USA > Delaware > New Castle County > Wilmington > Crane Hook church, predecessor of the Old Swedes' church at Wilmington, Delaware > Part 1
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02254 3828
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PAPERS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF DELAWARE.
Papers XI.
CRANE HOOK CHURCH
PREDECESSOR OF
THE OLD SWEDES' CHURCH
AT
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE.
BY
PENNOCK PUSEY, ESQ.,
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE. 1
Read before the Historical Society of Delaware, June 18, 1894.
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF DELAWARE,
WILMINGTON. 1895.
.。
€
PAPERS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF DELAWARE. XI
CRANE HOOK CHURCH,
PREDECESSOR OF
. THE OLD SWEDES' CHURCH AT
WILMINGTON, DELAWARE.
BY PENNOCK PUSEY, ESQ., WILMINGTON, DELAWARE.
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF DELAWARE, WII MINGTON. 1 895.
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CRANE HOOK CHURCH.
CAREFUL readers of history well know how large has been the agency of religion in promoting the exploration and settlement of the New World by people from the Old. Indeed, it scarcely needs a critical student of history to dis- cover how essentially the aspirations, condition, and destiny of man in his general career are involved with and shaped by his religious convictions ..
One of the longest and certainly the bloodiest and most destructive of the world's conflicts-the great Thirty Years' War-had religion in some of its needs and aspects as its real 'origin, its professed object, and its sustaining cause. And, however humiliating the thought, however saddening the cruelties or monstrous the inconsistency that men should thus sacrifice the end to the means, that professing Christians should make war for Him who enjoined Peace, and butcher each other into compliance with the command not to kill; yet nothing, perhaps, than the prosecution of that exhaustive war with all its atrocities more effectually refutes the dishonoring pessimism which assumes that the average man is an ignoble self-seeker actuated only by selfish motives. Never did thought of self sway so little,
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perhaps, as with the actors on either side in that sanguinary struggle. No incentive to personal gain; no fear of injus- tice within, nor danger of foes without the state ever induced such an outpouring of means, energies, and sacri- fices as the people there volunteered in the ardor of their religious devotion. What the law failed to exact, the peo- ple freely gave to support and carry on that pious contest. No cowardly evasion of duty or base gratification of pas- sion could avail against the dictates of conscience and noble fealty to faith. For ordinary purposes, the overtaxed sup- porters of government would have bitterly resisted the slightest additional impost; but for religious principle, to vindicate their cherished faith, the people cheerfully sad- dled themselves with fresh burdens, and for thirty weary years persevered in a struggle whose waste of life and treasure yet continues its direful effects after a lapse of two hundred and fifty years.
With that great war at least one of the movements for emigration to America was deeply concerned. Indeed, the sad conflict had a direct, if not logical, connection with the origin of our own city of Wilmington. For it was Gus- tavus Adolphus, the great champion of the Reformation in that struggle, who organized the first Swedish expedition to the New World; it was that prolonged war with its exact- ing demands that caused the postponement of the enter- prise; and it was the last request of the great king who was sacrificed in that war which impelled the resumption and active prosecution of the project for colonization to America that resulted in starting the voyages from father- land to the Delaware, and finally brought the Swedish
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immigrants to their rocky landing-place within the limits of Wilmington.
It was in great measure the same religious fervor that impelled the several movements of people from Europe to the original colonization and settlement of the several sec- tions of our common country. The pious devotion of the Pilgrim fathers in New England; the heroic zeal of the Jesuit missionaries in carrying the gospel to the heathen through the trackless wilds of the upper Mississippi; the steadfast trust of the Quaker's "testimony" in suffering persecution in the Old World and returning good for evil in the New; the stern persistence of the uncompromising Scotch-Irish in maintaining his faith in the barren strong- holds of the Atlantic mountain ranges ; the broad, just views of the enlightened Catholics of Maryland in their early religious toleration; the honest solicitude of the English church to conserve its established rights against the grow- ing inroads of dissenters in Virginia and neighboring Southern territories; the tested fealty and chivalrous zeal of the suffering Huguenots who fled to South Carolina; the steady-going Moravians and lesser sects and worship- ping societies who have usually been content to show their faith by their works in various parts of the country-all these, as well as the Swedish immigration, were in divers ways and various degrees indebted to religious feeling for their inspiration and sustaining cause.
