of the Convention which ratified the Constitution of the United States.

Thirteen years have passed since he left New York. It is A. D. 1789. New York was just beginning to recover from the disastrous years of the Revolution during which the British troops occupied the city. The population had sunk from 20,000 to 10,000 in 1783, but by this time had risen again to 30,000. The people were getting ready to celebrate the greatest event in the history of the city, the inauguration of the first President of the American Republic. Preparations were made to honor the occasion with all possible ceremony. Great men had gathered from all parts of the country. But to the older members of the Swamp Church there was doubtless no one, not even Washington himself, who stood higher in their esteem and affection than the representative from Pennsylvania, the Reverend Frederick Muehlenberg. And when a few days later the erstwhile German pastor of the Swamp Church was elected Speaker of the first House of Representatives of the United States of America, none knew better than they that it was only a fitting tribute to the character and abilities of their former pastor.

Kunze's is one of the great names on the roll of our ministers. He was a scholar, a teacher, a writer, and an administrator of distinction. Trained in the best schools of Germany, when he arrived in America in 1770, he at once took high rank among his colleagues in Philadelphia. Besides his work as a minister he filled the chair of Oriental and German languages in the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1784 he accepted a call to New York. He did this partly in the hope of establishing a Lutheran professorship in Columbia College. He accepted a call to the chair of Oriental languages in Columbia. He was also a regent of the university.

Kunze was not only an able man, he was also a man of deep piety, a qualification not altogether undesirable in a shepherd of souls. His writings indicate that in his preaching and catechization he strove not to beat the air but to win souls to a personal experience of salvation.

While it is doubtful whether he would find admission to some of the most orthodox synods of our own day; he was comparatively free from the latitudinarian tendencies which had been brought over from Germany during the last quarter of the century.

Along with General Steuben and other influential citizens he founded, the German Society, an association which is still an important agency in the charitable work of this city.

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