Piety and the Paltz: Religion in Colonial New Paltz

Paula Wheeler Carlo, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, History, Nassau Community College

Portions of this paper have been copyrighted by the author. Please do not quote from this paper without citing the source.

On January 22, 1683, "Mr. Pierre DaillÈ, Minister of the Word of God, arrived at New Paltz. [He] preached twice on the Sunday following and proposed at a social gathering of the families, to elect by a majority of votes of family heads, an elder and a deacon to assist the minister in guiding church membersÖ."(1). This first entry in the New Paltz Church records reveals several characteristics of French Reformed churches, which followed the teachings of sixteenth-century religious reformer John Calvin. First there is the central importance of preaching: DaillÈ preached twice, not once. Next there is the involvement of the congregation in church governance: family heads voted to elect an elder and a deacon. Another essential characteristic is the offices themselves: elders and deacons, along with the pastor, comprised that uniquely-Calvinist institution known as the consistory. These positions were necessary because each was responsible for different functions. According to Calvin's "Ecclesiastical Ordinances," devised in 1541 for the church in Geneva, Switzerland, the church should have four offices: pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. Elders enforced discipline, supervised the district, and visited each family at least once a year. Deacons assisted the pastor with poor relief, visited the sick and needy, and administered the city's hospital. The fledgling community of New Paltz further complied with Calvin's guidelines by hiring and maintaining a schoolmaster. Teachers were expected to instruct young people in sound doctrine (2). By adhering to Calvin's Ordinances, the settlers of New Paltz demonstrated that they wished to maintain their European religious heritage. My paper discusses the early history of the New Paltz Church and explores how religious practices were shaped by conditions in the American wilderness. I will also examine some of the problems that confronted this congregation throughout the colonial period.

Before proceeding it is necessary to clarify some terms. The words Huguenot and French Reformed are used interchangeably. Calvinist is a broader term that includes the French, Dutch, Swiss, German, Walloon (Belgian) and other Reformed churches. It also refers to Pilgrims, Puritans, and Presbyterians, to name some of the English-speaking Calvinist denominations. The experience of the New Paltz founders differs from that of most other French-speaking Calvinists since they left northern France and the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium) long before the intense persecutions of the 1680s. Initially they went to the German Palatinate (Die Pfalz), for which New Paltz is named, but then they decided to re-migrate to North America in the 1660s and 1670s. Because they left Europe voluntarily and probably brought moveable assets with them, their uprooting was not as difficult as it was for the post-1685 refugees who often fled with little more than their lives. Thus, the relatively favorable conditions of their exodus facilitated their resettlement in the New World.

Nevertheless, life in early New Paltz was not easy since this was a frontier community. Like their co-religionists elsewhere, they eventually had to make certain practical religious accommodations and adjustments. For most French-speaking Calvinists in the British Atlantic World, this meant conformity to the Church of England (3). In the Dutch dominated Hudson Valley, however, they were more likely to be influenced by the Dutch Reformed Church and by Dutch culture in general. Eventually the founders of New Paltz and their descendants learned to speak and write Dutch and some joined Dutch Reformed Churches. But this does not mean that they completely abandoned their religious beliefs since Dutch Reformed Churches were steeped in Calvinism, a characteristic that they shared with the French Reformed Churches.

Like other Protestants, Calvinists believed in justification by faith rather than by works, which was the major characteristic that separated Protestants from Roman Catholics. In addition, all Protestants repudiated the office of the papacy, allowed their clergy to marry, did not pray to saints or to the Virgin Mary, and did not pray for the dead-hence they denied the existence of Purgatory. Seventeenth-century Calvinists, however, placed greater emphasis on certain concepts than did other Protestants. These ideas, which were ratified at the 1618 Synod of Dort, are summarized in the following mnemonic device based on the word TULIP.

T = Total Depravity. Human beings are, by nature, totally depraved.
U = Unconditional Election. God chooses (elects) some persons to be saved regardless of individual merit.
L = Limited Atonement. God's atoning grace is limited to the Elect.
I = Irresistible Grace. One cannot resist or refuse the grace of God.
P = Perseverance of the Saints. Once God has extended his grace to someone, that grace cannot be forfeited. In other words, salvation is permanent.

