USA > Delaware > New Castle County > Wilmington > Crane Hook church, predecessor of the Old Swedes' church at Wilmington, Delaware > Part 2
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Acrelius, in his "History of New Sweden," says: "The church at Christina usually held its services in Christina fort; but for greater convenience a small wooden church was, in 1667, erected at Tranhook, at the distance of one- fourth of a Swedish mile from the fort on the creek: this
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was more suitable for the Hollanders who dwelt at Sand- hook" (New Castle).
Such are the brief references to Crane Hook Church; writers invariably assuming its existence without mention of any prior facts relating to its construction. Yet for thirty years the edifice subserved all purposes as the centre of all the lower or Christina settlements of church at- tendants.
· Coming after the chapel at Fort Christina and the church on Tinicum Island, Crane Hook was the third church on the Delaware. The fourth was at Wicaco, the old block- house having been fitted up for temporary use, and which gave place to the brick structure built there in the year 1700, which still stands as a memento of the pious zeal of the early Swedes, being but two years the junior of our own venerable edifice in Wilmington. It is proper here to state that, according to Acrelius, at an early date there stood on Sandhook (New Castle) a small wooden church for a while, but without regular attendance.
During the thirty-two years of its existence as a place of worship, religious services were conducted in Crane Hook Church by three regularly ordained ministers. These were Reverends Laurentius Lokinius or Pastor Lock, Jacobus Fabritius and Eric Bjork. The first, Pastor Lock, came to America during the administration of Governor Printz about or before the year 1653, and first officiated in the church on Tinicum Island as successor to Rev. John Cam- panius. For many years this Pastor Lock was a prominent actor in river affairs, sacred and secular, his name frequently occurring in various attitudes in the law records of the
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time. He was for several years the only minister serving the different congregations on the entire river,-a state of affairs from which he was himself one of the first sufferers. For when he had the misfortune to be deserted by an eloping wife and sought another to supply her place, he found it easier to find a willing companion than to make her his wife, from the lack of a clergyman to perform the wed- ding ceremony. And when from the necessities of his large household the urgency tempted him to perform his own ceremony in marrying himself to his proposed bride, who was but seventeen years old, his offence caused his suspension from the ministry for a time. But his sufferings did not end here. For when, in search of evidence against the wife-stealer, he broke open the renegade's trunk, the poor man as a punishment was made to pay all the debts the absconder had left behind; a travesty of justice rarely excelled in the jurisprudence of any age or country. Pastor Lock had moreover in the people's behalf more than once condemned the extortions of an odious government, by which he incurred the suspicion of having aided a prepos- terous movement known as the "Long Finn Rebellion," which alarmed the country in 1669, and for which he earned the contemptuous censure of the governor in New York. After long and varied service Pastor Lock became afflicted with lameness, and according to Acrelius " his old age was burthened with many troubles," from which he was relieved by death in 1688.
Rev. Jacobus Fabritius, the second pastor at Crane Hook Church, was equally celebrated as an active participant in both religious and general affairs on the Delaware, where
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his name frequently appears in the reports of both church and legal proceedings. But the somewhat contradictory records render uncertain the date and duration of his min- isterial services at Crane Hook Church. From the often repeated statement that he was called directly from New York and preached his first sermon at the Wicaco Church in the year 1677, it has been inferred that that occasion marked his first appearance on the Delaware; but the records distinctly show that he had been among the lower congregation here in a presumably clerical capacity at least five years previously. He was a Dutchman, and his first arrival in America was at New York on the 20th of Feb- - ruary, 1669; and for the two years following he ministered to the Lutherans there, apparently amid much dissension, when, in July, 1671, his New York congregation expressed the desire "to have nothing further to do with him," and appointed a person to settle his accounts. Thereupon Fabritius asked leave to give his valedictory, and the fol- lowing year he appeared on the Delaware. A petition from the Lutherans on the Delaware, with fourteen signatures appended on behalf of the whole congregations concerned, dated June 1, 1675, refers to a former petition with a docu- ment dated the 10th of December, 1672, whereby they divided the river into two parishes, so that all above Ver- drietige Hook (Edgemoor) should be under the pastorate of Rev. Mr. Laers (Pastor Lock), and all below Verdrietige Hook under the pastorate of Magister Fabritius; and they humbly requested the governor to confirm the desired division and "also their Mag" Jakobus Fabricius." This was presented as from "the churches of Swaenewyck and
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Kraenhoek;" but it was followed in August by a remon- strance from a few of the Swedes and Finns belonging to Crane Hook Church against the acceptance of Fabritius as their minister on the ground that neither they nor their wives and children could understand him. No further action is shown respecting this particular matter; and, as Fabritius was a month later wholly suspended from exer- cising his function as a minister or preaching anywhere within the government, we are left in doubt as to the extent or continuance of his earliest ministerial services on the Delaware. The alleged cause of his suspension from the ministry was his violent and lawless conduct during a bitter contest respecting the labor and taxation for dyking certain marshes near New Castle. The opposing parties seem to have assembled in Crane Hook Church, where Fabritius vigorously protested against the scheme, and the angry contestants were led into a disturbance, for which the pastor and an accomplice were promptly arrested. A vigorous opponent of the project and resulting taxation having been seized by the authorities, the Magister earnestly denounced the unjust proceedings, loudly declaring that if the arrested man, who had done no wrong, must go to prison, he, too, would go; and was taken at his word.
