CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK
Sunday was not observed in New Netherland with any such rigidity as
in New England. The followers of Cocceius would not willingly include
Saturday night, and not even all of the Sabbath day, in their holy
time. Madam Knight, writing in 1704 of a visit to New York, noted:
“The Dutch aren’t strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston and
other places where I have been.” This was, of course, in times of
English rule in New York. Still, much respect to the day was required,
especially under the governing hand of the rigid Calvinist Stuyvesant.
He specially enjoined and enforced strict regard for seemly quiet
during service time. The records of Stuyvesant’s government are full of
injunctions and laws prohibiting “tavern-tapping” during the hours of
church service. He would not tolerate fishing, gathering of berries or
nuts, playing in the street, nor gaming at ball or bowls during church
time. At a little later date the time of prohibition of noise and
tapping and gaming was extended to include the entire Sabbath day, and
the _schout_ was ordered to be active in searching out and punishing
such offenders.
Occasionally his vigilance did discover some Sabbath disorders. He
found the first Jew trader who came to the island of Manhattan serenely
keeping open shop on Sunday, and selling during sermon time, knowing
naught of any Sunday laws of New Amsterdam.
And Albert the Trumpeter was seen on the Sabbath in suspicious guise,
with an axe on his shoulder,--but he was only going to cut a bat for
his little son; and as for his neighbor who did cut wood, it was only
kindling, since his children were cold.
And one Sunday evening in 1660 the _schout_ triumphantly found
three sailors round a tap-house table with a lighted candle and
a backgammon-board thereon; and he surely had a right to draw an
inference of gaming therefrom.
And in another public-house ninepins were visible, and a can and
glass, during preaching-time. The landlady had _her_ excuse,--some came
to her house and said church was out, and one chanced to have a bowl in
his hand and another a pin, but there was no playing at bowls.
Still, though he snooped and fined, in 1656 the burgomasters learned
“by daily and painful experience” that the profanation of “the Lord’s
day of Rest by the dangerous, Yes, damnable Sale or Dealing out of
Wines Beers and Brandy-Waters” still went on; and fresh Sunday Laws
were issued forbidding “the ordinary and customary Labors of callings,
such as Sowing, Mowing, Building, Sawing wood, Smithing, Bleeching,
Hunting, Fishing.” All idle sports were banned and named: “Dancing,
Card-playing, Tick-tacking, Playing at ball, at bowls, at ninepins;
taking Jaunts in Boats, Wagons, or Carriages.”
In 1673, again, the magistrates “experienced to our great grief” that
rolling ninepins was more in vogue on Sunday than on any other day. And
we learn that there were social clubs that “Set on the Sabbath,” which
must speedily be put an end to. Thirty men were found by the _schout_
in one _tap-huys_; but as they were playing ninepins and backgammon
two hours after the church-doors had closed, prosecution was most
reluctantly abandoned.
Of course scores of “tappers” were prosecuted, both in taverns and
private houses. Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were not the
only guiding thoughts in the burgomasters’ minds in framing these
Sunday liquor laws and enforcing them; for some tapsters had “tapped
beer during divine service and used a small kind of measure which is
in contempt of our religion and must ruin our state,”--and the state
was sacred. In the country, as for instance on Long Island, the carting
of grain, travelling for pleasure, and shooting of wild-fowl on Sunday
were duly punished in the local courts.
I do not think that children were as rigid church attendants in New
York as in New England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this injunction:
“y^e Constables in eache warde to take thought in attending at y^e
church to hender such children as Profane y^e Sabbath;” and we know
that Albany boys and girls were complained of for coasting down hill
on Sunday,--which enormity would have been simply impossible in
New England, except in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. In
another New York town the “Athoatys” complained of the violation of
the Sabbath by “the Younger Sort of people in Discourssing of Vane
things and Running of Raesses.” As for the city of New York, even at
Revolutionary times a cage was set up on City Hall Park in which to
confine wicked New York boys who profaned the Sabbath. I do not find so
full provisions made for seating children in Dutch Reformed churches as
in Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of Martin Luther’s was “Public
sermons do very little edify children”--perhaps the Dutch agreed with
him. As the children were taught the Bible and the catechism every day
in the week, their spiritual and religious schooling was sufficient
without the Sunday sermon,--but, of course, if they were not in the
church during services, they would “talk of vane Things and run
Raesses.”