The most significant problem for the early New Paltz Church was finding and keeping qualified French Reformed ministers. Indeed, both Pierre DaillÈ and his successor, David de Bonrepos, were only part-time pastors of the New Paltz Church, as they simultaneously served other Huguenot congregations in New York. Moreover, following de Bonrepos' departure around 1702 the New Paltz Church was pastorless for nearly thirty years. However, this problem was not unique to New Paltz since ordained clerics of nearly all religious denominations were in short supply in colonial America (4). The situation was most acute in frontier settlements like New Paltz, because educated clergymen usually preferred to remain in established towns and cities where there were more material amenities and daily life was less difficult. Conditions for the Huguenots were exacerbated by the closure of their theological schools in France. Further worsening the shortage was the fact that many Huguenot refugee pastors remained in cosmopolitan centers in Europe, ministering to refugee congregations there, which was a far more attractive alternative than the boondocks of North America. Huguenot ministers who came to North America often faced extremely difficult, poverty-stricken lives. Not only did they travel through the wilderness from one congregation to another, but they often had to deal with poor and traumatized congregations, particularly after the large Huguenot exodus following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, which made Protestantism illegal in France.

How did the faithful of New Paltz maintain their religious beliefs and practices when they did not have the benefit of an ordained minister? Occasionally they trekked some sixteen miles to the Dutch Church in Kingston, primarily when there were children to be baptized, when couples wished to marry, or when communion was offered. Nevertheless, sources indicate that religious services were held regularly in New Paltz. Consider the following evidence: a stone church was constructed in New Palz in 1717, some baptisms appear in the church records in 1718, and seating assignments in the new church were designated in 1720-all despite the fact that there was no minister (5). Moreover, in a 1751 communication, New Paltz consistory members wrote that "besides maintaining Family worship, they [had] in their midst the public service of pure Religion. . .Whenever there was no minister a sermon was read in French" (6). They also noted that around 1727 afternoon services began to be held in Dutch to accommodate Dutch families in the community. Since Calvinist churches usually had two Sunday services for most of the year, the morning service was probably conducted in French. Because there appears to have been a schoolmaster in the community for most of this time, he was probably the person charged with reading the sermon. Certainly this was the practice in many Dutch Reformed Churches in colonial North America that lacked a resident minister: the voorlezer or lay reader, who was often the schoolmaster, led the services. Therefore, it is very likely that this was the case in French Reformed Churches under similar circumstances. Indeed, owing to the persecution they had endured in France and the Spanish Netherlands, Huguenots and Walloons were accustomed to private family devotions as well as clandestine worship without an ordained minister long before their arrival in North America (7). In addition, Bibles, hymns, sermons, and other devotional texts were available in early New Paltz, which would have facilitated this practice (8).

In the Roman Catholic Church the weekly celebration of the eucharist, wherein the priest miraculously transformed the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, was the central focus of the service. No miraculous transformation took place when communion was celebrated in Reformed Churches. Instead, a lengthy sermon served as the focal point. It was accompanied by Bible-reading and psalm-singing. In this way, Reformed and other Protestant Churches were better equipped to survive in the absence of ordained clerics. They also permitted greater participation by lay persons than was typical in the Roman Catholic Church. Although communion or the Holy Supper was observed only four times a year, this did not mean it was lightly regarded. In most Calvinist churches, persons who wished to partake of communion had to undergo a stiff examination by the consistory before they were allowed to participate. This examination was also the prerequisite for church membership. In some cases, a membership certificate from another Reformed church was accepted in place of an examination by the consistory. In this connection, some of the New Paltz patentees brought their certificates with them from Europe (9), which may have allowed them to circumvent a spiritual grilling. Persons in New Paltz were typically between 17 and 23 when they were first admitted to communion and were accepted as church members, underscoring the fact that it was not an automatic rite of passage and that the candidate had to have reached an age of accountability (10). Unlike the Catholic Church, in which God's grace was received from the eucharist, in Calvinist Churches evidence of Election or the previous receipt of God's grace was the prerequisite to communion. When communion was observed in Reformed Churches, people typically did not go to the altar and kneel to receive the bread from the minister. Instead, a "table of the Lord" was set up in the large center aisle and those who had been admitted to communion would simultaneously partake of the bread and wine, as they were solemnly reminded that "whosoever ate and drank unworthily, ate and drank damnation unto themselves."

