USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 12
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume II > Part 12
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This, then, brought Methodism up to the turn of the century. The foundations had been securely laid. There were societies, by the year 1800, in Newtown, Brooklyn, Commack, Searingtown, Hempstead Harbor, Near (or East) Rockaway, Patchogue, and Southold. There were church buildings in all but Hempstead Harbor and Southold, although as previously mentioned the Patchogue edifice was shared with three sister denominations.
Meanwhile, Methodism in Brooklyn had been developing inde- pendently, not as a part of the Long Island circuit, but as a missionary enterprise of the John Street Church in New York. (At this time, it must be remembered, Newtown was much more accessible from down- town New York than was Brooklyn.)
Captain Webb preached in Brooklyn about the same time that he was preaching in Jamaica and Newtown, but at that time Brooklyn was an unimportant collection of scattered farms with no population to compare with Jamaica and Newtown. Whatever work Webb did in Brooklyn is buried in statistics of John Street Church in New York, and if he enrolled any members in Brooklyn they were doubt- less counted as belonging to John St. There was no organized effort in Brooklyn until after the American Revolution.
In the year 1787, however, the Rev. Woolman Hickson appears out of nowhere to preach from a table in New St. (later Sands St.) near what is now the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Like most of the other early Methodist preachers he had come up from Maryland, and his last recorded appointment is in 1786, "to the Baltimore circuit". How and why he came to Brooklyn is hard to
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say, but here he was to be found, early in 1787, preaching to a scatter- ing of farmers in a pleasant country lane lined with trees and com- manding an excellent view of green fields sloping down to the edge of the bay. At the conclusion of this initial sermon Hickson offered to return to Brooklyn and preach regularly if a suitable meeting place could be found, whereupon a cooper by the name of Peter Cannon offered the use of his cooper shop down near the ferry. His offer was gratefully accepted and here, in 1787, Hickson organized the society from which all of Brooklyn Methodism was to develop. In 1788 Hickson has departed from the scene and the little society in Brooklyn is under the pastoral care of the Rev. John Dickins of New York, a minister of John St. Church, and a remarkable man who was later to become known throughout Methodism as the founder of the Methodist Publishing House.
By 1790 Brooklyn had gotten out from under the wing of New York Methodism and had joined the Long Island Circuit, but it was still a small and struggling society. The work there was not unre- warding, however, for in 1791 Benjamin Abbott writes in his diary: "I received my appointment to Long Island and accordingly took my station. The next day I preached (in Brooklyn) to a small congregation with life and power. The Lord attended the word with success. Some young ladies were cut to the heart, and one gentleman cried out for mercy, and before meeting ended he found peace and joined the society. Next day I went to Newtown."
The work in Brooklyn went ahead, and by 1794 the preachers (there were two of them by this time) considered Brooklyn important enough to spend a month there and then a month on the rest of the island. But by 1796, by which time a church had been erected in Sands Street, Bishop Asbury was still unimpressed. He writes in his journal: "I went over to Brooklyn where we have a small society. I had very few hearers except those who came from the city (New York). I administered the sacrament and we had some life. We then returned to the city, where I preached to about 1600 people, some of whom were wicked and wild enough. . Oh, when will the Lord appear as in ancient times?"
In 1794 the church in Sands Street was incorporated under the title "The First Methodist Episcopal Church in the town of Brooklyn, Kings County, Nassau Island (the name given to Long Island by the Act of 1693, which was never repealed) and at a meeting held on May 19, 1794 at the house of Peter Cannon the following were elected to the first Board of Trustees: John Garrison, Thomas Van Pelt, Burdett Stryker, Stephen Hendrickson, Richard Everit, and Isaac Moser. They purchased from Joshua and Comfort Sands a lot front- ing on New Street, later to be known as Sands Street, and began the erection of a church. On Sunday June 1, 1794, the Reverend Jospeh Totten of the Long Island Circuit preached the dedicatory sermon. This church, later known as the Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church, was the mother church of Kings County Methodism, and for decades was the largest and most active Methodist congregation on Long Island.
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In 1795 Brooklyn became for the first time a separate station. The Rev. Jospeh Totten was the pastor, and the membership was thirty-nine. By 1798. the first year for which accurate records are available. there were fifty white and twenty-six colored members.
Smithtown Branch Methodist Episcopal Church
The presence of these colored folk among the congregation was the cause of entries like this one in the old record books: "Jacob and Susan, joined together in marriage. Oct. 12. 1807. by me, ELIJAH WOOLSEY-Consent of George Bennett, Owner."
