USA > New York > Rockland County > History of Rockland County, New York : with biographical sketches of its prominent men > Part 53
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Lastly, I nominate and appoint my friends Johannes Jos. Blauvelt and John Haring, Esquires, Executors of this my last will and testament and I hereby revoke all former wills and testaments by me made. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this Thir- tieth day of January A. D., one thousand seven Hun- dred and eighty-four.
"Signed, sealed and de-) clared by the said Samuel Verbryck as and for his last will and testament in the presence of us who have hereunto set our names as witnesses in the SAMUEL VERBRYCK (SEAL). presence of each other and of the Testator.
FREDERICKUS BLAUVELT, JOHN DE WINT, JUN., COVERT HARING.
The question naturally occurs how a pastor, over a hundred years ago, on a salary of only $250 per annum, including a house and a few acres of land, could have had anything to leave to his family, after living in a dis- turbed state of the country and rearing a family of four sons. The simple and plain manners, customs, dress, and habits of the people in those early days are the explana-
tion. Mr. Verbryck left to his wife and four sons about 300 acres of land near Hackensack and about 50 acres near Tappan. It is evident from his will that he felt a Christian solicitude in regard to the future of his slave Mary, as he was careful to provide that she should never be sold, but must remain under the care of his widow ol her heirs to the end of her life.
The record of baptisms at Tappan continues perfect during the whole of Dominie Verbryck's pastorate. The marriage record, however, fails, except from September 23d 1750, to October 3d 1754. The member record is unbroken from the organization of the church, in 1694, to July 4th 1754, but fails through all the rest of Dominie Verbryck's time, not being reopened till March 21st 1785. The wonder is, not that these records are lost, but rather that the baptisms were all preserved through
" Since several persons, members of the church, who made their profession of faith for Dominie Verbryck, are not recorded in this book, and no doubt Mr. Verbryck had their names properly recorded in some book that cannot now be found, having been lost in the late war, the Rev. Consistory have resolved to let their names be recorded in the church book. They are as follows:"
The eighty names, given with this entry, added to the previous entries on the register, makes a total of 503 members known to have been received by the church from its organization in 1694, by profession and by letter, to March 2Ist 1785.
Rev. Nicholas Lansing .- The third settled pastor of the Tappan church was, in many respects, more marked than any other whose ministry it ever enjoyed. Many still live who remember him well, as he died less than forty- nine years ago, and was in active service till within a fortnight of his death. Not the period in which he Served the people as their pastor (this was a quiet one, at least as to Tappan), but certain remarkable peculiari- ties of constitutional temperament, and of personal and pulpit manner, during more than fifty years of ministry in Rockland county, so impressed his individualism upon the county, and imbedded it in its traditions, that it is certain his name will become more and more the inspira- tion of legendary spell among the people as time rolls on. The editor of this history and writer of this sketch knew him well, lived in the same house with him through several of his last months, and was old enough to under- stand him, being thirteen years of age when he died. He heard him preach, during his last six years, twice a month, alternately in English and Dutch. He takes great pleasure in recalling of him what he can, and committing it to this permanent form.
" Dominie Lansing " (popularly pronounced "Lon - sen." He will never be known in tradition by any other
*The records of the schismatto organization of which we have spoken as existing from 1767 to 1778, are still preservod and perfect.
