HISTORY OF

ST. GEORGE'S CHURCH

CHAPTER I

RELIGIOUS BEGINNINGS IN NEW YORK

(1623-1748)

THE history of St. George's Church has interest for a wider circle than those immediately connected with that church or those whose ancestors participated in its upbuilding and development. Its influence in shaping the religious life of the community has been noteworthy and pronounced. It has stood always for ideas and methods well defined, which in their zealous application could not fail to achieve results. The strongly marked insistent personality of each of its great rectors, supported as they were by a devoted loyal people, endowed St. George's with a prominence and power which commanded attention and respect. However men might differ from the views and principles for which St. George's stood, its leadership was recognized and felt.

St. George's, having now completed a centenary of parochial existence, is fittingly observing her centennial celebration of that fact. But the annals of her past must cover a much longer period than a century, for sixty antecedent years of chapel life must add their chronicles of strivings and achievements to those of the centennium of her independent being, to constitute the record of that continuous life and honorable activity which has secured for St. George's Church a significant prestige and notable position in the history of New York.

The narrative divides itself into four well-defined and characteristic periods, that of the Chapel and those so dominated and imbued by the forceful personality of its illustrious rectors, Doctor Milnor, Doctor Tyng, and Doctor Rainsford.

A brief review, however, of the yet earlier religious history of the city may fitly preface the annals of St. George's Chapel and the Church.

The earliest attempt at permanent settlement on Manhattan Island was made in May, 1623. Prior to that date, since Hudson's voyage of discovery in 1609, nothing but traders' huts had been erected on the island and no adventure undertaken to organize a colony or cultivate the soil. A trading charter had been granted to some associated merchants by the States General of the Dutch Republic "to make four voyages within three years," which had expired by its own limitation in January, 1618. But the Dutch Government, perceiving that the only way to establish ownership of territory in the New World was to secure possession, at last assented, after long discussion and much heated controversy, to a project of an influential body of its enterprising merchants; and the West India Company was organized with vaster privileges than were ever granted to a private corporation. Under their charter, which was approved in its final form by the States General June 21, 1623, they were empowered to exercise the functions of a sovereign state, "to colonize and govern and defend New Netherland." They could appoint officials, administer justice, contract alliances, erect forts, and carry on war on land or by sea. So vigorously prosecuted was this last-named privilege and so phenomenal the successes of its well-armed fleet in capturing Spanish prizes, and thereby bringing to the Company immense returns, that the work of colonization went on but haltingly. But not entirely unmindful of that clause in its charter which provided that it should "advance the peopling of the fruitful and unsettled parts," it manned an expedition which reached New Amsterdam in May, 1623, consisting chiefly of Walloons, some thirty families, under Cornelis Jacobson May, who was to remain in the colony as its first Director. These people were of Gallic origin who had fled to Holland from religious persecution and inhabited the frontier between France and Flanders, and who now desired to find a permanent home in the New World. Other adventurers followed in the succeeding year with William Verhulst, who succeeded May as the Director, but whose official term was of a similarly short duration. To Peter Minuit, however, who arrived May 6, 1626, a man of energy and experience, is due the credit of superseding the simple rule of his predecessors by an organized government, in which he had the assistance of a Council vested with legislative and judicial functions. A fort was erected and a warehouse, and with fresh arrivals from Holland the population of the island soon increased to some two hundred people.

The earlier colonists brought with them no ordained clergyman, but Minuit was accompanied by two "Krankbesoeckers," or "com

forters of the sick," whose duties included reading to the people from the Scriptures and instructing them in the Creeds. In August, 1628, however, the Rev. Jonas Michaelius, accredited to his work by the Synod of North Holland, established the first "form of a church" in Manhattan, Minuit the Director-General being appointed one of the elders. "At the first administration of the Lord's Supper we had," writes Michaelius, "full fifty communicants, not without great joy and comfort for so many Walloons and Dutch. . . . We administer the Holy Sacrament of the Lord once in four months. The Walloons and French have no service on Sundays otherwise than in the Dutch language, of which they understand very little."

The first place where stated religious services were held was the loft of Francis Molemaecker's horse-mill fitted up for the purpose, and in a tower connected with which there had been hung some Spanish bells captured at Porto Rico in the preceding year by the West India Company's fleet. This mill was located on the north side of what is now South William Street between Broad and William. When Domine Everardus Bogardus came over in 1633 with the new Director-General Wouter Van Twiller, he "would have none of the loft of the horse-mill in which his predecessor had preached and prayed," so a small wooden church was built for him on the shore of the East River, which was at that time the present line of Pearl Street, between Broad and Whitehall, and a parsonage house was erected for him near by. The Domine " preached with vigor on Sundays and on week days kept a watchful eye on civic affairs." Many of Van Twiller's acts failed to meet with his approval, and when the former resented his criticisms Bogardus denounced him from the pulpit as a "child of the devil." William Kieft succeeded him as Director - General in 1638, under whose auspices a new church was built within the fort. This fort, which under successive names played such an important part in the early history of the city, was completed in 1635 and was a quadrangular structure three hundred feet long and two hundred and fifty wide, located on some rising ground bounded by the present streets called Whitehall, Bridge, State, and Bowling Green. It inclosed a guard-house and barracks, the public offices, and a house for the Director-General; and in time came to be "distinguished not less for its social and political associations than for its characteristics as a military post.

