The Story of New Netherland/Chapter 19

M OST of the Dutch churches in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys had a family resemblance in their solidity and small proportions, several of them being built in whole or in part of little yellow bricks brought from Holland. The diminutive, square, hooded windows were set with tiny panes of glass. Happily they were guarded on time outside by heavy iron cross-bars, for the small boys, then as in our day, threw stones. The gable end faced the road. In the towns this architectural feature meant, “Love thy neighbor as thyself — the idea being to let the snow and rain fall in your own yard and not on the heads of street folks and passers-by.

The Sleepy Hollow church at Tarrytown, still standing and in use, though greatly altered, is a fair type of those structures. Inside the edifice were two connected galleries, one on the west and one on the north side, and both were very near neighbors to the high pulpit. Two beams, each a foot square, set north and south across the inside of the building, bound the walls together. The ceiling was of white painted boards. The six-sided sounding-board of white oak, five feet above the pulpit, was suspended from the crossed timber above by an iron rod. To these beams the kievits, or phœbe birds — after which Kievit’s Hoek, on the Connecticut River, was named — used to come and build their nests. Untaught in the golden virtue of silence, these and other feathered visitors kept up gossip and scolding during the service, to the disturbance of the Domine and the delight of the little folks.

The sturdy Dutchman, like other puritans, disdained support to his spine while listening to doctrinal sermons one or two hours long. Before the Reformation there were no pews, for these came in with Protestantism, and are a family institution. At first it was a luxury, as well as a novelty, to sit at all. When aristocratic fashions imported from England prevailed, there were in the Dutch churches at Albany, Schenectady, and in other places, on either side of the old pulpit, “the thrones,” that is, seats elevated a little above the level of the others, covered with rich curtains, and meant for the special use of the family of the lord of the manor, or, in a free town, the local magistrates. Here sat the Patroon and his wife, he occupying the one side and the lady the other. In later days, during devotional exercises, there were short curtains sliding on brass rods, and screening off the inmates, which were drawn aside during the sermon, making the inmates, the Domine, and the congregation visible to one another.

The Tarrytown bell, still swinging in the belfry and summoning summer worshippers, was, like others, in the Mohawk Valley and on Manhattan, cast in Patria. Amsterdam was famous for its foundries, and the metal from captured Spanish cannon was plentiful and cheap. The bronze of many hundreds of the bells in music-loving Holland once made the thunder of war. Besides its rich ornamentation of raised figures, the Tarrytown bell bears the inscription from Romans viii. 31, — “Si Deus nobis, quis contra nos,” and the date 1685. In very early days the bell was rung in most of the settlements three times a day, to sound the hours of breakfast, dinner, and supper for housekeepers and the men at work in feild or street, and always when there was a christening. Then people went in the church to see the baby held in the Domine’s arms. Whoever else might come, the minister and elder must be present.

On the sacramental table the communion service of colonial days, sometimes of pewter, but oftener of silver, is in many Reformed churches still in use. In larger edifices, long tables were laid down the aisles. The baptismal bowl used to be placed in a socket or bracket extending from the pulpit. The pulpits, usually brought from Holland, were octagonal in shape, each suggesting a wineglass in form, and just large enough to hold one man. Set up on a wooden, standard, or demi-column, about nine inches in thickness, each was mounted by a little stairway. Loftier than the minister’s crown was a peg upon which to hang his cocked hat. In silken gown and neck band of linen, cambric befje, or bands, the Domineset out from the parsonage arrayed for service. On entering he doffed his three-cornered hat, and then the-men streamed behind him to their seats.

The Dutch Church edifices were greatly altered after the Revolutionary War, and in one respect they were made to conform to the simple and more democratic style common before the English conquest. Then also the relics of feudalism, the curtained seats of grandeur for the manor lord and lady and places for the magistrates, were removed. In their stead were set, as in Holland, pews for the members of the Consistory, elders and deacons, in front of each of whom, on the projecting shelf of the pew front, was laid a Bible. The hymn-book had bound up with it the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession of Faith, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, held in 1619, and the forms for Ordination, Communion, Marriage, Burial, and Installation used in the liturgy, and also the prayers of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands. When in modern days the wineglass pulpit was exchanged for a more fashionable sort, the mahogany of the old one was usually made into souvenirs of some kind, tables or bookcases. Invertebrated hard oak was exchanged for soft pine benches without cushions, but with high, straight backs. It seemed like veritable laps of luxury, and “flowery beds of ease,” when cushioned seats were provided for saints and sinners alike.

