the century. The descendants of the Dutch families had all become
English. The need of English had been met in part by the elder
Muehlenberg and his successors, Weygand and Hauseal, in Trinity Church,
doubtless also by Frederick Muehlenberg in the Swamp Church.
After the, Revolution (1784) the United Congregations certainly made
some provision for English although it was inadequate. In 1794 the
younger people petitioned for occasional services in a language which
they could understand. Dr. Kunze himself made some attempts to handle
the English, but his faulty pronunciation so amused the young people
that he gave it up. He appointed a young man by the name of Strebeck to
assist him in ministering to the English members of the congregation.
Strebeck at this time was a Methodist, although he had been confirmed
in a Lutheran Church in Baltimore. Under Kunze's influence he again
joined the Lutherans.
"A Hymn and Prayer Book for the use of such Lutheran Churches as use the
English language," published by Kunze in 1795, and another by Streback
[sic] in 1797, show that serious efforts were made to meet the wants of
the English-speaking members.
Finally, on June 25th, 1797, a separate congregation was organized
entitled The English Lutheran Church in the City of New York. (This was
the corporate name, although it was subsequently known as Zion Church.)
Strebeck was chosen pastor. Land was rented on Pearl Street opposite
City Hall Place and a frame church was built.
The incorporation of the church was reported to the Ministerium which
met at Rhinebeck. The following reply was given under date of September
1st, 1797:
"Upon reading a letter from New York signed by Henry Heiser, Lucas Van
Buskirk and L. Hartman, representing that they have erected an English
Lutheran Church, on account of the inability of their children to
understand the German language:
RESOLVED, That it is never the practice in an Evangelical Consistory to
sanction any kind of schism; that if the persons who signed the letter
wish to continue their children in the Lutheran Church connection in New
York, they earnestly recommend them the use of the German School, and in
case there is no probability of any success in this particular, they
herewith declare that they do not look upon persons who are not yet
communicants of a Lutheran Church as apostates in case they join an
English Episcopal Church.
RESOLVED, 2d, That on account of an intimate connection subsisting
between the English Episcopal Church and the Lutheran Church and the
identity of their doctrine and near alliance of their Church discipline,
this Consistory will never acknowledge a new erected Lutheran Church
merely English, in places where the members may partake of the Services
of the said Episcopal Church."
From the viewpoint of the ministers in 1797, Lutheranism seems to have
been a matter of language rather than of religion. It was something to
be retained among German-speaking people, but could not be effectively
transmitted except through the medium of the German language.
We have come to the last decade of the 18th century. In the political
world great men were finding themselves and mighty principles were
finding expression in the organization of what was destined to become
one of the great states of the world. Some of our own men were taking a
large part in the making of American history. In the church they were
content with a more restricted outlook. Our people, it is true, were of
humble origin, yet some of them had attained wealth and social standing.
The Van Buskirks, the Grims, the Beekmans, the Wilmerdings and the
Lorillards were men of affairs and influence in the growing town of
30,000 that had begun to extend northward as far as Canal Street and
even beyond. But we look in vain for any positive contribution to the
life of the embryo metropolis of the world.
Our church had lost its roots. The Rhinebeck Resolution indicates the
feeble appreciation of the distinctive confession to which she owed her
existence. The English hymn books and liturgies of this period are
equally destitute of any positive confessional character.
But after all, the church in New York only reflected in a small way the
conditions that existed on the other side of the Atlantic. In the
Fatherland the national life had been declining ever since the Thirty
Years' War. In 1806 Germany reached the nadir of her political life at
the battle of Jena. In the church this was the period of her Babylonian
Captivity. Alien currents of philosophical and theological thought had
devitalized the teaching of the Gospel. The old hymns had been replaced
by pious reflections on subjects of religion and morality. The Lutheran
Liturgy had disappeared leaf by leaf until little but the cover
remained. With such conditions in the homeland what could be expected of
an isolated church on Manhattan Island? Take it all in all, it is not
surprising that only two congregations survived. It is a wonder that
there were two.