It is probable that in the early lack of places for public assemblies, Crane Hook Church had before been used for meetings of citizens; and this may not have been the first time its walls resounded with the noises of wrangling as well as with the sounds of worship.
Readers of these old records are unavoidably impressed with much of the reported conduct of these colonial minis-
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ters as discreditable and derogatory to their calling. But it should be remembered that the statements come from unfriendly reporters giving one side of debatable subjects, often distorted by national prejudices. Nor should it be forgotten that these clergymen had cast their lot with the common people engaged in a common struggle with the forces of nature, wherein it was difficult to consult the mere proprieties of life. In close sympathy with their parishion- ers in all their trials and hardships, these ministers were in no condition to pose in dignified seclusion as models of clerical decorum : their frontier necessities did not admit of it. An impartial scrutiny of their conduct reveals no crime or actual immorality, and, if they were sometimes carried beyond prudence or propriety in the heat of con- troversy, it was not an unpardonable offence. Indeed, it may well be doubted whether it was not to the credit of Pastor Lock that he resented the petty arrogance of the government at the risk of promoting rebellion, or whether Minister Fabritius did not evince a loyal faith to conviction in offering to share imprisonment with the man he thought wronged. Both pastors probably deserved the reverent affection their respective congregations expressed for them.
The practical government of these river territories was then a species of paternal despotism. Under the supreme and irresponsible rule of the Duke of York, it was adminis- tered by an executive " commander" and seven justices of the peace, of whom any four constituted a court of judica- ture. They were appointed by the duke's governor in New York, and their offices and acts were alike dependent upon his will. Under such control their powers seemed
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without limit, ranging over the whole scope of colonial affairs, temporal, spiritual, and mixed. They ordered the construction of dykes and roads; they undertook to medi- ate in household troubles and neighborhood scandals. They established churches and enforced payment to the ministers ; they required church-wardens to test and secure just standards of measurement; they ordered the repair of private grist-mills ; they cared for the provisioning of inden- tured children at the expiration of their domestic terms ; they ordered the stoppage of vessels sailing above favored New Castle; and in at least one instance they permitted an inhabitant of Crane Hook to continue living there with two wives, on the ground that both Dutch and English pre- cedents could be found for such indulgence.
After the early service of Magister Fabritius at Crane Hook Church, as before stated, this gentleman was called in 1677 to Wicaco, where he served the congregation, probably without interruption, until August, 1684, at least, and perhaps longer. It is not known at what time he returned from Wicaco to Crane Hook Church, but he con- tinued to officiate in the latter until his growing blindness prevented uninterupted service, when it was opened and closed at intervals of months at a time. Mr. Fabritius died in 1693; and with the earlier death in 1688 of Pastor Lock with his prior disabilities all the river churches were desti- tute of ministers for several years prior to the arrival of the missionaries sent from Sweden, when Rev. Eric Bjork con- ducted his first divine service in Crane Hook Church on the 11th of July, 1697. This zealous rector at once entered upon the work of erecting the now existing stone edifice
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familiarly known as the "Old Swedes' Church;" but he meanwhile continued services for nearly two years longer in Crane Hook Church, wherein the last divine service was held on the fourth Sunday after Easter in the year 1699, while the dedication services in the new church took place on Trinity Sunday of the same year. Until the completion of this now ancient structure, Crane Hook Church served the purposes of the fast growing Swedish parishioners, but, owing to a like growth and for greater convenience of the Dutch, they had partially formed a separate congregation at Swanwyke on the easterly side of New Castle, to which end they had taken steps to secure land for a church site, grave-yard, and glebe in 1678, and by 1683 they had dis- solved religious partnership with the Swedes at Crane Hook and built a church of their own, as is shown by a letter written in the latter year by William Penn stating that the Dutch had a meeting-place for religious worship at New Castle.
The same increase of population in due time led to the erection of churches on the easterly side of the river, event- ually causing the then new and now old Swedes' Church to serve the needs of the more immediately surrounding settlements only.