Baptism was the only other sacrament observed in Reformed churches. Like communion, it did not confer saving grace. Nevertheless, it was an expected act of obedience that commemorated the baptism of Jesus, just as the Holy Supper commemorated the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. These sacraments also corresponded to certain rites within Judaism, with baptism effectively replacing circumcision and communion replacing the Passover seder. Calvinists and most other Protestants regarded the remaining five sacraments observed by the Roman Catholic Church as unscriptural medieval accretions. New Paltz infants were usually baptized sometime between one and three months old. However, it was not unheard for baptisms to occur at older ages, particularly when there was no resident minister, or at younger ages, especially if a child appeared to be weak or sickly (11). Even then, it was not done for the salvation of the soul, but because of the "weakness and tenderness of the parents' consciences" (12).

In 1731 the New Paltz Church once again acquired a resident minister, the Reverend Johannes Van Driessen. The Belgian-born Van Driessen had not been ordained in the French Reformed Church nor had he been ordained by the Classis of Amsterdam, the body that oversaw Dutch Reformed Churches in Europe and the colonies. Instead, he had been ordained by the Presbytery of New Haven after undergoing an examination at Yale University (13). The circumstances of his ordination, indeed, his very presence, were the source of considerable dissention between the New Paltz Church and the Dutch Reformed Church in Kingston. While the Kingston Church insisted that the New Paltz Church fell under its control, the New Paltz consistory insisted that their church was independent of the Kingston Church and that they could hire anyone they wanted to as a minister. Apparently during its pastorless years, the New Paltz Church had worked out an agreement that permitted its members to marry, baptize their children, and take communion at the Kingston Church in exchange for a monetary contribution. According to Kingston, it was a permanent arrangement: according to New Paltz it was only until they acquired their own pastor. If the agreement was permanent, it meant that the New Paltz Church had shifted its allegiance from French to Dutch Reformed sometime before 1731 and that it was under the jurisdiction of the Classis of Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the evidence regarding when and if the New Paltz Church became Dutch Reformed is inconclusive and contemporary sources are full of partisan rancor (14). Twentieth century historians hold differing views on the issue, with some arguing that the shift occurred in the 1720s, while others claim it took place in the 1750s or even later (15).

Some of the issues in the ongoing feud between New Paltz and Kingston were mirrored in the Coetus-Conferentie controversy that raged within the Dutch Reformed Church in the eighteenth century. Coetus supporters desired greater autonomy for Dutch Reformed churches in North America, including the establishment of an American Coetus to promote cooperation and mediate disputes among local churches. They also advocated the education and ordination of clergy in America. In contrast, Conferentie supporters insisted that all Dutch Reformed churches were subordinate to the Classis of Amsterdam and that Dutch Reformed ministers had to be educated in Europe and ordained in Holland. Thus for the Conferentie, which was supported by the Kingston Church, Van Driessen was not properly ordained. The New Paltz Church, on the other hand, favored the greater autonomy offered by Coetus adherents. Further complicating the situation was the fact that New Haven, where Van Driessen had been ordained, was the center of Congregational independency, whose proponents insisted that no hierarchy outside of individual congregations was necessary. The French and Dutch Reformed Churches, in contrast, had a Presbyterian system of governance, with a limited hierarchy outside the local churches. Moreover, since its founding in 1701, Yale University was considered to be a more pietistic alternative to Harvard (16), which brings us to another aspect of the controversy between the Coetus and Conferentie parties.

The Coetus-Conferentie dispute encompassed more than matters of ordination and governance. It also revolved around the issue of a personal religious experience, similar to what modern-day evangelicals call being born-again. Indeed, this aspect of the dispute was not limited to the Dutch Reformed Church, but was evident in nearly all Protestant churches in Europe and North America. In denominations that had originated in continental Europe, this movement was known as pietism. For denominations of British origin it was known as evangelicalism. This concept was not completely alien to the Reformed tradition, which expected potential communicants and church members to present evidence of election. However, unlike pietists and evangelicals, traditional Calvinists did not insist that this evidence had to consist of an identifiable one-time conversion experience. Instead, conversion might take the form of an evolutionary process, in which a person gradually, rather than suddenly, became aware of his or her status as one of the Elect. Conferentie supporters disavowed pietism, while Coetus supporters embraced it. In the eyes of pietists, persons who could not identify a specific conversion experience were unregenerate, meaning they were not among the Elect. Thus, while pietism does not represent a complete break with Calvinist tradition, it clearly represents a shift of emphasis.