In "Old New York" Dr. Francis presents a vivid picture of the social and
religious life of this period and from it we learn that the Lutherans
were not the only ones whose religion sat rather lightly upon them.
French infidelity had taken deep root in the community and Paine's Age
of Reason found enthusiastic admirers.
Fifty years ago I was browsing one afternoon over the books in the
library of Union Theological Seminary, at that time located in
University Place. I was all alone until Dr. Samuel Hanson Cox, the
father of Bishop Arthur Cleveland Coxe, came in. He was then in his
eighties, but vigorous in mind and body. We easily became acquainted and
I was an eager listener to the story of his early ministry in New York,
which fell about the time of which we are speaking. From him I got a
picture of life in New York closely corresponding with that which is
given in Dr. Francis' interesting story. There were leaders of the
church in those days who were not free from the vice of drunkenness.
Evangelical religion in all denominations had a severe conflict in
doctrine and in morals with the ultra liberal tendencies of the time.
A marked defect of our church life was the inadequate supply of men for
the ministry. For 140 years New York Lutherans had been dependent upon
Europe for their pastors. For 60 years more this dependence was destined
to continue.
Kunze had long been desirous of providing facilities for theological
education in this country. Under the bequest of John Christopher
Hartwig, he organized in 1797 a Theological Seminary. The theological
department was conducted in New York by himself, the collegiate
department in Albany and the preparatory department in Otsego County.
One of his students was Strebeck. Another, Van Buskirk, a promising
young man, died before he could enter the work. The Mayer brothers,
natives of New York, became eminent pastors of English Lutheran
churches, Philip in Albany and Frederick in Philadelphia. It was a
trying time in which Kunze lived, but he planted seed which still bears
fruit.
One event of the eighteenth century seems worthy of spcial [sic]
mention, even when seen through the vista of a hundred and fifty years,
although at the time it may have attracted little attention. Because of
the side light which it throws upon history we permit it to interrupt
for a moment the course of our story.
It harks back to the refugees from the Palatinate who emigrated to the
west coast of Ireland at the same time that their fellow countrymen
under Kocherthal came to New York. Their principal settlements were at
Court-Matrix, Ballingran and other places in County Limerick near the
banks of the river Shannon. As they had no minister and understood
little or no English, in the course of forty years they lost whatever
religion they had brought with them from Germany. It came to pass that
John Wesley visited these villages. He found the people "eminent for
drunkenness, cursing, swearing, and an utter neglect of religion."
(Wesley's Journal, II, p. 429.)
Wesley's sermons reminded them of the sermons they used to hear in their
far-off German home, and a remarkable revival occurred among them.
Subsequently numbers of them followed their countrymen of the preceding
generation to New York and some of them joined the Lutheran Church.
Among the names to be found on the records of our church are those of
Barbara Heck and Philip Embury.
Now some of our ministers, as far back as Falckner in the beginning of
the century, belonged to the Halle or Francke school of Lutheranism,
and the spirit of our church life at this time, as may be seen from the
letters of Muehlenberg in the "Hallesche Nachrichten," was not alien to
that which the Palatines had imbibed from John Wesley, himself a product
of the Pietistic movement of which Halle was the fountain head. One
would suppose that these Palatine immigrants from the west of Ireland
might have found a congenial home in the Lutheran Church and contributed
to the spiritual life of the congregation. But for some reason they did
not. They withdrew from us and helped to organize in 1766 the first
Methodist Society in America.
The Methodists of America number seven million communicants. Barbara
Heck, Philip Embury and other Palatine immigrants were our contribution
to their incipient church life in America.
In the Nineteenth Century
1801-1838
The history of our churches in the nineteenth century may be divided
into three periods. The first extends from 1801 to 1838.
At the beginning of the century there were two congregations, the
German-English Church on Frankfort Street and the English (Zion) on
Pearl Street.
