OLD CATSKILL

Written by Henry Brace

from

Harper's New Monthly Magazine

No. 360

May 1880

Pages 810 to 826

Published by

Harper & Brothers,

Franklin Square, New York

Kindly Contributed by Linda Van Deusen-Kintzing

10 March 2004

transcribed by Susan Stalker Mulvey

Continued from Page 819

[page 820] the Iroquois.  Along the southern front of this building, under the eaves, may still be seen the initials of the builder and the date of erection.--F. S., 1705.

    The house within has undergone but little alteration.  Beams of yellow pine eighteen inches square, supporting the ceilings, project into the rooms of the first story.  The windows are filled with small panes of old glass, of which some have become prismatic, like the bottles from a Cyprian tomb.  The fire-places, though now disused, are huge caverns eight feet broad and three feet deep.  The sides of these chimneys were once covered with square titles of coarse Delft earthenware.  These have fortunately been preserved, and a few months ago I had the pleasure of looking them over.  Upon them are rudely painted, in blue, scenes taken from the Scriptures--the suicide of Judas, Pilate's washing of his hands, the cock that crew thrice.  I failed to find among the collection a duplicate of the delightful tile which Mistress Maria Schuneman Van Vechten once showed me, whereon was drawn Lazarus coming out of his tomb.  The restored and overjoyed man is waving over his head a small Dutch flag.

   Upon the walls of the southeastern room, during Francis Salisbury's life, hung the precious heirlooms which his father, Silvester, brought with him from England--the coat of arms of the Welsh Salisburys, knights of Llewenny; a picture concerning which the tradition is that it is a portrait of Anne Boleyn by Holbein; two rapiers mounted in silver, of dainty workmanship, and stamped, one with the date 1544, the other with the date 1616.

    The house which Gerritsen Van Bergen built for himself in 1729 is also standing.  But while it has been made inhabitable by the alterations it has undergone, its picturesqueness has been greatly marred.  The house is of brick--no other ancient house in the town of Catskill is of this material--and was of one story, with a roof of steep pitch covered with large concave tiles of red earthenware.  The story goes that the bricks and roof tiles were imported from Holland; but as kilns for both bricks and tiles were built in Albany so early as 1657, the tradition is at least doubtful.

    In 1732, twelve or fourteen yeomen, with their families and dependents--sixty to eighty person all told--had settled upon [page 821] these lands in the region south of the Catskill, which to this day is called the Inbogt.  The first care of the colonists had been to clear and to plant a few acres, and to build houses for themselves and barns for their cattle.  These needful tasks accomplished, their second care was to found a church.  Their children had been baptized and their dead had been buried by Domine Kocherthal, of East Camp, and by Domines Dellius and Van Driessen, of Albany.  On Sunday, also, two or three times during the year, the people had gathered together in the house of Gerritsen Van Bergen, or in the roomy log-cabin of Benjamin Dubois, near the mouth of the Catskill, and had listened to the reading of the Bible and of portions of the liturgy prescribed by the Synod of Dort.  But it now seemed to these pious men that the time had come for a dedicated place of worship and for an established pastor.

    The inhabitants of Coxsackie were of like mind, and joined their neighbors of Catskill in inviting George Michael Weiss to become their minister.  The call bears the date of the 8th of February, 1732.  The united congregations agreed to pay Weiss a yearly salary of fifty pounds, to provide for him a house, garden, and fire-wood, and to give him a horse, saddle, and bridle.  He agreed to preach twice on every Sunday in Dutch--thirty days in Catskill, and twenty-two days in Coxsackie--to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and to instruct the children in the Heidelberg Catechism.  A portion of his parishioners, however, being German, he also engaged to give their children religious instruction in their mother-tongue.

    Seventeen days after the call had been given, on the 25th of February, 1732, the church at Catskill was organized by the election of a consistory and by the installation of the pastor.  The next year the church edifice was built, and was duly consecrated.  Domine Petrus Van Driessen, of Albany, preached in the morning from that glowing verse in the Twenty-seventh Psalm in which David sings of his desire to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.  The new pastor preached in the afternoon, but from what text will never be known.  When he had made the entry of the services of dedication in the church book, he dropped a blot of ink upon the record of chapter and verse, then smeared the blot with his thumb, and obliterated the figures forever.

    Domine Weiss was a native of one of the Palatinates, and was trained in the great theological school of the University of Heidelberg.  In 1727 he was sent to Philadelphia, apparently as a sort of foreign missionary to the heathen; removed thence to Huntersfield, on the Schoharie and from Huntersfield came to Catskill.  The testimonials he received from Heidelberg and from his flock in Philadelphia attest his orthodoxy and zeal--testimonials which he copied with proper pride and in bad handwriting into the Doep Boek, or Book of Baptisms, of the Catskill church.  It is especially remarked of him that he could speak Latin with great fluency--more correctly, it is to be hoped, than he could write Dutch.

    Domine Weiss's ministrations lasted four years, when he went back to Philadelphia.  From 1736 until August, 1753, the church at Catskill remained without a pastor.  Then followed the long and faithful life-service of Domine Johannes Schuneman.

     The Schunemans were Germans, and were among the Palatines whom Queen Anne, between the years 1708 and 1711, had sent to New York.  The Lower Palatinate had been cruelly ravaged by the French.  In the sore distress of the poor inhabitants, they petitioned Queen Anne to transport them to America.  Several hundreds were accordingly brought over in government transports.  It was the first German immigration into New York of importance.  The new-comers were peasants, but they were a thrifty and industrious people.  They were established at East Camp, on the Hudson, on a tract of six thousand acres which the province bought from Robert Livingston, and at West Camp, directly opposite, on inappropriated lands.  They not only had a free passage to this country, but they were also fed and clothed and furnished with tools for a year.  It as the intention of the government to employ them in raising hemp, and in making tar, pitch, and resin, and in getting out masts of pine for the royal navy.  But the enterprise proved a failure.  Many of the colonists migrated to the valley of the Schoharie; others bought the land upon which they had been placed.

     Among these German refugees were the Fieros, Webers, Plancks, Dietrichs, Newkirks, and Schmidts, whose sons afterward became well-to-do yeomen in the town [page 822]