Before the arrival of any Dutch preacher in the new settlement in the
new world, the spiritual care of the little company was provided for
by men appointed to a benign and beautiful old Dutch office, and
called _krankebesoeckers_ or _zeikentroosters_,--“comforters of the
Sick,”--who not only tenderly comforted the sick and weary of heart,
but “read to the Commonalty on Sundays from texts of Scripture with the
Comments.” These pious men were assigned to this godly work in Fort
Orange and in New Amsterdam and Breuckelen. In Esopus they had meetings
every Sunday, “and one among us read something for a postille.” Often
special books of sermons were read to the congregations.
In Fort Orange they had a domine before they had a church. The patroon
instructed Van Curler to build a church in 1642; but it was not until
1646 that the little wooden edifice was really put up. It was furnished
at a cost of about thirty-two dollars by carpenter Fredricksen,
with a _predickstoel_, or pulpit, a seat for the magistrates,--_de
Heerebanke_,--one for the deacons, nine benches and several
corner-seats.
The first church at Albany, built in 1657, was simply a block house
with loop-holes for the convenient use of guns in defence against the
Indians,--if defence were needed. On the roof were placed three small
cannon commanding the three roads which led to it. This edifice was
called “a handsome preaching-house,” and its congregation boasted
that it was almost as large as the fine new one in New Amsterdam. Its
corner-stone was laid with much ceremony. In its belfry hung a bell
presented to the little congregation by the Directors of the Amsterdam
Chamber of the West India Company. The _predickstoel_ was the gift
of the same board of West India Directors, since the twenty-five
beavers’ skins sent for its purchase proved greatly damaged, and hence
inadequate as payment.
This pulpit still exists,--a pedestal with a flight of narrow steps and
curved balustrade. It is about four feet in height to its floor, and
only three in diameter. It is octagonal; one of the sides is hinged,
and forms the entrance door or gate. All the small trimmings and
mouldings are of oak, and it has a small bracket or frame to hold the
hour-glass. It stood in a space at the end of the centre aisle.
“I see the pulpit high--an octagon,
Its pedestal, doophuysje, winding stair,
And room within for one, and one alone,
A canopy above, suspended there.”
From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and candle-sconces projected from
the walls. There were originally two low-set galleries; a third was
added in 1682. The men sat in the galleries, and as they carried their
arms to meeting, were thus conveniently placed to fire through the
loop-holes if necessity arose. The bell-rope from the belfry hung down
in the middle of the church, and when not in use was twisted round a
post set for the purpose.
This church was plain enough, but it was certainly kept in true Dutch
cleanliness, for house-cleaners frequently invaded it with pails
and scrubbing-brushes, brooms, lime, and sand. Even the chandelier
was scoured, and a _ragebol_, or cobweb-brush, was purchased by the
deacon for the use of the scrubbers. The floor was sanded with fine
beach-sand, as were the floors of dwelling-houses. I find in the
records of the Long Island churches frequent entries of payments for
church brooms and church sand,--in Jamaica as late a date as 1836. In
1841 the deacons bought a carpet.
In 1715 the second Albany church was built, on the site of the old one.
As Pepys tells of St. Paul’s of London, so tradition says this Albany
church was built around the first one, that the congregation were only
three weeks deprived of the use of the church, and the old one was
carried out “by piece meal.” At any rate, it was precisely similar in
shape, but was a substantial edifice of stone. This building was not
demolished until 1806.
The sittings in this church sold for thirty shillings each, and were,
as it was termed, “booked to next of kin.” When the first owner of a
seat died (were he a man), the seat descended to his son or the eldest
of his grandsons; if there was no son nor grandson, to his son-in-law;
this heir being in default, the sitting fell to a brother, and so on.
When the transfer was made, the successor paid fifteen shillings to the
church. A woman’s seat descended to her daughter, daughter-in-law, or
sister. Sittings were sold only to persons residing in Albany County.
When a seat was not claimed by any heir of a former owner, it reverted
to the church.
This church had some pretence to ornamentation. The windows were
of stained glass decorated with the coat-of-arms of various Albany
families. The panes with the Van Renssellaer and Dudley arms are still
in existence. Painted escutcheons also hung on the walls, as they did
in the church in Garden Street, New York. This was a custom of the
Fatherland. A writer of that day said of the church in Harlem, “It is
battered as full of scutcheons as the walls can hold.”