In 1802 two hundred members of the German church who had not united with
Zion in 1797 asked for a separate English church. The request was
declined, but regular services in English were held in the afternoon
with promises of a new church as soon as possible.
In 1804 Strebeck, the pastor of Zion, joined the Episcopalians and
subsequently became rector of St. Stephen's Church. Here he was
followed in the course of years by a constant procession of his former
parishioners. It will be recalled that Zion had not been received into
connection with the Ministerium.
In 1805 Ralph Williston was chosen pastor. In 1810 he also became an
Episcopalian. Not long after, the entire congregation followed him into
the Episcopal fold. The resolution effecting the change read as follows:
"Whereas, many difficulties attend the upholding of the Lutheran
religion among us, and whereas, that inasmuch as the doctrine and
government of the Episcopal Church is so nearly allied to the Lutheran,
and also on account of the present embarrassment of the finances of this
church, therefore
"RESOLVED, That the English Lutheran Church with its present form of
worship and government be dissolved after Tuesday, the 13th day of March
next, and that this Church do from that day forward become a parish of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, and the present board of officers of
this church take every measure to carry this resolve into effect."*
*On West Fifty-seventh Street, a few steps from Carnegie Hall, the
visitor interested fn Lutheran antiquities may find the stately
Episcopal Church of Zion and St. Timothy. It has a membership of 1,300.
Its communion vessels still bear the inscription: ZION LUTHERAN CHURCH.
Kunze died in 1807. His successor, Frederick William Geissenhainer of
New Hanover, Pa., took charge in 1808 and remained till 1814 when the
state of his health compelled him to return to Pennsylvania.
He was succeeded by Frederick Christian Schaeffer of Harrisburg, a
gifted man who preached equally well in German and in English. On the
tercentenary of the Reformation in 1817 he preached a Reformation sermon
in St. Paul's Episcopal Church on Broadway, which attracted widespread
attention. A copy is preserved in the New York Public Library.
[illustration: "Fragment of Kunze's Gravestone discovered by the author
in 1907, in Greenwich Village, where some laborers were digging the
foundation for a new building. Kunze's ashed repose in the Lorillard
vault of the churchyard of St. Mark's in the Bowery, Tenth Street and
Second Avenue."]
After twenty years the promise of a separate English church was
fulfilled, when in 1822 a large and beautiful structure was erected in
Walker Street, just east of Broadway, and placed at the disposal of the
English portion of the congregation. It was called St. Matthew's Church.
Schaeffer was assigned to the pastorate and Geissenhainer was recalled
from Pennsylvania to take charge of the German part of the congregation.
New trouble soon developed. The English congregation demanded
representation in the Church Council. This the mother church declined to
concede, although it is claimed they had agreed to do so when the
English congregation was formed. The new congregation was unable to
maintain itself, and in 1826 the church was sold for a debt of $14,000,
and Pastor Schaeffer resigned. The Walker Street building was bought by
Daniel Birdsall who resold it to the mother church. The legal questions
at issue in the transaction were taken into court and decided in favor
of the mother church.
A son of the pastor, Frederick William Geissenhainer, Jr., was called
from Pennsylvania to minister in St. Matthew's Church in English, so
long as this could be done without detriment to the German congregation.
This continued for three years, by which time a deficit of $5,000 had
accumulated.
In the meantime the congregation of Frankfort Street had grown to such
an extent that it decided to sell the Old Swamp Church, and move into
the spacious building on Walker Street, where it also acquired the name
of the English congregation and was thereafter known as St. Matthew's
Church. The younger Geissenhainer continued to hold English services in
the afternoon until 1840. The senior Geissenhainer served the German
part of the congregation until his death in 1838.
After Pastor Schaeffer resigned in 1826 he collected the salvage of the
English enterprises and organized a new English church, St. James,
which he served until his death in 1831.
