Sunday in New Netherland and 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 Knights, writing in 1704 of a visit to New York, noted, “ The Dutch are n’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. Nevertheless, much respect to the day was required, especially under the firm hand of the rigid Calvinist, Governor Stuyvesant. He constantly 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, or gaining 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, or constable, was ordered to be active in searching out and punishing such offenses.

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. 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 surely any one would have a right to draw an inference of gaming therefrom. And in another public-house ninepins were plainly 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 the schout snooped and fined, in 1673 the burgomasters “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, in taverns and in private houses. Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were not the only guiding thoughts in the burgomasters’ minds in framing their 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.

Before the arrival of a Dutch preacher in the new settlement in the New World, the spiritual care of the little company was provided for by krankebesoeckers, or zeikentrosters, “ comforters of the sick,” who “ 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, and took the place of ministers. At Fort Orange they had a domine before they had a church. The patroon instructed his agent, 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 loopholes for the convenient use of guns in defense against the Indians, if defense were needed. On the roof were placed three small cannon, commanding the three roads which led to the church. This edifice was called “ a handsome preaching-house,” and it was boasted that it was almost as large as the fine one in New Amsterdam. Its corner-stone was laid with much ceremony. Over all hung in a belfry a bell presented to five little congregation by the directors of the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company. The pulpit 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 a curved balustrade. It is about four feet in height, and only three in diameter. It is octagonal ; one of the sides, being hinged, forms the entrance door, or gate. All the small panels and mouldings are of oak. It stood in a space at the end of the centre aisle.

From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and candle-sconces projected from the walls. There were originally two low 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 bellrope from the belfry hung down in the middle of the church. 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 a ragebol, or cobweb-brush, was purchased by the deacon for the use of the Scrubbers. The floor was sanded, as were the floors of dwelling-houses.

In 1715 the second Albany church was built on the site of the old one. Tradition says it was built around it; that the congregation were deprived of the use of the church only three weeks, and the old one was carried out “ by piecemeal.” At any rate, the new one 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. When the first owner of a seat died (were he a man), it descended to his eldest son or the eldest grandson; if there were no son or 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 building had some pretense to ornamentation : the windows were stained glass decorated with the coats of arms of various Albany families. The Van Rensselaer and Dudley arms still exist; and wooden coats of arms were hung on the walls, as in the New York church. This was a custom of the Fatherland. A writer of that day said of the churches in Rotterdam and Harlem, “ They are battered as full of escutcheons as the walls can hold.”

The meeting-house sometimes bore other decorations, often “ billets of sales ” and notices of vendues or “ outcrys.” In the Albany church, when there was rumor of an approaching war with France, “ guns, powder, and bales,” to the number of fifty, were ordered to be “ hung up in ye church,” — a stern reminder of possible sudden bloodshed. “ Ye fyremasters ” were also ordered to see that “ ye fyre-ladders and fyre-hookes were hung at ye church.” In many churches the bier stood in the porch, with the doodkleed, or burial pall, when not in use.

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 remodeled 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 sixsided or eight-sided; these had always a high steep pyramidal roof terminating in a belfry, which was often topped with a gilded haen, or weather - cock. The churches at Jamaica and New Utrecht were octagonal. The Bushwiek 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 meetinghouse at Flushing were similar in shape.

When the bold Dutch 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, — that “ the first thing they build in New England after their dwellinghouses 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 Company, and fortune favored the scheme ; for the daughter of Domine Bogardus was married opportunely just at that time, and, as was the wise custom of the day, a collection was taken up at the wedding. Kieft asked that it be employed for the building of the church; and when the wedding guests were mellow with wedding cheer, “ after the fourth or fifth round of drinking,” says the chronicle, each vied with the others in pious liberality. A few days later some regretted their expansiveness at the wedding feast ; but Kieft held them stiffly to their contracts, and “ nothing availed to excuse.” As a result of all this, a stone church, seventy-two feet long and fifty-five feet wide, was built 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, when it was burned.

There was no church in Breuekelen 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 sharptoned bell which had been sent over by the West India Company. The walls were so paneled with dark wood, the windows were so high and narrow, that it was always dark and gloomy inside the church ; 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 nine A. M. and two P. M., but in 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 varicolored flowers. This church stood on what is now Fulton Street, a mile from the ferry, and was used until 1810.