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designation), was born at Albany, N. Y., September 20th 1748. He did not enter the ministry till 1780, when about 32 years of age. He passed his early manhood as a sailor on the Hudson, and, for some time before he studied for the ministry, was master of an Albany and New York sailing vessel. It was while thus employed that he was brought to spiritual concern. His first exer- cises were a painful struggle with self-righteousness, the memory of which tinged the whole course of his subse- quent preaching. It was in a prayer meeting that, under a severe assault of Satan, he first came really to feel the deep corruption and absolute helplessness of his own nature, and, giving up the useless contest, to abandon himself to grace alone for salvation. Speaking of this experience, he was accustomed to say, with characteristic earnestness, in phrase drawn from his early calling: "Then my proud sails came down, and I saw that I must be saved by free, sovereign, and unmerited grace." In this grace he was soon led thoroughly and perma- nently to trust. Almost immediately thereafter, he felt go on horseback between his two churches, a distance of seven miles. He also rode on horseback when making his pastoral calls. Possibly to this he may have been in- debted for his early recuperated constitution and his long and well-preserved health. I have often seen him, after he had passed his eighty-first year, run down the parsonage lawn, leap over the fence, in contempt ot the gate, spring on his horse, and ride off with a vigor that left me amazed. Every movement and every word was quick, nervously impulsive, and frequently fiery and pas- sionate. His life was a perpetual drive of energy, applied equally to all matters of concern, both small and great. Yet he was uniformly well and wonderfully en- during. He had a life-long and inveterate habit of snuffing. He carried the snuff loose in his vest pocket, and used it so freely and carelessly that the material be- came engrained into, and literally colored his clothing from head to foot. Every piece of it, but especially the upper parts, was always deeply snuff colored. He lived in a day when photographs were unknown, and no himself powerfully drawn to the ministry. He pursued painted portrait of him, after he reached manhood, seems to have been taken. For these reasons I have been so minute in this pen picture, that I may convey to readers some idea of the person, health, and habits of this remarkable man.
his studies under the Rev. Eilardus Westerlo of Albany, and was licensed by the General Meeting of Ministers and Elders held in New Paltz, October 1780. A year later, the same body at its session in New Hurley, N. Y., after approving a call made upon him by the congregations of Natural temperament and personal piety .-- No one ever doubted for a moment that Dominie Lansing had been, and was, the subject of a powerful work of converting and sanctifying grace. His whole nature was pervaded with his religion and with the spirit of consecration to his Master. He had an awful horror of sin and sinning, was terribly afraid of tempters and temptation, and never discovered that he had done a wrong to another without hasting at once and with all speed to own and, if possible, undo it. His quick, fiery temperament continually led him Livingston Manor, in Columbia county, N. Y., directed his ordination and his installation over those congregations as their pastor. The ministers, in their minutes, very strongly express their great satisfaction with his exami- nations, and especially with his trial sermons. The first three years of his ministry were spent, as a result of these proceedings, in the pastorate of the three churches of Ancram, Stissing, and Livingston Manor, the latter of which has since been sub-divided. On the eleventh of August 1784, a call was made out for him by the united into saying and doing things which yet his deep toned churches of Tappan and Clarkstown. This call he ac. cepted, and of these two churches he remained the pastor till 1830, when, owing to his age (82 years), he gave up Clarkstown. Of the church of Tappan, however, he continued to be pastor till his death in September, 1835, thus accomplishing a pastorate of this church of more than fifty-one years. purity of soul intensely abhorred. Thus he was con- stantly humbling himself and repenting. His tempera- ment was the occasion to him of unutterable trial, but for all this it brought into greater conspicuousness before others the spiritual character of the man, and furnished the means of illustrating to all who knew him the pro- foundness of his conversion, and the deep sincerity of his life.