Even in Brooklyn, early a center of Abolitionist sentiment, slavery was an accepted institution until about 1825.
In 1799 James Harper, the no-longer-young Englishman who had befriended Captain Thomas Webb and in whose house at Newtown
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the oldest known Methodist society on Long Island was organized, moved to Brooklyn, to become keeper of the town poor-house. As in Newtown, his house immediately became headquarters for the Metho- dist preachers, who boarded with him for the sum of $3.25, or 26 York shillings per week. This practice continued until 1808, when Joshua Sands cancelled the last $100 due him for the land on which the church was built and donated a lot for a parsonage on High Street adjoining the church property. This gift so enthused the trustees that they built not only a new parsonage but a new church, which was completed in 1810 at a cost of $4200, $260 of which was accounted for by the sale of the old building to George Smith, a member of the church, who moved it to Jamaica Turnpike (Fulton Street) opposite High.
The new church contained a feature not found in the old-a "gallery for Africans". Presumably the colored members had here- tofore sat in the main body of the church with the rest of the congre- gation. What this new "gallery for Africans" had to do with it is hard at this point to say, but in 1818 the seventy-four colored mem- bers of Sands Street church organized themselves into the "African Asbury Methodist Church" and erected a small meeting house on High Street between Bridge and Pearl, which remained under the jurisdic- tion of the Sands Street white preachers until 1820, when the colored members seceded from the church in a body.
From Sands Street Methodism spread rapidly throughout Brooklyn. In 1822 a little society was organized at Yellow Hook which afterwards became the Bay Ridge Methodist Church; in 1823 the York Street Church was formed by Sands Streeters, and in 1826 a class had been established in Red Hook Lane. In 1831 the Washing- ton Street Church and parsonage were erected at a cost of $24,000- a lavish expenditure in that day. In 1836 Brooklyn Methodism was offered a gift of land near Hanson Place but the gift was declined as being "too far from the settled part of the city." Today Method- ism's Brooklyn cathedral, Central Methodist Church, occupies approxi- mately the same site. In 1834 there were enough Methodist societies in Williamsburgh for a "Williamsburgh Circuit" to be set up; a "Newtown Circuit" was established in 1841; a "Flushing Circuit" had come into being in 1824. In 1846, by which time a considerable German population was to be found in Brooklyn, and particularly in Williamsburgh, a German-speaking society was organized and on September 21, 1846, the cornerstone of the "German Methodist Epis- copal Free Church" was laid at the corner of Stagg and Lorimer Streets. This was the beginning of the old "East German Confer- ence" of the Methodist Church which was merged with the New York East Conference in 1943.
No account of the rise of Methodism on Long Island would be complete without some mention of the Brooklyn Sunday School Union, an organization which flourishes today and brings out thousands of Brooklyn Sunday School children to parade on its "Anniversary Day" early in June.
On the 11th of February, 1816, while the Rev. Nathan Emery was pastor at Sands Street, a Quarterly Conference was held at which
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Thomas Sands, a local preacher in the Sands Street Church (later a large shipping merchant and Mayor of Liverpool, England) proposed to establish a Sunday School in Brooklyn. The proposal was adopted, and the children were brought together on the following Sunday in a building known as Thomas Kirk's printing office, a long, narrow- framed edifice on Adams Street between Sands and High. The fol- lowing were chosen as teachers: Robert Snow (Superintendent). Andrew Mercein, Joseph Herbert, and Daniel DeVinne. This was the first Sunday School on Long Island.
In March of the same year a printed appeal was addressed to "the people of the Village" about the Sunday School. It was, said the appeal, an interdenominational school and the parents could say what catechism was to be taught to their children. After the Sunday School hour the children would be escorted to the church of their choice by the teachers. This appeal was printed in the Star and as a result of it a public meeting was called and, on April 8, 1816, the Brooklyn Sunday School Union was officially launched. The meeting place was moved from Kirk's building to the school-house of District No. 1 on the corner of Concord and Adams Streets. There was some opposi- tion to it on the grounds that to have "school" on Sunday was a desecration of the Sabbath, and the project had its ups and downs. In 1821 a new Sunday School building was erected in Prospect Street near Adams, being built with beams and timbers from Mr. Snow's old potash store in New York. As the other denominations developed their own facilities, their children gradually withdrew from the Union, leaving the building to the Methodists, who later erected a Sunday School building of their own on High Street near the parsonage in the rear of the Sands Street Church. But the Sunday School Union continued to function, and still functions today.