By the mid-eighteenth century, most members of the New Paltz Church supported the Coetus faction, which was typical of newer settlements west of the Hudson River (17). Indeed, when the Coetus was held in New York in October 1755, elders from the New Paltz Church attended, suggesting that their ties to the pietistic branch of the Dutch Reformed Church were stronger than they had wished to admit several years earlier (18). In addition, many of the pastors that New Paltz engaged on a temporary basis from the 1730s through the 1750s had strongly pietistic leanings and had been trained for the ministry by leading pietists or evangelicals, including the well known Theodore Frelinghuysen. Those that considered themselves to be Dutch Reformed were among that Church's more independent-minded mavericks. This further alienated members of the Kingston Church and led to the renewal of verbal hostilities in the 1750s.

We might ask, what business was it of the Kingston Church, or any other church for that matter, what New Paltz Church members believed and whom they hired as ministers? Calvinists firmly believed in the Biblical dictate that we are our brother's keepers. If an observant Calvinist believed that a fellow Calvinist was straying from the straight and narrow path, it was his or her duty to alert church authorities to intervene and to lead them back onto the right path. In the case of the Kingston-New Paltz dispute other issues were involved as well. For example, in 1732 while he was still pastor of the New Paltz Church, Van Driessen and his brother publicly criticized the Kingston Church and its minister. Meanwhile, the Kingston Church argued that New Paltz had reneged on its promise of monetary contributions and that its ministers fomented dissention (19). Moreover, in 1745 John Henry Goetschius, a frequent visiting pastor for the New Paltz Church, reportedly claimed that "the majority of ministers here were unregenerate men.Ö" (20). These were fighting words at that time, since they implied that the pastor of the Kingston Church was unregenerate and, therefore, not among the Elect.

Once again, we might ask, why did people get so hot and bothered about these issues? A basic fact of colonial life is that neighbors and even neighboring communities often feuded with one another. Sometimes it was over property issues like unclear boundaries or runaway animals that did damage. In other cases, the dearth of cultural and intellectual diversions aided and abetted butting into one another's business. And if you could sublimate nosiness driven by boredom into the service of the Almighty as your brother's keeper, it was all the better. Eventually the Classis of Amsterdam was asked by both the Kingston and New Paltz Churches to intervene in the conflict. Kingston, however, was disappointed when the Classis determined that because of the size of the New Paltz Church as well as its distance from Kingston, it deserved to be an independent congregation. Furthermore, the Classis urged both groups to forgive and forget in order to restore peace (21).

Nevertheless the Coetus-Conferentie dispute had not been laid to rest. Problems erupted again in the mid-1760s, this time within the New Paltz Church. Some New Paltz residents, who had close ties to the Kingston Church, decided that the New Paltz Church should support the Conferentie rather than the Coetus party. Hence, they created the Second Church of New Paltz which had to share a minister with the Dutch Reformed Church in Shawangunk. The Second Church proved to be a shortlived institution, however, as the death knell was beginning to sound for the Conferentie party. Around the same time, the Coetus movement was garnering more support. In 1766 Coetus advocates even established Queens College (present-day Rutgers University) in New Jersey, where Reformed clergy could be educated and trained, thereby reducing dependence on overseas education and ordination for clergy. Indeed, when representatives of these factions met in New York in October 1771 (22), both Coetus- and Conferentie-supporting Dutch Reformed Churches officially declared their independence from European control. Old World ties were subsequently weakened by the American Revolution. Thus by the closing decades of the eighteenth century, the faithful of New Paltz and elsewhere had achieved their independence in the religious and political spheres in what was now the United States of America.

Notes:

1. French Church, New Paltz, "Records, 1683-1702," New Paltz Reformed Church Records, 1683-1892, Spec. coll., HHS NP. An English version appears in Dingman Versteeg, Records of the Reformed Church of New Paltz, New York (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub. Co., 1977). Translation used in text is a combination of Versteeg's and the present writer's.