Among the major happenings in this period were the Burr-Hamilton duel,
the launching of Fulton's steamboat, the introduction of Croton water,
the opening of the Erie Canal, the writings of Washington Irving, and
the organization of the American Bible Society and the American Tract
Society.
Such things as social service, church extension or confessional
questions had not yet begun to disturb the churches. Our people had all
the time they wanted therefore for controversy on the undying question
of the relative importance of the English and German languages. This,
as we have seen, led to a lawsuit, the sale of a church and the
permanent rupture of a historic congregation. We lost one English
congregation, Zion, disbanded another, St. Matthew's, and sent away
enough English members besides to constitute St. Stephen's Episcopal
Church on Chrystie Street.
Such, in brief, is the story of the Lutherans of New York during the
first third of the nineteenth century. In the Fatherland great events
were taking place and history was making rapid strides. The war of
liberation was decided by the battle of Leipzig and the defeat of
Napoleon. But the hopes for social and political improvement were
disappointed by reactionary movements and economic distress. A new
emigration to "the land of unbounded possibilities" began. In 1821-22 it
amounted to 531, in 1834-35 it was 25,997. Among the immigrants were
many who in various capacities became empire builders in America. But in
all that related to the Lutheran church New York at this time took a
subordinate place. Philadelphia was the first city of the land. The
construction of railroads and the opening of the Erie Canal carried the
active and ambitious men far into the interior. The church life of New
York still flowed in sluggish currents. After 190 years, from 1648, when
the first appeal for a minister was sent to Amsterdam, to 1838, our
enrollment consisted of two congregations, the German-English church of
St. Matthew, and the English church of St. James.
In the Nineteenth Century
1839-1865
Immigration began to assume large proportions. It did not reach its
climax until the following period, but it was sufficiently large to
awaken attention. In 1839 21,028 immigrants arrived here from Germany;
in 1865, at the close of the Civil War, 83,424. Most of these were
bound for the interior, but many who had only stopped to rest a while
in New York decided to make this their home.
The East Side became a little Germany and even on the West Side Germans
began to appear in increasing numbers.
At the beginning of this period an event occurred, unnoticed at the
time, which proved to be the beginning of a great movement, "a cloud out
of the sea, as small as a man's hand." In 1839 a thousand exiles arrived
from Germany under the leadership of Pastor Grabau. Most of them went to
the interior, some to Buffalo, others, the wealthier members, to the
neighborhood of Milwaukee. Ten or a dozen families remained in New York
with a pastor named Maximilian Oertel. Their services were held in a
hall at the corner of Houston Street and Avenue A. Doubtless none of
their contemporaries ever dreamed that this insignificant congregation
was related to one of the larger movements of church history.
Connecting links were two men whose names I have never seen associated
with the story of the Lutherans of New York. One of them was Dr.
Benjamin Kurtz of Hagerstown, the other was Frederick William III, King
of Prussia. The king had imposed the Union upon the churches of Prussia
and imprisoned the pastors who refused to conform. This was the king's
part in the movement. Dr. Kurtz had visited Berlin in 1826 in the
interest of his educational schemes and in one of his addresses he
implanted the microbe of America in the mind of a man who subsequently
became a leader of one band of these pilgrims to the promised land. This
was Dr. Kurtz's share in the work. Both Kurtz and the king were
unconscious instruments in the hands of Providence.
Dr. Kurtz was for a large part of the nineteenth century a distinguished
leader in the General Synod. He contributed to the establishment of the
Theological Seminary at Gettysburg and he was the founder of the
Missionary Institute, now the Susquehanna University, at Selinsgrove. He
died in 1865. His grave is in the campus of the University of which he
was the founder.
But who were these immigrants and how did they come to be exiles? This
is another story; but it has to be told, because in the providence of
God it is connected with the history of the Lutherans in New York.