But there was a difference. However common the end, in the means employed for attaining it there was one broad and marked dissimilarity in the origin and impelling agen- cies in these several movements. For while some of them
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were born of religious intolerance and were prosecuted chiefly by refugees from persecution at home, others re- ceived the kindly encouragement and co-operation of the home government. To the latter class belonged the Swedish migration to the New World. Nay, it received not merely the friendly countenance and sympathetic aid of the home government; it owed its very conception to the Swedish throne, which persevered in its purpose in the face of a constantly depleted treasury and a succession of obstacles. Against these serious practical hindrances, and in spite of the distractions and numberless disabilities caused by a great war, the enterprise owed its initiatory zeal and its persistent support almost wholly to the pious and enlight- ened home government. A more religious monarch than Gustavus Adolphus, one more uniformly guided by re- ligious considerations in his state policy, never sat upon a European throne. In a large degree he deemed himself an instrument of Providence in furthering a divine reign upon ' earth; and there was ever a lofty consecration and a seer's fervent spirit in this great monarch that excited an admira- tion akin to awe among friends and foes alike. It was this that impelled him to leave his throne and plunge in person with his small army, against such fearful odds, into the fortunes of the Thirty Years' War; and it was this as a primary incentive that caused his persistent devotion to the Swedish colonization in America. In enumerating its pur- poses in his first proclamation, the king states his hopes, “ if God gives luck, that it certainly will tend to the honor of His holy name, to our state's prosperity, and to our sub- jects' improvement and benefit:" while in introducing the
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second charter, with its thirty-seven articles, the king solicits . the generous support of the people, among other reasons, " for the spread of the Holy Gospel, and through com- mercial intercourse the hope of bringing the Indians to a better civil state and to the truth of the Christian reli- gion."
The untimely death of the king did not frustrate his plans, but simply committed their execution to his great minister, Oxenstiern, an enlightened and masterly states- man in full sympathy with his king's aspirations, who was all the more intent upon consummating them from the mute pathos of the great monarch's unfinished purposes, and the now undivided responsibility he felt for pushing them to completion. King Adolphus, in his desperate struggle for the very existence of Protestantism in Europe, had felt the greater urgency for providing an asylum for the rights of conscience in the free domain of the New World. From that virgin field his attention was not diverted by the engrossing events in which he acted a dominant part. "They did but enlarge his views," says the historian Bancroft; and he now, but a few days be- fore his death on the field of Lützen, recommended the colonizing enterprise to the people of Germany, which he reurged later as a dying request to his own country- men. Accordingly, in spite of continued requisitions from the wasting war, preparations were resumed with new vigor; and in order that the religious needs of the col- onists should be promptly cared for, one of the earliest of Sweden's ten expeditions to the Delaware carried a clergyman provided with books of devotion and all
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churchly appointments for worship; and on the spot where they first landed to settle, and within the same enclosure that embraced their first structure for occupation and de- fence, they built their first edifice for worship. In that little chapel in Fort Christina, built on the rocks within the present limits of this city, the first Swedish clergyman- the Rev. Reorus Torkillus-conducted the first Christian services ever held on the shores of the old South or Dela- ware river or bay.
This pioneer rector was born in West Gothland, Sweden, in the year 1608, and came to Christina with the second expedition, which arrived in 1640. He took a wife from among his own parishioners in the New World, setting an example at the outset of a sacred and promising mission which was generally followed by his clerical successors. But the pious career thus auspiciously begun was destined to short life. Torkillus was taken sick on the 23d of Feb- ruary, 1643, and died on the 7th of September of the same year, at the early age of thirty-five, leaving one child. He was probably buried in the old church-yard near the south end of the present edifice. We are not informed whether the deceased rector was succeeded by another appointee to continue services in the chapel in Fort Christina. But as this was as yet the only place of worship, it is probable that the Swedes here continued their services, perhaps by the lay reading of psalms and sermons, at least until supplied with another minister and church. It is certain that in Governor Beekman's time, prior to the English conquest in 1664, Andreas Hudde, who had been the Dutch commander at Fort Nassau (Gloucester), officiated as clerk in the church
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at Christina for a time, under Rev. Mr. Lock, who was then the only Swedish clergyman in the country.