Incidentally, one of the most zealous workers in the Sunday School Union in the early days was Mr. Abraham Vanderveer, a mem- ber of the Dutch Reformed Church, who was to give his name to Vanderveer Park, a residential section of Flatbush.
Meantime, out on the island the going was hard. One of the Long Island circuit-riders complained in his diary :
"The Long Island devil seems to be a different devil from that in other places. A stupid indifference either to religion or to the honors of the world prevails generally. The inhabitants have a pretty good share, however, of the love of money, but too many only want money to get something to drink with."
Quakerism and Calvinism, too, according to the Methodist his- torian, Dr. N. Bangs, impeded the progress of the true gospel on Long Island.
The Rev. Mitchell Bull, the salty Irishman who rode the circuit in 1806, gives us this interesting record of a trip around his parish :
Sunday, May 10th-Preach at Rockaway, 10:30 A. M.
Preach at Lester Raynor's (Freeport) 3 P. M.
Monday, May 11-Preach at Elijah Chichesters (Amityville) 2 P. M.
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Tuesday, May 12-Preach at William Allaby's (Babylon). Wednesday, May 13-Preach at Widow Week's. Thursday, May 14-Rest and visit. Friday, May 15-Rest and visit.
--
(From watercolor by Cyril A. Lewis)
The Methodist Church at Hempstead
Saturday, May 16-Ride to Coram, to the house of Joseph Roe. Sunday, May 17-Preach at 10 A. M. and 3 P. M in the meeting-house, Coram.
Monday, May 18-The Manor, preach at the house of Lewis Gordon, 3 P. M.
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Tuesday, May 19-Preach at house of Ezra Tuttle, Patch- ogue, 3 P. M.
Wednesday, May 20-Preach at house of Caleb Newton, The Pond (Lake Grove).
Thursday, May 21-Preach at house of Adam Darling, Smith- town River, 3 P. M.
Friday, May 22-Preach at house of George Wheeler, Hap- pauge, 3 P. M.
Saturday, May 23-Ride to Commack, to Samuel Brush's house.
Sunday, May 24-Preach at Commack Meeting-house, 10 A. M. Preach at Happauge Meeting-house, 3 P. M. (Home of Jacob Wheeler).
Monday, May 25-Preach at William Smith's house, Dix Hills, 3 P. M.
Tuesday, May 26-Preach at Joseph Higbie's, Cow Harbor, 2 P. M. Preach at Gilbert Scudders, Huntington, 8 P. M. Wednesday, May 27-Preach at Carpenter's house, Musketo Cove, 3 P. M.
Thursday, May 28-Preach at Joseph Starkin's house, Hemp- stead Harbor, 2 P. M.
Friday, May 29-Preach at Searington, 2 P. M.
Saturday, May 30-Ride to Newtown, to Joseph Harpers house.
Sunday, May 31-Preach at Newtown Meeting-house, 10 A. M. and 3 P. M.
Monday, June 1-Visit.
Tuesday, June 2-Ride to Rockaway, to David DeMotts house. Wednesday, June 3-Preach at Samuel Osborn's house, Sodom (Baldwin) 3 P. M.
Thursday, June 4-Preach at Brierly Plains, Moses Beadles, and Parker Baldwin's, alternately.
Friday, June 5-Preach at Benjamin Nichols, Jerusalem, 2 P. M.
Saturday, June 6-Ride to Rockaway, to John Laydons or Thomas Burtices.
To minister to such a circuit in our day, even with the assistance of an automobile, would be a herculean feat. In 1806 the Rev. Mr. Bull did it on horseback. Nobody in that day, at least, could complain that the preacher did not earn his money!
In this same year, 1806, the first Methodist camp-meeting on Long Island was held in Kelsey's Woods at Cow Harbor (Northport). The enthusiasm generated at this "protracted meeting" increased Methodist activity throughout the island, and the repercussions were felt even back in Brooklyn, where members of the Sands Street Church, aflame with missionary zeal as a result of the revival, invaded the Brooklyn Navy Yard and made many converts among the sailors, with the result that many "asked that their grog be stopped."
It was out of this meeting, too, that John Darling and "Old Captain" became Christians. Darling, known as "Swearing John"
.