Reference has been made to the predominant and con- tinued use of Dutch money and measurements in the busi- ness affairs of the olden time. Indeed, both the tenacity of old customs and transition to the new are curiously illus- trated in the reported transactions of business and other affairs. It was something like ten years after the English conquest in 1664 before the names of English currency
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appear at all in the old records, and for twenty-five years after the English gained control the guilders and styvers of the conquered Dutch continued to be more designated in business transactions than the pounds, shillings, and pence of their conquerors. Progress, indeed, in business, re- ligious or national unity was not wholly uninterrupted, but rather with reflex waves, which mark, if they do not quicken, the general advance, as was seen in the retrograde motion of a few Swedish church members who were slow in comprehending Dutch followed by closer union in re- ligious and social matters. The unification was inevitable, however hindered; and in the different stages of transition among the varied nationalities not only all the different kinds of money from the different home governments, in- cluding the wampum of the Indians, but beaver-skins, schip- ples of wheat, pounds of tobacco, and other commodities were used as business currency, not unfrequently all of them being combined in a single transaction, while the different kinds as agreed upon to be paid were invariably enumerated and specified in the written contract.
Perhaps an average exhibit, within a small space, of those primitive transactions relating to court, church, and currency affairs will be afforded by a single document, which I here present from the old records in its original orthography and phraseology :
Appeared before the august court at New Castle, "Elice the wife of Orle Torson decd shewing by Petition that Jacobus Fabritius heretofore did borrow of her husband the sum of seventy and seven gilders of the money then belonging to ye church att Swanwyke, as also that there
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was yett a small parcell of wampum in her hands of ye sª Church, defsiring (sence those of ye Church of Crainhoek do demand itt) that this court would order her, to whom she should deliver the sª wampum, as alfsoe who shall Re- ceive ye money bake of sª fabritius-Ordered that the wampum as also the debt of fabritius bee Received by this church of New Castle as the nearest to itt. Those of ye Crainhoek haveing already Received a good part thereof."
The Jacobus Fabritius here mentioned was the rector before referred to as having officiated in Crane Hook Church at various times between the years 1672 and 1677, when he was called as the regular pastor at the Block House church at Wicaco. After his service at that place, probably in 1684 or 1685, he again served Crane Hook Church, where he relieved Pastor Lock, who had become helplessly lame and otherwise disabled. Mr. Fabritius had begun to lose his eyesight about the year 1682, and his in- creasing blindness interrupted his services, and finally com- pelled his retirement in 1691, when Charles Springer, who had before aided the pastor at times, continued partial public worship by reading prayers, psalms, and homilies for the remaining six years until the arrival of Rev. Eric Bjork and his fellow-missionaries in 1697.
After the abandonment of Crane Hook Church in 1699, most of the neighboring glebe land, being inconvenient for the use of the minister of the new church at Christina, was soon after sold, and the old log structure was in time de- molished and removed excepting the large supporting stones, some of which continued to mark the site down to a time within the memory of the writer of these lines. Part
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of the site and yard was afterwards occupied by an orchard, but was still used for a time as a burial-place for poor people.
The orchard trees are now all gone; the supporting side and corner-stones have disappeared; the majestic button- wood, which long stretched its protecting arms over the rustic structure, died many years ago, leaving its lifeless trunk to mark the spot, which, at last, is indicated only by the fast decaying stump of the historic tree. Thus has passed away a cherished house of worship, replete with ten- der interest and value as a transitional waymark in the progress of those ancestral peoples whose life and works were the formative material of the later citizenship of our common country.
Crane Hook Church stood upon a beautiful bank of fast- land near the river shore, with gently undulating fields on the one hand and the bright and majestic Delaware on the other. To its rustic cupola the old bell, which had long done varied service in Fort Christina, was removed for a new lease of melodious life; and it is a pleasing fancy to recall its tones pealing over the virgin fields and through the echoing forests in mellow summons to its primitive worshippers. It is not difficult to imagine the assembled congregation exchanging neighborly greetings under the lofty buttonwood at the church-door prior to the service or lingering in its grateful shade in friendly chat at its close. Under the leafy protection of this noble tree the edifice must have been a notable object from the river, as were the ar- riving boat-loads of people in their varied costumes a pic- turesque spectacle from the shore. No marshy deposit then separated the fastland shore from the outer depths of
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the river, and as the approaching worshippers glided over its tranquil surface to the grassy ascent to the church, they must have been soothed with gladdening suggestions of the Psalmist's words, " He maketh me to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters." Perhaps even one may not exaggerate the kindly agency which such a picture, with that of the fragrant meads, the singing birds, and the benign sky arching the coupled peace of land and water, may have exerted on a sweet summer Sabbath in at- tuning the simple-hearted attendants to worshipful thoughts of the merciful Father above all.
Should a spot thus full alike of sacred associations and historic significance be suffered to fade from the memory of men ? For myself, while I may be deemed a victim to the morbid retrospection belonging to growing years, I am not ashamed to confess my growing affection for these dear old relics ; and there was almost a personal element in the feel- ing with which I long continued to scan the horizon for a sight of the guarding old buttonwood pathetically lifting its bare, dead limbs as in plaintive appeal against extinction. And when, upon its final disappearance, I, some months ago, hastened to the spot after a long absence, it was with something of the anxiety with which I would have hastened to the bedside of a dying friend, as it was with something of heart-felt relief that I found, from the glad sight of the old tree-stump, that it was not yet too late to repair the mischiefs of neglect.
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