In the early years of the nineteenth century there occurred a remarkable
religious awakening in Germany. This awakening had much to do with a
revival of Lutheranism. It had been greatly strengthened at least by the
publication of the Ninety-five Theses of Claus Harms in 1817, on the
occasion of the tercentenary of the Reformation, and it in turn
stimulated the Lutheran consciousness of multitudes who had been carried
away by the rationalistic movement of the eighteenth century. The
publication of the royal Liturgy in 1822 and the forcible measures of
the king in ordering a union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches of
the kingdom called forth the staunch opposition of the Lutherans. This
ended in a widespread agitation which sent multitudes of families to a
land where one of the chief fruits of the Lutheran Reformation, that of
religious liberty, could be enjoyed.
The notable thing about the entrance of a few of these people into our
New York life was that it injected new ideas into the stagnant mentality
of the period. That the men who brought them were brusque and exclusive,
was of small account. When Stohlmann, who had recently been called to
St. Matthew's Church, visited Pastor Oertel in his attic room, his
Lutheranism, with a sly allusion perhaps to the stairs, was promptly
challenged by the remark: "You climbed up some other way."
Nor did it matter that on some points the new comers themselves were not
agreed? The Prussians, later known as "Buffalonians," led by Grabau, had
a hierarchical theory of the ministerial office. The Saxons, later known
as "Missourians," led by Walther, had the congregational theory of
church government. For a score of years a titanic conflict was waged
between these two parties. It ended in a decisive victory for
"Missouri." Today "Buffalo" numbers 49 congregations, "Missouri" 3,689.
The Houston Street party in 1839 held hierarchical views. Subsequently
they adopted the congregational theory of the church and established in
1843 the first "Missouri" congregation in New York under Pastor Brohm.
After several removals the congregation settled at Ninth Street and
Avenue B, where it still maintains its place of worship.
The chief field of the "Missourians," as their name indicates, is in the
West. And yet in Greater New York they number 51 churches and many more
in the suburbs. They maintain numerous missions among special classes.
At Bronxville they have a college. They alone of all Lutherans make a
serious effort to conduct parochial schools. More than any other
variety of Lutherans do they educate their promising young men for the
ministry.
But, as has already been intimated, the chief significance of their
entrance into New York history is that thenceforth Lutherans had to give
an account of their Lutheranism. Whether you agreed with them or not,
you had to take sides and give a reason for the hope that was in you.
They brought about that "contiguity of conflicting opinions" which is a
condition of all progress.
Ten years later a different class of German immigrants came to our city.
The Revolution of 1848 had resulted unsuccessfully for the friends of
political freedom, and many were compelled to take refuge in America.
Some were professional men of ability and high standing, whose
contribution to the intellectual life of our city was considerable.
Others were only half educated, young men who had not completed their
studies in the University, but, intoxicated with the new ideas, had
thrown themselves with the enthusiasm of youth into the conflict for
freedom. Here they were like men without a country, aliens from the
Fatherland, and in America incapable of comprehending a state without a
church and a church without a state.
Few of these found their way into the Lutheran churches of New York.
They were the intellectuals of the German community and had outgrown the
religion of their countrymen who still adhered to the old faith.
Our churches received but little support from this large and influential
class. Many of them had long since renounced allegiance to Jesus, and in
the free air of America looked upon churches as anachronisms and
hearthstones of superstition. Their influence upon the common people and
upon the social life of the German community was hostile to that of
Christianity. The churches had to get along without them, or rather, in
spite of them. There were notable exceptions. But as a rule the
"Achtundvierziger" did not go to church.
Still, in spite of their unchurchly views, most of them were unable to
shake off wholly the forms of their ancestral religion. There were too
many remnants (_superstites_) of the old faith binding them to ancient
customs. Independent ministers with no synodical relations, with or
without certificate of ordination, or the endorsement of organized
congregations, unmindful of the _nisi vocatus_ clause in the Augsburg
Confession, helped to maintain the forms of an inherited Christianity by
performing such ministerial acts as were required by the people. At one
time these free lances were quite numerous. At present no
representatives survive in New York.