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because of his accomplished cursing, and "Old Captain", a Negro, were two of the most unregenerate men in Smithtown River (Landing) and they went to Kelsey's Woods, as did many others, out of sheer curiosity. At the meeting there was a Praying Ring, in which all attending walked around a circle in single file while the "seekers" knelt in the center of the circle. "Swearing John", in order to have a better view of the show, climbed up a tree, ventured too far out on a weak limb, and fell into the middle of the "seekers". A woman from Smithtown recognized him and began to pray for him in a loud voice, and John was so touched by this that he professed conversion. Thereafter he was known as "Praying John" and became a licensed exhorter.
The details of "Old Captain's" conversion are not so complete, but after it he used to chant "Whole Christian or no Christian" as he chopped wood and thus, we are told, was able to chop three or four cords a day. His Smithtown friends built him a small shanty down near the river, and because it had no floor he used to put down a shingle on which to kneel in prayer. The Rev. Edwin Warriner, his- torian of the New York East Conference of the Methodist Church, says that he could be heard to pray for a mile. Warriner also tells us that "Old Captain" often went over to Commack to services and says : "They loved to hear 'Old Captain', the Negro Methodist of Smithtown, who used to stuff his old bandana into his mouth to keep from making too much noise when he prayed."
In the early days the Methodists took very seriously John Wesley's injunction against "the wearing of gold and costly apparel", and were pretty straight-laced folk. The Quarterly Conference for the Long Island (Suffolk) Circuit was held at Hauppauge in 1815, and admission was by ticket only, tickets being distributed by the class-leaders to those who were deemed "worthy" of attending. No one was admitted without a ticket and no one could obtain a ticket who "wore rings on their fingers or in their ears" or "flowers on their bonnets".
Around the year 1820 Methodism on Long Island, as elsewhere, was split by the so-called "Stillwellite heresy" which resulted in the establishment of the "Methodist Protestant" Church. The revolt against the authority of the ministers, presiding elders, and bishops began in John Street Church in New York and was not long in spread- ing to Long Island. One of the places where the dissidents had control was Cow Harbor (Manhasset), where, in 1831, they dismantled the church and moved it to Commack, leaving a handful of "loyalists" to carry on for the Methodist Episcopal Church. This was the first great schism to divide the Methodist Church, the second coming later over the issue of slavery. But in 1939 there was a happy reunion, the Methodist Protestants and the Southern Methodists coming together with the Methodist Episcopal Church to form a united Methodist Church ..
It was the good fortune of Brooklyn and Long Island Methodism to be served by some of the denomination's most brilliant and devoted ministers. Freeborn Garrettson, one of the great names in
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American Methodism, came north from Maryland in 1787, following his conversion and the freeing of his slaves, to be the associate of the Rev. John Dickins in New York and on Long Island and later, when he was placed in charge of the district which included Long Island, he was the first Methodist to bear the title "Presiding Elder." Wil- liam Phoebus, who served the Long Island circuit in 1791, was another scholarly Marylander who made a living as a physician when he was not preaching. The Methodist people in Rockaway, commenting on the difference between Phoebus and Benjamin Abbott, his associate
(From watercolor by Cyril A. Lewis)
Brick Church, East Williston
on the Long Island circuit, said: "Abbott raises the devil, but Phoebus lays him again". In addition to his preaching and doctoring, Phoebus found time to write an excellent biography of Bishop Thomas Whatcoat and to edit The Experienced Christian's Magazine. Ben- jamin Abbott was a large, hearty man who, according to the records and the number of anecdotes told about him, evidently made. more of an impression on the people around the Long Island circuit than any of his colleagues. Once, it is said, he preached on the text "Thou art an austere man", pronouncing the word "austere" as though it were "oyster"-a very appropriate text indeed for the South Shore. When his attention was called to this, he remarked "Never mind that, we raked in seven, didn't we?"
Ezekiel Cooper, who had been converted as a boy in Maryland by hearing Freeborn Garrettson preach to a company of American soldiers in his father's house, was the first Methodist preacher to begin his ministry on Long Island. Of Cooper, who spent 62 of his
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84 years in the ministry, the historian Edwin Warriner says: "He was known as a great angler. Like Izaak Walton he carried his fishing tackle with him, and was ever-ready to give a reason for his recrea- tion. Bishop Scott says that his [Cooper's] walking cane was arranged for a fishing rod, and he always had on hand a scripture argument to prove that fishing was an apostolic practice. On one occasion when he returned from an excursion without catching any- thing, a preacher was much disposed to laugh at his poor success. 'Never mind', said the reverend old angler, 'although I have caught nothing, while watching my line I have finished the outline of one or two sermons'."