In colonial days, the meeting-house in winter was warmed chiefly by the zeal of the preacher. The bodily heat of the men was kept in by great-coats. No wood stove radiated roasting heat a few inches, nor did sheet-iron pipes of imposing length and ugliness, as in later times, traverse the space from wall to wall. The women found the holy tabernacles less arctic and more amiable than did the men. Girls and matrons, who came with silver-clasped Bibles, hung by chatelaines at their belts, had foot stoves. In the case of well-to-do folk these were usually carried by the negro servants. In other instances, the boys, or servant maids, or even Mynheer himself, were the heat-bearers. In later days, hot bricks from the sleigh were wrapped up, and took the place of “stovey” for caloric. If the “klinkers” got cold before the service ended, — for sermons were considered outrageous, and it was thought that the Domine “ran out of timber” if they were too short, — the men went right up to the stove and heated them again on the logs or embers. In modern days, when cast-iron wood burners were introduced, high was their mounting on stilts, — so that the galleries could get warm. Terrific at times was the raking and banging of the iron door by the sexton, who was very apt to magnify his office as fireman, even to the extent of a million diameters.

Usually saplings, that grew to be grand old trees, were early planted near the “Kerk.” In the summer time the men sat out under their shade on smooth stones or benches until the minister came, when they all rose up like a flock of sheep, following their wether into the fold. Many were the proverbs about the Domine, who, in the days before newspapers and magazines, was on week days a walking library and on Sunday an oracle. “As the Domine sneezes, so sneeze we all,” was a common saying. “I hold by your coat tails, Domine,” confessed many a docile parishioner. Before the social pipe or glass was enjoyed, “Domine eerst” was the polite and waiting word. No wonder that the sociable pastor visited often at the most hospitable homes, and sometimes brought down the sarcastic fling, “The Domine comes often for the wine”; while of a reverend but incorrigible old pipe smoker it was said, “He belongs to the family of John Tobacco” (Jan Tabak). Considering the pithiness of many Dutch proverbs, “translation is treachery.”

At Dorp, or Schenectady, when the juffrouw, or Domine’s wife, entered the church, the whole congregation stood up to greet her. It was the universal clerical custom for the preacher, before mounting the pulpit, to stand at the foot of the stairs, and, with one hand holding his hat and the other raised in silent. prayer, to make spiritual invocation before he ascended. When seated, he selected the biblical passage for the clerk or fore-reader, who had his desk below. This important person, often school-teacher, funeral director, and man of much if not all work, read to the people the appointed chapter of Scripture, and afterwards gave out the psalm, usually acting as precentor. This order of worship is still followed in the Fatherland. If these colonial assistants read with the same fine effect and reverend devotion as I have often heard the Scriptures rendered by the precentors in Holland, it seems no wonder that Scripture-reading then, as now, was often declared and felt to be quite as important as the minister’s discourse, for correct reading is, ipso facto, both illumination and commentary.

The ordinary sermon was from seventy-five to ninety minutes long, with occasional tendency to plethoric continuity. Being divided into two parts, with a collection in between, it was borne more cheerfully than in later times, when books were numerous and homilies must be short. Then the proverb was occasionally flung at the Domine, “He can’t let go of his sermon.”

The universal rule was to take at every service two collections for almsgiving, — one for the Church support, and one for the poor. There was nothing stingy about a Dutchman when it came to his Church. His was ever an open hand, and few people support their spiritual shepherds better than the Dutch. On Communion Sundays, the table was drawn out to its full length, inside the railing or down the aisle, and the people sat around it in successive companies, every company receiving an address from the minister. As each person approached the table, he, or more often she, would lift the edge of the cloth and deposit under it the silver or copper coin, which was to be used only for the purchase of bread and wine for the sacrament.

At noon there was an hour’s intermission between the services, when the people ate their lunch and chatted together, usually in the grove near the church. Planted as shoots, these chestnuts, oaks, maples, or poplars grew up to be magnificent “trees of the Lord, full of sap.” With their increase the worshiper’s storehouse of precious memories and sweet experiences was filled.

The subjects with these neighbors were at first theological and edifying, but soon tapered off to matters of daily routine, simple business, or elaborate gossip. People rode long distances on horseback, and this equitation gave the young men an opportunity to exhibit their dexterity and gallantry in assisting the rosy maids from their saddles. The courtings, the flirtations, the love-makings, and the delightful little nothings that took place during the intermission between sermons were moments of joy at the time, and became rich flowers in memory’s gardens. Although excess of this “charm that Eden never lost” might spoil, for the afternoon, the full effect of the second sermon, yet who, other than the Domine, would be called in to complete the work begun on Sunday noon and join for life the lovers? Verily “the better the day the better the deed.” The church records and the private cash accounts of the Domines show that the people were as generous then as now, indeed, rather more no, we judge from the many books we have seen, in paying for the privilege of linking their lives with yoke-follows. In Dutch neither man nor woman in married to any one. Bride or groom marries with him or her. In New Netherland boys and girls were both educated, and men and women were more on an equality than after the time of English fashions. Until quite recent times all marriage fees were paid by the Domine into the church treasury, and were not private perquisites, as at present, or gifts to the lady of the parsonage.

The first use of the English language at a baptism, September 25, 1785, greatly offended some good people, who made mighty outcry against the innovation. “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange tongue?” voiced their feeling. Indeed, it was difficult for Dutch folk in their old age to understand how God could reveal his truths in any language but that of their fathers.