Dominie Lansing's Person, Health, and Habits .- Dom- inie Lansing was, as to person, figure, and movements, tall, gaunt, and ungainly. He continued to the last to wear the Continental dress, though it had been so long discarded that to most people it had already become a real curiosity. When he began to study for the ministry he was in such feeble health that his relatives strongly opposed the step. His physician insisted that he never would reach the pulpit. Yet he was spared for a most vigorous service of fifty-four years. As I now recall him, I do not remember any irregularity in his health, or any interruption to his work from sickness, during his last six years. His vigor and buoyancy during those
Scholarship and Habits in his Study .- In childhood I was accustomed to regard Dominie Lansing as a great scholar. I now know that he could not have been all that I then thought him in this respect. His opportunities for that early culture which is indispensable to elementary and re- fined accuracy had been limited. He was to a great ex- tent self made, and it has been seen that he started upon study at a late point in his manhood. Yet he was an in- defatigable studen: of the Bible in its original languages, and also of the Greek and Latin fathers, and of the Latin theologians. I have some of his Hebrew and his theo- logical books in my own library. They give evidence of years were like those of a strong, healthy boy. He lived having been laboriously studied. The margins of their in the Tappan parsonage, quite near the church, and down to 1830, continued through his whole ministry, to
pages are filled with finely written annotations. To these evidences of his industry I have my own memory of the
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constancy with which he kept his study and pored over his books. He had become literally mighty in the Scrip- tures. Then, too, his habits of prayer in his study were of the closest kind. Never was any one more continu- ously at the throne of grace, pleading for himself and for others. He had evidently become deeply persuaded of the truth of the saying-" bene orasse bene stu- duisse." He took the most assiduous pains to draw in nourishment to his own spiritual life through the two great channels-Bible study and prayer. Hefrequently spent much of the night, and often a whole night, in pray ing. His clothing always gave way first upon his knees. He was also a firm believer in fasting which he practiced to a large extent. So much I personally remember of him as a student, a scholar, a man of prayer, and a man of rigid self discipline. I have even yet a high regard for his scholarship, as scholarship was reckoned in his day. But I feel after all, and even more strongly still, that his length that would in our day be tolerated for the regular sermon. Yet I have no memory of any complaint from the hearers. The usage was fixed and so were the nerves of the people. But the pulpit manners of the Dominie 1 can never forget. His eccentricities, of which I shall have to speak in a moment, were not uppermost. Uppermost was grave dignity, a manner thoroughly in keeping with the solemnity of the pulpit and its themes, the manner of an ambassador from God, deeply conscious of the weight of his message and of the delightful, or the dreadful, issues to his hearers, that hung upon the faithful and earnest, or the careless and slovenly, delivery of it. Notwithstand- ing his naturally fiery temperament when suddenly roused, there was a benignity in the old pastor's face and a gentleness in his conversation when his spirit was at rest, that drew my heart to him in an instant when we met in private. But in the pulpit he was a literal thun- piety and his closeness of walk and communion with God derer. He seemed to look down on usfrom the sky. He were the overtopping peculiarities of his personal life. bottomed every sermon with the most searching analysis of the human heart, labored with terrible earnestness to dislodge unscriptural hopes, and ended in every case by shutting every hearer down to Christ only as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The terrors of the law he always applied till men shivered with fear, and the grace of the gospel and the free salvation he never failed to magnify at the end. He was a master in the realm of spiritual experience. He knew every chord of the heart and every sensation of it, and his sermons were enriched with de- lineations in which, as in a glass, every spirit led hearer could see his own exercises reflected and explained. None of the eccentricities of the preacher ever obscured these prevailing characteristics. Every one saw and felt that his eccentricities were not put on, but were part of the man. And so being, and so being regarded, they served in his case to deepen, not to injure the effect of his profoundly earnest and intelligently weighty teach- ings and appeals. He never used manuscript in preach- ing, and as the natural result of this, he became largely repetitive in his later years. Yet even his repetitions were of service in deepening the impressions and fixing the memory of his preaching. What he repeated was not the common place, but always the striking. Over and over he uttered sayings of the most vital monient. He seemed to gather into a few aphoristic utterances the accumulations of a life study and a life experience, that he might be sure at last to leave his best things with his people. His figure and manner in the pulpit are indel- ibly fixed upon the memory of many who are living yet, and his sayings have long been among the floating tradi- tions of Rockland county. They continue even now to affect the religious life of the whole region over which the remarkable preacher was so well known.