The meeting-house sometimes bore other decorations,--often “Billets of
sales,” and notices of vendues or “outcrys.” Lost swine and empounded
swine were signified by placards; town meetings and laws were posted.
In the Albany church, when there was rumor of an approaching war with
France, “powder, bales,” and guns to the number of fifty were ordered
to be “hung up in y^e church,”--a stern reminder of possible sudden
bloodshed. “Y^e fyre-masters” were also ordered to see that “y^e
fyre-ladders and fyre-hooks were hung at y^e church.”
In 1698 a stone church was built in Flatbush. It cost nearly sixteen
thousand guilders. It had a steep four-sided roof, ending in the centre
in a small steeple. This roof was badly constructed, for it pressed out
the upper part of one wall more than a foot over the foundation, and
sorely bent the braces. The pulpit faced the door, and was flanked by
the deacons’ bench on one side and the elders’ bench on the other.
Of the seating arrangement of this Flatbush church Dr. Strong says:--
“The male part of the congregation were seated in a continuous pew
all along the wall, divided into twenty apartments, with a sufficient
number of doors for entrance, each person having one or more seats.
The residue of the interior of the building was for the accommodation
of the female part of the congregation, who were seated on chairs.
These were arranged into seven rows or blocks, and every family had
one or more chairs in some one of these blocks. This arrangement of
seats was called ‘De Gestoeltens.’ Each chair was marked on the back
by a number or by the name of the person to whom it belonged.”
When the church was remodelled, in 1774, there were two galleries,
one for white folk, one for black; the benches directly under the
galleries were free. In the centre of the main floor were two benches
with backs, one called the Yefrows Bench, the other the Blue Bench. The
former was for the minister’s wife and family; the other was let out to
individuals, and was a seat of considerable dignity.
Many of the old Dutch churches, especially those on Long Island, were
six-sided or eight-sided; these had always a high, steep, pyramidal
roof terminating in a belfry, which was often topped by a gilded
_weerhaen_, or weathercock. The churches at Jamaica and New Utrecht
were octagonal. The Bushwick church was hexagonal. It stood till
1827,--a little, dingy, rustic edifice. This form of architecture was
not peculiar to the Dutch nor to the Dutch Reformed Church. Episcopal
churches and the Quaker meeting-house at Flushing were similar in shape.
When the bold sea-captain De Vries, that interesting figure in the
early history of New Netherland, arrived in churchless New Amsterdam,
he promptly rallied Director Kieft on his dilatoriness and ungodliness,
saying it was a shame to let Englishmen see the mean barn which served
Manhattan as a church; and he drew odious comparisons,--that “the first
thing they build in New England after their dwelling-houses is a fine
church.” He pointed out the abundant materials for building creditably
and cheaply,--fine oak wood, good mountain stone, excellent lime; and
he did more,--he supported his advice by a subscription of a hundred
guilders. Director Kieft promised a thousand guilders from the West
India Company; and Fortune favored the scheme, for the daughter of
Domine Bogardus was married opportunely just at that time; and as has
been told in Chapter III., according to the wise custom of the day in
Holland, and consequently in America, a collection was taken up at
the wedding. Kieft asked that it be employed for the building of a
church; and soon a stone church seventy-two feet long and fifty-five
feet wide was erected within the Fort. It was the finest building in
New Netherland, and bore on its face a stone inscribed with these
words: “Anno Domini 1641, William Kieft, Director-General, hath the
Commonalty built this Temple.” It was used by the congregation as a
church for fifty years, and for half a century longer by the military
as a post-building, when it was burned.
There was no church in Breuckelen in 1660. Domine Selyns wrote,
“We preach in a barn.” The church was built six years later, and
is described as square, with thick stone walls and steep peaked
roof surmounted by a small open belfry, in which hung the small,
sharp-toned bell which had been sent over as a gift by the West India
Company. The walls were so panelled with dark wood, the windows were
so high and narrow, that it was always dark and gloomy within; even in
summer-time it was impossible to see to read in it after four o’clock
in the afternoon. Services were held in summer at 9 A. M. and 2 P. M.,
and in the winter in the morning only. The windows were eight feet from
the floor, and were darkened with stained glass sent from Holland,
representing flower-pots with vines covered with vari-colored flowers.