The second Swedish church was erected, three years later, on Tennakong, or Tinicum Island, in the year 1646, and there the Rev. John Campanius, who conducted the ceremonies attending its consecration, also laid out a grave- yard, in which the first interment was made on the 28th of September, 1646. This second church on the Delaware was built under the auspices of the celebrated Governor Printz, who arrived in February, 1643, after a memorable voyage of perilous storms and divers delays, which termi- nated, "by God's grace," in one hundred and fifty days. The continued prominence given to the religious purposes of these Swedish expeditions is shown by the instructions given to Governor Printz by the Swedish government, which, among the first of the twenty-eight articles, require him "to promote by the most zealous endeavors a sincere piety in all respects toward Almighty God, to maintain the public worship conformably to the rights and doctrines of the national church, to support a proper ecclesiastical disci- pline, to urge instruction and virtuous education among the young," etc .; while he is urged to persist in the peaceful policy of the Swedes toward the Indians by promptly re- newing and confirming the old treaty by which they had conveyed to the Swedes the western shore of the Dela- ware; and, while always recognizing the natives as the rightful owners of the country, he was to treat them in the most equitable and humane manner, and to accomplish, as far as practicable, their conversion to Christianity and their adoption of the manners and customs of civilized life.
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In furtherance of this peaceful policy toward the Indians, this distinguished clergyman, Rev. John Campanius, who came with Governor Printz, specially devoted his labors to the instruction and conversion of the natives; to which end he zealously applied himself to the prompt acquisition of their language. He began the translation of Luther's shorter catechism in 1646, which was probably the very first work of translation into the Indian language in America, a's the first Indian translation by John Eliot, the New Eng- land missionary, was not published till 1664. And, more- over, as Campanius, during the three years prior to his work of translation in 1646, had actively labored with the Indians, and, while exchanging friendly visits with them, had always taken care to teach them the rudimentary ideas of the Christian religion, the Swedes may claim the honor of hav- ing sent the first of Christian missionaries among the natives of America, while Eliot held his first service among them on the 28th of October, 1646. The Rev. Campanius, in 1648, ' returned to Sweden, where he completed his translation of the catechism, which was printed in Stockholm, in the In- dian and Swedish languages, in 1696, a copy of which is in the library of the American Philosophical Society. In this celebrated work a notable deviation may be found in the Lord's Prayer, which, instead of the usual words "give us this day our daily bread," etc., reads "give us this day a plentiful supply of venison and corn," thus better suiting the comprehension of the Indian mind.
Following Rev. John Campanius, but during the admin- istration of Governor Printz, which terminated the latter part of 1653, there arrived two Swedish clergymen, the Rev.
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Laurentius Laers, or Lokinius, commonly known as Pastor Lock, and Rev. Israel Holgh. The latter, after a short stay, returned to Sweden, while Pastor Lock, who was probably Campanius's successor, lived a long and active life as minister in different churches, and died in the year 1688. We will see more of him hereafter.
Following these arrivals, there came to succeed Governor Printz Commissary and Counsellor Johan Claudii Rising, who arrived in May, 1654, in company with Lindstrom, the military engineer, and various officers and soldiers. With them came two clergymen, the Rev. Mathias Nicolai Ner- tunius and Rev. Mr. Petrus Laurentii Hjort. The latter, whom Rising described as " both temporally and spiritually a poor parson," took charge of the congregation at the cap- tured Fort Trinity (New Castle). But both left the country with Rising upon his surrender of Fort Christina in Sep- tember, 1655.