Pulpit Manners and Preaching .- The pulpit in which he preached (he never saw the completion of the new church) was very high, of the old wine glass form, and surmount- ed by the old fashioned sounding board, which was orna- mented with a sheaf of golden grain. It was reached on either side by a circular flight of steps. Every memory I have of the Dominie's ascent of this pulpit and services while occupying it, is a memory of intense solemnity. Upon the steps, in going up, he always prostrated him- self at full length and remained for several minutes, evi- dently in earnest prayer. Then rising, he ascended to his place with the air of a inan who " walked with God." In the order of service, he carried out strictly the usages of the Reformed churches of his day. During the sum- mer and autumn of each year he always preached twice on the Sabbath in the church, with an interval of not more than half an hour between the two services. The second Sabbath service in the church, during his whole ministry, was always devoted to an exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism. The morning service was never less than two hours in length, and the second was never less than an hour and a half. The former was intro- duced by the clerk and chorister, who stood below and in front of the pulpit, read the law, and then gave out a psalm which he sung with the people. As I have said already, the Dominie's services, during the six years of my acquaintance with him, were conducted on his two Sab- baths of each month, alternately in the English and Dutch languages, with the singing of each to correspond. There were different clerks for the different languages, the clerk for the Dutch services being the venerable Samuel G. Verbryck, a son of the former pastor. When the clerk's part of the services ended, the Dominie began. One of the peculiarities of the service of his day in the Re- formed church was the " exordium remotum," an intro- ductory exposition of the whole, or sonie passage, of the Scripture reading, and intended to prepare the hearers for the treatment of the main subject of the service. This was invariably of great length. It often exceeded any
His Eccentricities .- From what has. been already said, it will be understood that he was eccentric even in figure and movements. But his chief eccentricities lay in his sayings and his illustrations. Had they been affected, they would not be noticed here. But they were of the essence of the man, and were so overruled by
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divine grace as to become wonderfully subservient to his leaves of the Bible to find and read a passage from one life work and mission. His most ordinary speech in of Paul's letters, saying as he did so: " Paul says, Paul says, what says Paul?" At this juncture the negroes in the gallery were whispering. The good dominie heard them, and continuing with his words, " Paul says, Paul says, what says Paul?" added in Dutch, without lifting his eyes or changing his tone, and as if reading his newly found text: "Niggers mustn't talk in the gallery!" An- other variety of eccentricity in his manner is illustrated by the following: Beginning a sermon on Noah saved by the ark, he is said to have descended from the pulpit with the remark to his hearers, "I don't suppose you
common life was unusual and eccentric. It was not al- ways in the sayings he uttered, but often in his special ways of uttering them that the eccentricity lay. Every deliverance with him was in vigorous Dutch or Saxon. On one occasion, after spending a tedious week of calm on a sloop between New York and Albany, during which he had been tortured with the profanity of a godless crew, he was met by a friend who accosted him with the inquiry how he did, and to whom he replied, "Oh, miserable! I have been in hell for the last week." He was proverb- ially indifferent as to the care of his horse, leaving him know how the ark looked," and to have begun to draw an
too much to the careless treatment of his servants. I outline of the vessel on the pulpit front. The story well remember the appearance of the unhappy animal. And yet the dominie always drove at startling speed. On one occasion a person at the roadside called to him as he went, "Dominie, you ride as if the devil was after you." " Oh, yes," he replied, "he is always after me." At an- other time, when he was returning from Clarkstown with some friends in the vehicle, as he was approaching his goes that the elders, one or more, rose from their seats, gently took him by the arm, and suggested that he was not doing a wise thing. Whereupon he yielded to them in an instant and returned to the pulpit, saying as he went: " Well, well, if you know more than I do, all right." At another time, lost in earnestness while preaching, he was stamping on the pulpit floor and pounding
home, at a sharp turn he drove suddenly over a cow ly- the open Bible with terrible energy, when he heard,