This church stood in the middle of the road on what is now Fulton
Street, a mile from the ferry, and was used until 1810.
These early churches were unheated, and it is told that the half-frozen
domines preached with heavy knit or fur caps pulled over their ears,
and wearing mittens, or _wollen handt-schoenen_; and that _myn heer_
as well as _myn vrouw_ carried muffs. It is easy to fancy some men
carrying muffs,--some love-locked Cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole;
but such feminine gear seems to consort ill with an Albany Dutchman.
That he should light his long pipe in meeting was natural enough,--to
keep warm; though folk do say that he smoked in meeting in summer
too,--to keep cool. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Albany
and Schenectady churches had stoves perched up on pillars on a level
with the gallery,--in high disregard or ignorance of the laws of
calorics; hence, of course, the galleries, in which sat the men, were
fairly heated, while the ground floor and the _vrouws_ remained below
in icy frigidity. It is told of more than one old-time sexton, that he
loudly asserted his office and his importance by noisy rattling-down
and replenishing of the gallery stoves and slamming of the iron doors
at the most critical point in the domine’s sermon. Cornelius Van
Schaick, the Albany sexton, made his triumphant way to the stoves,
slashing with his switch (perhaps his dog-whip) all the boys who
chanced to be in his way.
The women of the congregation carried foot-stoves of perforated metal
or wood, which were filled with a box of living coals, to afford a
little warmth to the feet. Many now living remember the scratching
sound of these stoves on the boards or the sanded floor as they were
passed from warm feet to cold feet near at hand. _Kerck-stooven_
appear on the earliest inventories, were used in America until our own
day, and still are used in the churches in Holland. In an anteroom in
a Leyden church may be seen several hundred _stooven_ for use in the
winter.
It is stated of the churches in New York City that until 1802 services
were held, even in the winter-time, with wide-open doors, and that
often the snow lay in little drifts up the aisles,--which may have been
one reason why young folk flocked to Trinity Church.
One very handsome church-equipment of the women attendants of the Dutch
Reformed church was the Psalm-book. This was usually bound with the
New Testament; and both were often mounted and clasped with silver.
Sometimes they had two silver rings at the back through which ribbons
could be passed, to hang thereby the books on the back of a chair
if desired. Sometimes the books had silver chains. Rarely they were
mounted in gold. The inventory of the estate of nearly every well-to-do
Dutch woman, resident of New York, Albany, or the larger towns, shows
one, and sometimes half-a-dozen of these silver-mounted Psalm-books.
Elizabeth Van Es had two Bibles with silver clasps, two Psalm-books,
and two Catechisms. These books were somewhat dingily printed, in old
Dutch, on coarse but durable paper; the music was on every page beside
the words. The notes of music were square, heavily printed, rough-hewn,
angular notes,--“like stones in the walls of a churchyard,” says
Longfellow of the Psalm-book of the Pilgrims. The metrical version of
the Psalms was simple and impressive, and is certainly better literary
work in Dutch than is the Bay Psalm-book in English.
The services in these churches were long. They were opened by reading
and singing conducted by the _voorleezer_ or _voorzanger_,--that
general-utility man who was usually precentor, schoolmaster,
bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, and often town-clerk. As ordered
by the Assembly of XIX., in 1645, he “tuned the psalm;” and during
the first singing the domine entered, and, pausing for a few moments,
sometimes kneeling at the foot of the pulpit-stairs, in silent prayer,
he soon ascended to his platform of state. The psalms were given out
to the congregation through the medium of a large hanging-board with
movable printed slips, and this was in the charge of the _voorleezer_.
Of course the powers of this church functionary varied in different
towns. In all he seems to have had charge of the turning of the
hour-glass which stood near the pulpit in sight of the domine. In
Kingston, where the pulpit was high, he thrust up to the preacher the
notices stuck in the end of a cleft stick. In this town, at the time
of the Revolution, he was also paid two shillings per annum by each
family to go around and knock loudly on the door each Sunday morning
to warn that it was service-time. In some towns he was permitted to
give three sharp raps of warning with his staff on the pulpit when the
hour-glass had run out a second time,--thus shutting off the sermon.
The _voorleezer_ is scarcely an obsolete church-officer to-day. In 1865
died the last Albany _voorleezer_, and the Flatbush _voorleezer_ is
well remembered and beloved.