These early churches were unheated, and it is said that sometimes the domines preached in heavy knit or fur caps and mittens, and that both goodman and goodwife carried muffs. I can fancy a love-locked cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole carrying a great muff, but such feminine gear seems to consort in ill fashion with a sturdy Dutch mynheer. That he should smoke in meeting was natural enough, to try to keep warm ; though folk do tell 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 in icy frigidity. It is told of more than one old-time sexton that he loudly asserted the importance of his office by noisy rattling-down of the gallery stoves and slamming of the iron doors at the most critical point in the domine’s sermon. The women of the congregation carried footstoves of perforated metal or wood, which contained boxes of coals, to afford a little warmth to the feet. Kerck-stoofs appear on the earliest inventories. They still are used in churches in Holland. In an anteroom of a church in Leyden are several hundred stoven for use in winter.

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 clerk. During the singing the domine entered, and pausing for a few minutes at the foot of the pulpit in silent prayer, he soon ascended to his seat of state. The psalms were given out to the congregation through a large hanging-board with movable printed slips. Of course the powers and duties of this church functionary, the voorleezer, 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, about Revolutionary times, he was also paid two shillings per annum by each family to go around and knock loudly on the door every 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.

In New Amsterdam the koeck, or clerk, 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 assistants, and, heading the line, with their aid he carried 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, or “ alleys,” and thrusting in front of each “range” of seats, in the face of the seated people, a small cloth contributionbag, or sacje, 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 crab-nets. This custom — the use of so unfamiliar a medium for church collecting — gave rise to the amusing notion of one observant English traveler that Dutch deacons passed round their old hats on the end of walking-sticks 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 barters in lumber and peltries. In New Utrecht, the karck-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 sacje 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 collectionbags 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 traced from these two relative facts : the traders who gave freely into the churchbags 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 paid 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 are still in existence, and still used. The church at New Utrecht possessed and exhibited one at its bicentennial celebration, a few years ago. Their fate was settled when the honest deacons were forced to conclude that the sacje could, if artfully manipulated by designing moderns, conceal far too well the amount given by each contributor, and hide equally well 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 contributionplates, and abandoned sacjes. 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 new fashion, refusing to give at all.

I ought to add, in defense of the karck-sacje and in praise of the early congregations, that the amount gathered each week was most generous, — in proportion far in advance of our modern church contributions. The poor were at that time not taken in charge by the state or town, but were liberally cared for by the church. Often during the year much more money would be 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 rendered each year 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. There were also good Friesland stockings and many ells of linen to be given to the poor.

The “church poor,” as they were called, fared well in New Netherland. Of beggars and degraded poor of Dutch birth or descent there were none. Some poor folk having a little property transferred it to the Consistory, who paid it out for their support as long as it lasted, and cheerfully added to the amount by gifts from the church treasury while it was necessary for the care of these “ of the poorer sorte.” To show that these church poor were neither neglected nor despised, let me give an example of one case, — an ordinary entry 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 : —

Guilders. Stuyvers.

Dead shirt and cap 16

Winding sheet 14

Making coffin 24

1 lb. nails, cartage coffin 3 10

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

Grave-digging 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 occasionally 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 libeler and defendant. Both were abusive and personal in the pulpit, “ dishonouring the church by passion.” The former was alleged by his enemies to be frequently drunk, in church and abroad, and 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, and called opprobrious names (a hateful offense in New Amsterdam) ; he 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 Labadist travelers 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.”

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.”

The employment of the Dutch language in the pulpit of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Netherland 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 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 this church was “ the gospel undefiled in Holland Dutch.”

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 on Sunday.

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 people of all denominations were obliged to contribute to the support of the Church of England. 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 all held in Dutch. Third, all candidates for ministry in the Dutch Reformed Church were obliged to go to Holland for ordination : this involved great expense, and often kept congregations without a minister for a long time. The entire discipline of the church, all the courts of appeal, were also in the Fatherland.

In order to obtain relief from the lastnamed 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 Coetus. 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 between the Coetus party, the reformers, and the Conference 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 Coetus party obtained a college charter from George III. Blighted in its birth by the Revolution, the college lived with varying prosperity until its revival as Rutgers College in 1825.

Alice Morse Earle.