With the invading expedition compelling this surrender of Fort Christina in 1655 there came a Rev. Mr. Megapo- lensis as chaplain of Stuyvesant's forces; but as he came in the service of the enemy, and probably returned with some of them, it is likely that the Swedes experienced few or none of his friendly ministrations.
After the surrender of Fort Christina, but before the news of it had reached Europe, a Swedish vessel, the Mercurius, arrived in the Delaware, bringing the Rev. Mr. Mathias, a Swedish minister, who remained about two years and then returned to Sweden.
With the undyked marshes, exposing rank vegetation with each fall of the tide, there was increasing tendency to
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fever; and great sickness, with attending destitution, afflicted the Christina settlers during the years 1657 and 1658, when, to stay its effects, a " fast, prayer, and thank" day was offi- cially observed on the 13th of March, 1658, while, to the same end, the Rev. Mr. Welius, on the day following, preached a sermon at Altona (Fort Christina) at the request of the fort commissary .*
On the 18th of March, 1662, it was ordered that a fast and prayer day be thereafter kept quarterly, notice of which was to be given by tolling the bell of the fort.
On the 24th of July, 1663, the Rev. Abelius Zetscoven received a call from the Swedish congregation; but the Rev. Laers or Pastor Lock so strongly opposed his preaching, that the commissioners were obliged to threaten him with a protest before he would allow the new minister to preach on Whit-Sunday. This minister, the Rev. Abelius Zets- coven, gave his sermon at Tinicum Church on the last Monday of Pentecost, at the request of the Swedish com- missioners. They desired to engage him also as a school- master at the same salary as that paid to the Rev. Mr. Lock, but the people of New Amstel (New Castle), where he had been employed, would not dismiss him; and he never had charge of any congregation in the South or Delaware River as a regularly ordained minister.
These embrace all the names of clergymen and refer- ences to church services, mentioned in chronological order, that I have been able to glean from the old court records, clerical authorities, or other available sources, from the
* This Rev. Mr. Welius died the following year, 1659.
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landing of the Swedes in 1638 to about the year 1667. Down to this date all action looking to religious ends seems to have contemplated only the supply of Swedish needs, and in the interest of the Swedish Lutheran Church. In- deed, it may be mentioned as a remarkable fact that the provision for church supplies and management of religious affairs were then wholly in Swedish hands, while the con- duct of business and the means for its daily transaction were as exclusively by Dutch money and measures, which indeed continued for many years later. The Dutch during their rule built no churches or otherwise supplied the religious needs of their colonists on the Delaware. Nor did the Swedes, with their earlier and longer supremacy, do business with Swedish currency or according to Swedish standards of value or measurement. Or at least there is no evidence of it in old records or by tradition. The contrast is not so much a difference between the two peoples as one between two methods and aims animating the two powers behind the respective nationalities. The Dutch were traders sent by a company whose object was wholly com- mercial. The Swedes were wholly agriculturalists, aided by a pious home government whose purpose was largely religious propagation.
Such had been the situation prior to the operation of causes which were now ripe for change. During the twenty-nine years since the landing of the Swedes in 1638 the government had twice changed hands, first by the Dutch conquest of the Swedes at Fort Christina in 1655, and then by the English conquest of the Dutch in 1664. The three years of English rule had as yet effected little
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noticeable change of speech or customs among the two subject nationalities; but during the prior nine years of Dutch supremacy there had been such modification and intermingling of the languages of the conquerors and conquered that the Swedish and Dutch settlers were daily coming to a better understanding of each other. Originally from the same Teutonic family stock, the languages of the two nations were never greatly dissimilar: their govern- ments at home had long stood upon a footing of fair neigh- borly comity; they held much commercial intercourse and had much in common in industrial tendencies, and more in religious faith and social usages. With the decline of the old Dutch trading company, its Dutch dependents on the Delaware had resorted to farming upon their own re- sources, and the settlers from the two nations being thus thrown into nearer connection, upon a common footing, with common aspirations, were not long in reaching a com- mon recognition of each other. This was followed by closer social intercourse, which led to intermarriages, which through family relationships completed the various ties, cementing their union as one people with a common destiny.