The clerk in New Amsterdam was a marked personage on Sunday. After
he had summoned the congregation by the sound of drum or bell, he
ceremoniously formed a pompous little procession of his underlings,
and, heading the line, he carried with their assistance the cushions
from the City Hall to the church, to furnish comfortably the
“Magistrate’s Pew,” in which the burgomasters and _schepens_ sat.
The deacons had full control of all the funds of the church; they
collected the contributions of the congregation by walking up and
down the aisles and thrusting in front of each “range” of seats in
the face of the seated people small cloth contribution-bags, or
_sacjes_, hung on a hoop at the end of a slender pole six or eight
feet in length,--fashioned, in fact, somewhat after the model of
scoop-nets. This custom--the use of so unfamiliar a medium for
church-collecting--gave rise to the amusing notion of one observant
English traveller that Dutch deacons passed round their old hats on the
end of a walking-stick to gather church-contributions.
Often a little bell hung at the bottom of the contribution-bag, or was
concealed in an ornamenting tassel, and by its suggestive tinkle-tinkle
warned all church-attendants of the approach of the deacon, and
perhaps aroused the peaceful church-sleepers from too selfish dreams
of profitable barter in peltries. In New Utrecht the church _sacje_
had an alarm-bell which sounded only when a contribution was made. A
loud-speaking silence betrayed the stingy church-goer. The collection
was usually taken up in the middle of a sermon. The _sacjes_ stood or
hung conveniently in the deacon’s seat. In Flatbush and other towns
the deacons paused for a time in front of the pulpit--_sacje_ in
hand--while the domine enjoined generosity to the church and kindly
Christian thought of the poor. The collection-bags in Flatbush were of
velvet.
It is said that stray Indians who chanced to wander or were piously
persuaded to enter into the Fort Orange or Albany church during
service-time, and who did not well understand the pulpit eloquence of
the Dutch tongue, regarded with suspicious and disapproving eyes the
unfailing and unreasonable appearance of the _karck-sacje_; for they
plainly perceived that there was some occult law of cause and effect
which could be deduced from these two facts,--the traders who gave
freely into the church-bags on Sunday always beat down the price of
beaver on Monday.
The bill for one of these _karck-sacjes_ was paid by the deacons of the
Albany church in 1682. Seven guilders were given for the black stuff
and two skeins of silk, and two guilders for the making. When a ring
was bought for the sack (I suppose to hold it open at the top), it cost
four guilders. This instrument of church-collection lingered long in
isolated localities. It is vaguely related that some _karck-sacjes_ are
still in existence and still used. The church at New Utrecht possessed
and exhibited theirs at their bicentennial celebration a few years
ago. The fate of the _sacje_ was decreed when the honest deacons were
forced to conclude that it could, if artfully manipulated by designing
moderns, conceal far too well the amount given by each contributor, and
equally well concealed the many and heavy stones deposited therein by
vain youth of Dutch descent but American ungodliness. So an open-faced
full-in-view pewter or silver plate was substituted and passed in its
place. In 1813 the church at Success, Long Island, bought contribution
plates and abandoned the _sacje_. Some lovers of the good old times
resented this inevitable exposure of the amount of each gift, and
turned away from the deacon and his innovating fashion and refused to
give at all.
I ought to add, in defence of the _karck-sacjes_, and in praise
of the early congregations, that the amount gathered each week
was most generous, and in proportion far in advance of our modern
church-contributions. The poor were not taken charge of by state or
town, but were liberally cared for in each community by its church;
occasionally, however, assistance was given through the assignment to
the church by the courts of a portion of the money paid as fines in
civil and criminal cases. In New York a deacon’s house with nurses
resident, took the place of an almshouse.
Often during the year much more money was collected than was needful
for the current expenses of the church. In Albany the extra collections
were lent out at eight per cent interest; at one time four thousand
guilders were lent to one man. The deacons who took charge of the
treasury chest in Albany each year rendered an account of its contents.
In 1665 there were in this chest _seelver-gelt_, _sea-want_, and
_obligasse_, or obligations, to the amount of 2829 guilders. In 1667
there were 3299 guilders; also good Friesland stockings and many ells
of linen to be given to the poor.