2. R. J. Knecht, The French Wars of Religion, 1559-1598, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1996), 5.

3. The classic discussion of Anglican conformity is R. M. Kingdon, "Why did the Huguenot Refugees in the in the American Colonies Become Episcopalians?" Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 49 (1980): 317-35. For a reassessment, see Paula Wheeler Carlo, "'Playing Fast and Loose with the Canons and Rubrick': French Anglicanism in Colonial New Rochelle," Journal of the Canadian Church Historical Society 44, 1 (Spring 2002): 35-50.

4 See Richard W. Pointer, Protestant Pluralism and the New York Experience: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Religious Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1988), 14; also, John K. Nelson, A Blessed company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001), 3.

5. Records have been transcribed and translated by Dingman Versteeg, Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of New Paltz, New York (Baltimore: Genealogical Pub., 1977).

6. New Paltz consistory to Classis of Amsterdam, Dec. 10, 1751, transcribed in Edward T. Corwin, ed. Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York (Albany: James B. Lyon, 1901-16), 5: 3209.

7. Barbara Diefendorf, "The Huguenot Psalter and the Faith of French Protestants in the Sixteenth Century," in Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800): Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, ed. B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1993), 41-63.

8. Some of these materials are available in the Bible and Religious Book Collection, 1582-1689, Spec. coll., Huguenot Historical Society Archives and Library, New Paltz. Also, some books of this nature are mentioned in New Paltz wills. See, for example, the Last Will and Testament of Jean Hasbrouck, dated August 1712, in K. Hasbrouck, comp. Hasbrouck Family in America, 3rd ed. (New Paltz: Huguenot Historical Society, 1986), 30-32.

9. At least two of these certificates are still extant. See Louis Bevier, "Certificate of Church Membership," Frankenthal French Protestant Church, Germany, 1675, Louis Bevier Papers, 1675-1719; also, Jean Hasbrouck, "Certificate of Church Membership," Mannheim French Protestant Church, Germany, 1672, Levi Hasbrouck Family Papers: The Locust Lawn Collection, 1672-1968. Both documents are in the Special collections, HHS NP.

10. These were the ages of the persons admitted to communion during the pastorate of David de Bonrepos. See French Church, New Paltz, "Records, 1683-1702," New Paltz Reformed Church Records, 1683-1892, Special collections, HHS NP. Seventeen or eighteen seems to have been the standard age for admission to communion in other Protestant churches in colonial North America. I found this to be the case in the French Church in New Rochelle, even after it conformed to Anglicanism. See Paula Wheeler Carlo, "The Huguenots of Colonial New Paltz and New Rochelle: A Social and Religious History," (Ph. D. diss.: City University of New York, 2001), 300-302.

11. Carlo, "Huguenots of New Paltz," 139-41.

12. Regarding baptisms of sickly infants see, "Church of New York Consistory," August 20, 1747, in Corwin, ERNY 4: 2970-71.

13. Charles H. Stitt, History of the Huguenot Church and Settlement at New Paltz (Kingston, N. Y.: William H. Romeyn, 1863),

14. For a more in depth discussion of the controversy see, Carlo, 128-34.

15. In support of the 1720s see R. M. Kingdon, "Why Did the Huguenot Refugees in the American Colonies Become Episcopalians?" Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church XLIX (1980): 326; for the 1750s see Ralph Lefevre, History of New Paltz, New York and its Old Families, From 1678 to1820 (Albany, 1909. Reprint, Baltimore: Clearfield Co. by Genealogical Pub., 1996), 1: 134; for the 1770s see Gilbert Chinard, Les RÈfugiÈs Huguenots en Amerique (Paris: Belles-Lettres, 1925), 183.

16. Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (N. Y.: Oxford University Press, 1986), 220.

17. Richard W. Pointer, Protestant Pluralism and the New York Experience: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Religious Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1988), 16; Randall Balmer, A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies (New York Oxford University Press, 1989; OUP paperback, 2002), 132-33.

18. Corwin, ERNY, 5: 3598.

19. Ibid., 4: 2572.

20. "Testimony Concerning Certain Utterances of Rev. J. H. Goetschius," Dec. 27, 1745, in Ibid. 4: 2883-84.

21. Letters from Classis to New York Coetus, also to Kingston Church, and New Paltz Church, July 17, 1752, in Corwin, ERNY 5: 3185.

22. Richard P. McCormick, "Dutch Origins of Rutgers, the State University: II," De Halve Maen 41, 4 (Jan. 1967): 11-12.