Here, then, was a widened opportunity with the incentive of combined in lieu of divided resources. The opportunity was improved, and the result was the erection of the church at Crane Hook. Built for the joint accommodation, and with the combined means of Dutch and Swedish worship- pers, its site was chosen in almost the exact available centre of the surrounding communities for whom it was designed. The edifice stood nearly midway between the Dutch resi-
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dents at New Castle and below and the several Swedish settlements beginning at Christina and extending along the creeks flowing from the west and north beyond; while, although nominally further from settlers on the east side of the Delaware, the church was practically as near them by reason of the easier water transit, at that time almost the sole way of travel prior to the construction of inland roads and bridges.
It will thus be seen that the little log church at Crane Hook supplied a wide circuit of worshippers, embracing residents on the easterly shore south of Raccoon Creek with those on Penn's Neck and the region toward Salem, and including the entire westerly shore below the neighbor- hood of Chester. And notwithstanding the fast fusing unity of the two nationalities, with so many communities whose intermingling tongues were yet in various stages of transi- tion, it may be imagined that the task of a single preacher in making himself understood by all the congregation was not an easy one, as it presumably required a curious con- glomeration of Swedish and Dutch idioms, with an occa- sional English word or phrase as a sort of compromising cement and preparation for absorption into that compelling language which vaunts its growing universality as the des- tined speech of the modern world.
These are the peculiar circumstances which lend signifi- cant interest to this Crane Hook Church. Its character and construction mark a definable stage in the softening of national prejudices and the merging of racial elements of our composite population. This growing community of in- terests is exhibited at once in the commingling of the lan-
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guages, sympathies, and habits of the two peoples; in the combination of appliances for a common worship; in the selection of a central church site, as far as practicable, for the equal accommodation of all concerned; and it is indi- cated even in the name of the selected site, which has suc- cessively undergone the changeful appellations derived from three different languages. It was first called Trane Udden, from the two Swedish words trana, crane, and udden, point or cape. "Hook," as here applied, although little used or known in modern speech, has a common derivation in the sense of " angle" in the several family branches of our com- mon English tongue. Its orthography, under the Dutch supremacy, held firm sway variously as hoek and hoeck, the whole word being spelled "Kraenhoek." But all prior designations, like the prior rule of other nationalities, in due time yielded to the dominating English; hence the Crane Hook as we know it to-day.
It would be interesting to know all the minute circum- stances which preceded and attended the construction of Crane Hook Church,-to learn just those particulars which in the case of our existing old Stone Church have proved so attractive to the revering descendants of its builders,- the influences leading to the initiatory steps, the collection of the requisite means, the selection of the site, the progress of the work, the hopes, fears, delays concerning it, and the final completion of the humble edifice. But, unfortunately, the accessible facts touching the ancient structure are very meagre. The church records prior to those left by Rev. Mr. Bjork are far less complete than his careful details, and have never been translated, while a diligent search among
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the papers at home and in the archives of the Pennsylvania Historical Society has added but little to our scanty infor- mation.
Crane Hook Church was built about the close of 1666 or beginning of 1667. It was constructed of logs, which rested upon large rocks serving as corner-stones and sup- porting the edifice above the ground. This much we know: we know the site upon which it stood. But beyond these simple facts, and the further fact that the building served as an adequate place of worship for about thirty-two years, little can be ascertained.
Nicholas Collin, in his notes on the "Memoirs of Min- ister Rudman," among the records at Wicaco, as quoted by Benjamin Ferris, states, in referring to the early Swedes, that " their mild virtues also changed their former foes, the Dutch, into friends, so that they became members of their church. This happened the more easily as the Hollanders had no clergyman nor church of their own. They were of the Reformed Protestant communion,-not very different from the Lutheran. Their respective languages are in a great measure congenial; and thus, when a great many of the Dutch families had joined in the Swedish worship, a small church was built at Crane Hook, about one and a half miles from the fort, on the south side of the creek, being convenient for the Dutch at New Castle." -
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