In some churches poor-boxes were placed at the door. The Garden Street
Church in New York had two strong boxes bound with iron, with a small
hole in the padlocked lid, and painted with the figure of a beggar
leaning on a staff,--which, according to the testimony of travellers,
was a sight unknown in reality in New York at that time.
The “church-poor,” as they were called, fared well in New Netherland.
Of degraded poor of Dutch birth or descent there were none. Some poor
folk, and old or sickly, having a little property, transferred it to
the Consistory, who paid it out as long as it lasted, and cheerfully
added to the amount by gifts from the church-treasury as long as was
necessary for the support of those “of the poorer sort.” To show that
these church-poor were neither neglected nor despised, let me give
one example of a case--an ordinary one--from the deacons’ records of
the Albany church in 1695. Claes Janse was assigned at that time to
live with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They were to provide him
with _logement_, _kost_, _drank_, _wassen_ (lodging, food, drink, and
washing), and for this were paid forty guilders a month by the church.
When Claes died, the church paid for his funeral, which apparently left
nothing undone in the way of respectability. The bill reads thus:--
Dead shirt and cap 16 guilders.
Winding sheet 14 ”
Making coffin 24 ”
1 lb. nails, cartage coffin 3 ” 10 stuyvers.
2 Half Vats good beer 30 ”
6 bottles Rum 22 ”
5 gallons Madeira Wine 42 ”
Tobacco, pipes, and sugar 4 ” 10 ”
3 cartloads sand for grave 1 ” 10 ”
Gravedigging 3 ”
Deacons give three dry boards for coffin and use of pall.
With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, and a far from dry funeral,
Hans Claes’ days, though he were of the church-poor, ended in honor.
The earlier Dutch ministers were some of them rather rough characters.
Domine Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine Schaets, in Fort Orange,
were most unclerical in demeanor, both in and out of the pulpit. Both
were engaged in slander suits, the former as libeller and defendant;
both were abusive and personal in the pulpit, “dishonoring the church
by passion.” The former was alleged by his enemies to be frequently
drunk, in church and abroad; and, fearless of authority, he seized
the pulpit as a convenient and prominent platform from which he could
denounce his opposers. From his high post he scolded the magistrates,
called opprobrious names (a hateful offence in New Amsterdam),
threatened Wouter Van Twiller that he would give “from the pulpit
such a shake as would make him shudder.” He even arbitrarily refused
the Communion, thereby causing constant scandal and dissension. The
magistrates doubtless deserved all his rebukes, but in their written
admonition to him they appear with some dignity, expressing themselves
forcibly and concisely thus: “Your bad tongue is the cause of these
divisions, and your obstinacy the cause of their continuance;” and it
is difficult now to assign the blame and odium of this quarrel very
decidedly to either party.
The domine did not have everything his own way on Sundays, for the
Director drowned his vociferations by ordering the beating of drums and
firing of cannon outside the church during services; and denounced the
sermons in picturesque language as “the rattling of old wives’ stories
drawn out from a distaff.”
The Labadist travellers thus described the Albany domine:--
“We went to church in the morning [April 28, 1680], and heard Domine
Schaets preach, who, although he is a poor old ignorant person, and
besides is not of good life, yet had to give utterance to his passion,
having for his text ‘Whatever is taken upon us,’ etc., at which many
of his auditors, who knew us better, were not well pleased, and in
order to show their condemnation of it, laughed and derided him, which
we corrected.”
In turn the Lutheran minister was dubbed by the Dutch domines “a
rolling, rollicking, unseemly carl, more inclined to pore over
the wine-kan than to look into the Bible.” And we all know what
both Lutherans and Dutch thought of the Quaker preachers; so all
denominations appear equally rude.
The salaries of the ministers were liberal even in early days; that
of Domine Megapolensis (the second minister sent to New Netherland)
was, I think, a very fair one. He agreed to remain in the colony six
years, and was given free passage for himself and family to the new
world; an outfit of three hundred guilders; a salary of three hundred
guilders a year for three years, and five hundred annually during the
three remaining years; and an annual tithe of thirty schepels of wheat
and two firkins of butter. If he died before the term expired, his wife
was to have a pension of a hundred guilders a year for the unexpired
term. The first revenue relinquished by the West India Company to the
town of New Amsterdam was the “tapster’s excise,”--the excise on wine,
beer, and spirits,--and the sole condition made by Stuyvesant on its
surrender, as to its application, was that the salaries of the two
domines should be paid from it.