The suggestion of a new church came from David De Vries, a conspicuous and attractive figure in the affairs of the colony. He

rallied the Governor on the mean appearance of the little church in Pearl Street and quoted the example of their New England neighbors as making it their first care to provide a suitable meetinghouse in every new town and settlement and offered himself to give one hundred guilders toward a new church. The Governor was much impressed, but was at a loss to know how to provide sufficient funds till the happy thought occurred to him of utilizing the approaching marriage festivities of the stepdaughter of Domine Bogardus as a fit occasion for circulating a subscription. The Domine had wooed and won, some years before, the wealthy widow of Roelof Jansen, more commonly known as Anneke Jans, which marriage had enhanced his position and influence. And now at the wedding of his wife's daughter a subscription paper for the new church was passed around among the merry-hearted guests, whose generosity was stimulated by the abundant beverages and the rivalry of the occasion, and handsome sums were readily subscribed. A stone church was erected in the fort, at a contract cost of twentyfive hundred guilders, seventy-two feet long, fifty-five wide, and sixteen high. In its front wall on a marble slab was inscribed, "Anno Domini 1642, William Kieft, Director-General, hath this commonalty caused to build this temple." The church was called St. Nicholas, in honor of the tutelary saint of New Amsterdam, and here for half a century a succession of ministers of the Reformed Dutch Church, all educated in the universities of Holland, conducted service in the Dutch language until 1693, when the new church on Garden Street (now Exchange Place) was ready for occupancy.

It was natural and fit that the religion of the national Church of Holland should thus be firmly established in the jurisdiction of the West India Company, but of religious toleration there was none until after the English gained possession of the colony. In the articles for its government prepared by the Company at New Amsterdam, August 30, 1638, the following occurs:

Religion shall be taught and preached there according to the Confession and formularies of union here publicly accepted in the respective churches, with which every one shall be satisfied and content, without, however, it being inferred from this, that any person shall be hereby in any wise constrained or aggrieved in his conscience, but every man shall be free to live up to his own in peace and decorum; provided he avoid frequenting any forbidden assemblies or conventicles, much less collect or get up any such.

This was liberty of conscience for a man's own personal guidance, but a clear denial of the right to public worship save in the Dutch

language in the Dutch Church. Similarly, in the new charter granted to the Patroons in 1640, it was provided that "no other religion was to be publicly tolerated or allowed in New Netherlands save that then taught and exercised by authority in the Reformed Church in the United Provinces," for the inculcation of which the Company promised to support good and fit preachers, schoolmasters, and comforters of the sick. The doughty Peter Stuyvesant, who succeeded Kieft as Director-General in May, 1647, proceeded to enforce these regulations "with all the zeal of a bigot as soon as his attention was no longer engrossed by the determined and incessant demand of the Burghers for some form of representative government, which had theretofore been denied them. This bitter struggle with the Governor culminated in an appeal to the States General of Holland, resulting in a decree ordaining municipal government in New Amsterdam, with a city charter modeled after that of the cities of the mother country, providing for a schout or sheriff, two burgomasters, and five schepens, which elective officers were to combine both legislative and judicial functions; which government was inaugurated in 1653. A Description of New Netherland, published in this same year by Adrian van der Donck, one of the three representatives sent to Holland in 1649 with the petition for municipal government, had created a fresh European interest in America, and men of many nationalities flocked to New Amsterdam, anticipating that the traditional Dutch policy of religious toleration prevailed across the sea. So steady was the migration that between 1653 and 1664 the population of the town doubled, while that of the whole province increased fourfold.

In 1654 the Lutherans had become so numerous as to desire to form a congregation, but the two Dutch ministers uniting in a protest against permitting him to remain in New Amsterdam, the minister who had been sent over by his co-religionists in Holland was arrested and deported by Stuyvesant, and some Lutheran parents who refused to have their children baptized in the Dutch Church were fined and imprisoned. An appeal to the West India Company proved fruitless through the opposition in New Amsterdam, which was based on the ground that "if the Lutherans were tolerated the English Anabaptists and Independents, of whom there were many in the province, would demand the same liberty," and the Director-General was instructed to use all moderate exertions to allure the Lutherans into the Dutch Church and to matriculate them in the Reformed religion."

In 1656 the Dutch clergymen in New Amsterdam complained