CHAPTER I

FROM WALDORF TO ESOPUS

Pages 1-7

     In one of the colonial houses of Esopus, sat a young clergyman in his middle twenties, with his face bowed in his hands in deep thought.  The question before him was a momentous one.  Five years before he had left his native home in Waldorf, Germany, and started as many of the young men in that day did, for the new land of opportunity across the sea.

     It was the eventful year of 1776, and Esopus (Kingston) was full of refugees from New York, which city being invested by the British, many of her residents had fled to the smaller towns and villages further up the Hudson, that they might at least find safety for their families in the dangers which threatened.  In the [page 2] fatherland young John Gabriel Gebhard had been trained for his life work in the best education institutions of the day.  He had received his earlier university education at Heidelberg, and after a further course of theological study at Utrecht, had been licensed to preach by the Reformed Church of Holland.  A son of a minister of the Gospel, it would seem that he brought with him to America special fitness for his calling, and a promise of good things to come.  In the five hears that he had been on American shores, this was the second time he had been called to change his home, and this time he had a wife still under twenty, and two small children to consider.

     The young clergyman, after his month-long voyage from Germany, during which storms had swept the little vessel into the hollows of the sea and upon the crests of the billows, washed her decks, and even found the freight and luggage stored away in cabins and holds of the ship, at last landed, it is believed, at Philadelphia.  For three  years he had served the two congregations of Whitpain and Worcester, among the German portion of the population of Montgomery county, Pennsylvania.  Here in the first year of his [page 3] pastorate, he met and loved Anna Maria Magdalene Carver, a descendent of some of the early settlers of Philadelphia.  She was a charming girl of fifteen, and the customs of the time tending toward early maturity, in June of the following year they were married.  Succeeding years proved the choice of the girl wife to have been one of the wises steps of the young man's life.

     They had been married only a year when a call came to Mr. Gebhard to become the pastor of the German Reformed Church of New York.  This church had been formed a few years earlier from a small body of the German-speaking members of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in Nassau St., who wished to hear the Gospel preached in the High-Dutch tongue with which they were familiar.  In this desire they had the full consent of the mother church.  Indeed she ever gave her offspring a fostering care, the pastors of the German Church meeting in consistorial and classical gatherings with the ministers of the Collegiate Church, and being installed by the ministers of the older organization; while the members who had gone out to form the new church, also showed their attachment for [page 4] their previous place of worship, by requesting the privilege of returning to the old fold in case their enterprise should fail, and to be allowed to bury their dead with the Collegiate Church as formerly.

     The call to the New York church had been accepted, and the young couple had taken up their abode in the city, the German Church being situated at that time in Nassau St. between John St. and Maiden Lane.  Here two boys, Jacob and Philip, came to bless the minister's home, and the two years of his pastorate were full of activity in the growing town and congregation, and rich in friendships with men who like himself had left their old home and friends, to make a new home and life on American shores.  Rev. Frederick Muhlenberg was at this time in charge of the only German Lutheran Church in the city, and the two young clergymen were fast friends.  Later Mr. Gebhard named a third son for the friend from whom he was parted when New York became no longer a safe place of residence for either of them for both were patriotic and devoted already to this new country for which they had dared so much.  Neither of them was bound by ties of kindred to the British, who claimed the right of taxing [page 5] the American people, so their loyalty to the Colonies knew no hindrance, and their words were frank and warmly patriotic, their strictures on English interference bearing no uncertain sound, and it came to pass that the English felt that these young German patriots would better magnify their calling in some other town than one invested by the British, and they were fortunate that they made their escape in safety.  Frederick Muhlenberg retired from the ministry a few years later, and returning to Philadelphia, became a member of the Continental Congress of 1779.

     The roads about New York looked at this time like a perpetual moving day, for the active patriots among the townspeople left the city, many of them having already suffered from the confiscation of much of their property, through the hands of the Tory soldiers who plundered on every side.  Every horse and cart, sloop and sailing vessel, which could be procured was pressed into service, many of them carrying women and children, as well as furniture, out of the city whose churches were soon to be used as riding academies and prisons by the British, and whose congregations were already scattered.  It was estimated that one third of [page 6] the residents of New York left the city at this time.

     It was thus that the Rev. John Gabriel Gebhard had come to Esopus.  After a short time it became known where the popular young German minister from New York was to be found, and since the supply of clergymen was not great in the new country, even though outside of the cities they usually served three or four congregations, the New York minister received at this time three calls to vacant churches.  It was over these calls that he was thinking so profoundly.  There was much to be considered, possible war behind them cutting them off not only from the home across the sea, but also from the only homes he and his wife had known in the new land.  There were the children to be thought of, and deepest of all, was the seeking after Divine guidance as we went forward like Abraham of old, "not knowing whither he went."

     The call from the Claverack church covered much territory, and there was also another feature,--this was a call to preach in the Dutch tongue.  Mr. Gebhard's university training at Utrecht had somewhat familized (sic) him with the Low Dutch as it was called, but Latin was so universally used in the universities of the [page 7] old world, that the other languages did not hold an even chance.  Still the young man was a linguist by education and inheritance, and he answered to the question of the committee from Claverack, as to how long it would take him to learn the Dutch language sufficiently well to preach it, that he would do it in three months, which promise was kept to the letter.   This settled the matter, and the Claverack call was given and accepted.  Once more the young minister went forth into a strange land, a land which most surely the Lord had given him for ministerial labors, as he gave the broad acres of Canaan to Abraham for a possession.  The fifty year's pastorate which followed was the proof and fulfillment of the wisdom of the choice made in the fear of the Lord, in the tarrying-place of Esopus, in the eventful year of '76, and to the young minister's inalienable right to the V. D. M. (Minister or Servant of the Word of God) which always followed the signing of his name in the early days, as it did that of many of the clergymen which the Old World sent to the New. [page 8]

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