As time passed on, firewood became one of the minister’s perquisites,
in addition to his salary, sixty or seventy loads a season. We find the
Schenectady congregation having a “bee” to gather in the domine’s wood;
and the Consistory supplied plentiful wine, rum, and beer as a treat
for the “bee.”
What Cotton Mather called the “angelical conjunction” of piety and
physic sometimes was found in the person of the ministers of the Dutch
Reformed church, but not so constantly as among the Puritan ministers.
Domine Rubel, sent out by the Classis of Amsterdam, was settled over
the churches in Kings County. He was more devoted to the preparation of
quack medicines than to the saving of souls. One of his advertisements
of March 28, 1778, reads thus:--
“It has pleased Almighty God to give me the wisdom to find out the
_Golden Mother Tincture_ and such a Universal Pill as will cure
most diseases. I have studied European physicians in four different
languages. I don’t take much money as I want no more than a small
living whereto God will give his blessing.
JOHANNES CASPARUS RUBEL, Minister of the
Gospel and Chymicus.”
This does not let us wonder that after a while his parish became
dissatisfied with his ministrations, and that he ended his days in
dishonor.
The employment of the Dutch language in the pulpit in New York churches
lasted until into this century. Naturally, Dutch was used as long
as the Classis at Amsterdam supplied the churches in America with
preachers. In 1744 Domine Rubel and Domine Van Sinderin were sent to
Flatbush, the last ministers sent from the Classis of Amsterdam to any
American church; but at their death the Dutch tongue was not silent in
the Flatbush church; for their successor, Domine Schoonmaker, lived
to be ninety years old, and never preached but one sermon in English.
With his death, in 1824, ceased the public use of the Dutch language
in the Flatbush pulpit. Until the year 1792 the entire service in his
church was “the gospel undefiled, in Holland Dutch.” Until the year
1830 services in the sequestered churches in the Catskills were held
alternately in Dutch and English. Until 1777 all the records of the
Sleepy Hollow church were kept in Dutch; and in 1785 all its services
were in Dutch. In September of that year, a little child, Lovine Hauws,
was baptized in English by the new minister, Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees.
This raised a small Dutch tempest, and the new domine soon left that
parish.
In New York City the large English immigration, the constant
requirements and influences of commerce, and the frequent
intermarriages of the English and Dutch robbed the Dutch language of
its predominance by the middle of the eighteenth century. Rev. Dr.
Laidlie preached in 1764 the first English sermon to a Dutch Reformed
congregation. By 1773 English was used in the Dutch school, and young
people began to shun the Dutch services.
The growth of the Dutch Reformed church in New York was slow; this was
owing to three marked and direct causes:--
First, from 1693 until Revolutionary times Episcopacy was virtually
established by law in a large part of the province,--in the city and
county of New York, and in the counties of Westchester, Richmond,
and Queens; and though the Dutch Reformed church was protected and
respected, people of all denominations were obliged to contribute to
the support of the Episcopal church.
Second, the English language had become the current language of the
province; in the schools, the courts, in all public business it was the
prevailing tongue, while the services of the Dutch Reformed church were
by preference held in Dutch.
Third, all candidates for ministry in the Dutch Reformed church were
obliged to go to Holland for ordination; this was a great expense, and
often kept congregations without a minister for a long time. The entire
discipline of the church--all the Courts of Appeal--was also in the
Fatherland.
In order to obtain relief from the last-named hampering condition,
a few ministers in America devised a plan, in 1737, to secure
church-organization in New York. It took the slow-moving Classis of
Amsterdam ten years to signify approval of this plan, and a body was
formed, named the Cœtus. But this had merely advisory powers, and in
less than ten years it asked to be constituted a Classis with full
ecclesiastical powers. From this step arose a violent and bitter
quarrel, which lasted fifteen years,--until 1771,--between the Cœtus
party, the Reformers, and the Conferentie party, the Conservatives. The
permission of the Classis of Amsterdam for American church independence
was finally given on condition of establishing a college for the proper
training of the ministry of the Dutch Reformed church. The Cœtus party
obtained a charter from George III. for a college, which, called
Queens College, was blighted in its birth by the Revolution, but lived
with varying prosperity until its successful revival, under the name of
Rutgers College, in 1825.