ing in his way, and brought about the complete wreck of behind him, indications that the one-legged pulpit (pinned to the wall rather insecurely) was giving way. He had heard these indications before and spoken of them. At this time he took up his pulpit Bible, came down the steps with it, entered the clerk's desk, and be- fore resuming his sermon, said: " I have told the Consis- tory a hundred times that this pulpit will fall. I believe they want me to break my neck." There are countless traditions similar to these afloat in Rockland county and in and around Albany where he occasionally preached. But the power of his eccentricities lay in his illustrations of the points he made in speaking. Many times he used to say when preaching in the old stone church, " A sinner can no more save himself than I can take up this church his wagon, and the scattering of his party over the road. The cow proved to be unhurt, but the ladies, of course, were very much frightened. Amid the general con- fusion, the dominie, whose deep absorption had been the occasion of the catastrophe, came to a dawning sense of what had happened. His first thought, however, went to his neighbor, whose cow he feared he had injured, or perhaps killed, and his first exclamation was: "No mat- ter, my dears, I will pay for the cow, I will pay for the cow." Such peculiarities were characteristic of his or- dinary life. But it was with the pulpit and preaching that most of his remembered eccentricities are connected. One of his sayings, repeated, I am confident, more than a hundred times in my own hearing, and meant to illus- and throw it across the river to Tarrytown." Then, too, trate the real place of works in the plan of salvation (a his directness of personal application to his hearers was wonderful. Exchanging once with a brother, and preach- ing to a new audience, he laid the sins of the people be- fore them with pointed finger, saying: "You know that you lie, that you get drunk, that you are dishonest in your dealings," and so on, alleging against them infraction of all the commandments of the decalogue, and charging them with all manner of sins, till the people were dodg- ing about to get from under the range of that pointed fin- ger, and wondering how the Tappan Dominie could know so much about the sins of their lives. Such was the man. He was "sui generis." No one could imitate him. If his eccentricities had not been his nature, they would have been his defect and defeat. As it was, they added to the effectiveness of his preaching and his ex- ample. They helped to shape the character and the strength of his church. On one occasion, at a meeting of the Classis of Paramus, when reports from the churches quotation from old authors) was: " Do and Live? Do and be damned! I have never said to you, Do and Live, but Live and Do!" Another, intended to impress the certainty with which all his hearers were speeding to their earthly end was: " The time will come when two men will meet upon the road. One will say to the other, did you know Dominie Lon-sen? Know him, the other will reply, of course I did. Who didn't know Dominie Lon-sen? Well, he's dead!" And another still, intended to rebuke carelessness about one's certain death, was: " Not afraid to die. Who says he is not afraid to die? I'm afraid to die." This way of illustrating his points used to send thrills through my own child nature, as I well remember. But there were other phases of this eccentricity that grew simply out of his rapidity of thought and speech, developing the most grotesque com- binations, wholly unperceived and unsuspected by him- self. There are many traditions of this peculiarity, for were the order of the day, the President inquired for the which I cannot myself vouch, but which are undoubtedly report from Tappan (then universally, and still often, founded on fact, though they may be exaggerated. One pronounced " Top-on "). " What has Dominie Lon-sen is, that once, while preaching, he fell to turning over the to report about Top on?" he asked. " Top-on," said the
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Dominie, with a sigh of sadness, "Top-on? Why all Top-on is dead, and I am dead, too." The President thereupon called upon the Dominie to pray for Top-on, and he complied in a manner which proved that however it might be with Top-on, the pastor of its church was very far from dead. I repeat-Such was this remarkable man. I could not have done justice to his memory, or to the knowledge and impressions of still living people who knew him well, if I had dealt scantily or hastily with this part of my sketch.
Last Fortnight of His Life .- He preached regularly in his turns twice a month till within two weeks of his death, in September 1835. This was the year of the erection of the present church, of which I will speak un- der the sketch of the next pastor. The services of the summer had been held in the old thatched-roof barn of the parsonage property. The Sabbath was the 13th day day of the first autumnal month and it was his turn to preach. The improvised seats were crowded and the place was thronged with persons sitting and standing in and around. The Dominie was feeble and had reached the barn through the assistance of two of his Consis- tory.
IN MEMORY OF THE REVEREND NICHOLAS LANSING LATE MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL AT TAPPAN BORN IN THE CITY OF ALBANY
THE 20TH DAY OF SEPTEMBER 1748 DIED 26TH SEPTEMBER 1835
AGED 87 YEARS
AND 6 DAYS MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS A HUMBLE AND ZEALOUS SERVANT IN HIS MASTER'S CAUSE
REMEMBER YE NOT THAT WHEN I WAS YET WITH YOU I TOLD YOU THESE THINGS.
THOUGH DEAD, HE YET SPEAKETH.
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