Warriner also adds that "Brooklyn never rejoiced in a Methodist pastor of greater talent and popularity." Perhaps Cooper's interest in fishing had as much to do with that as his sermonizing. When he died in 1847 he left a fortune of $50,000-an unprecedented feat for a Methodist itinerant in that day, and one extremely rare even today !
The Rev. Seymour Landon, a doughty Vermonter who came to Sands Street, Brooklyn, as pastor in 1828 and who thereafter spent almost his entire ministry in Brooklyn and on Long Island (he was Presiding Elder of the Long Island District from 1851 to 1854) was the first of a long line of New York East Conference ministers to preach a "social gospel". And for this he paid a price. Warriner tells us :
"The General Conference of 1836, in its pastoral address, said to the Church: 'We * * * exhort you to abstain from all Abolition movements and associations, and to refrain from patronizing any of their publications. * * * We have come to the solemn conviction that the only safe, scriptural, and prudent way for us, both as ministers and people, to take is wholly to refrain from this agitating subject.'
"The New York Conference passed a resolution forbid- ding its members acting as agents for Zion's Watchman (an Abolitionist magazine). Landon demanded: 'Is the reso- lution intended to forbid my taking the paper myself, and paying for it?' At the following session, when appointments were read, Landon found himself transferred to Sugar Loaf Mountain where, like John the Baptist, he might riot on locusts and wild honey and meditate on the folly of having opinions of his own."
History, however, justified Landon and proved the Bishops mis- taken, and when the Abolition movement became respectable in the North he enjoyed a series of excellent appointments, which he doubt- less accepted with tongue in cheek.
Laymen, too, played a prominent part in the growth of Methodism on Long Island. The Searings of Searingtown, the Harpers (later to found the great publishing house) in Newtown and Brooklyn, the Raynors of Freeport and eastern Suffolk, the Osborns of Easthamp- ton and Riverhead, the Hawkins family of Ronkonkoma-all wrought as mightily as did the circuit-riding preachers to build the Church.
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During the first half of the 19th Century Methodist meeting-houses sprang up all over Long Island-Hauppauge in 1806, Sag Harbor in 1809, Jamaica in 1810, Stony Brook in 1817, Centerport and Bridge- hampton in 1820, East Norwich in 1822, Hempstead in 1822, Hunting- ton in 1825, Riverhead in 1830, Norwich in 1835, Brookhaven in 1833, Smithtown Landing in 1834, Good Ground, Orient, Port Jefferson, and Far Rockaway in 1836, Moriches in 1839, Middle Island, Babylon, Amityville and Coram in 1840, Cold Spring in 1842, Setauket and Farmingdale in 1843, West Hills in 1844, Smithtown Branch in 1845. On the western end of the island Flatbush, Yellow Hook, Canarsie, Coney Island, and Astoria were building sites in 1843-1844.
So rapid was the growth of Methodism on Long Island that in 1845, according to Dr. Prime's estimates, only the Dutch Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church had more members in that area than did the Methodists. In that year there were 34 preachers and 6619 full members.
Three years later, in 1848, the New York East Conference was split off from the old New York Conference, and Long Island, includ- ing Brooklyn and Queens, became the backbone of the new conference, which also included the southern part of Westchester County and most of Connecticut west of the Connecticut River. Long Island had previously been detached from the New York District of the old New York Conference (in 1840) and from then on until 1864 the "Long Island District" included the whole island. In that year a division was made between north and south, and the whole island from Mon- tauk to Brooklyn was bisected into the somewhat artificial divisions which still hold today.
Exactly 100 years after Dr. Prime estimated that there were 34 Methodist preachers and 6619 Methodist people on Long Island, the records of the New York East Conference showed that, in 1945, there were 141 fully ordained clergymen and 79 local preachers (unordained) serving 56,274 Methodist people and 26,745 Sunday School children. Methodism had made up for its late start and had overcome its early difficulties to overtake all of its denominational rivals with the excep- tion of the Roman Catholic Church.
The injunction of Dr. Prime, as he concludes that basic work on Long Island history on which all other histories of the region are dependent, might well be quoted here not only to "the people called Methodists" but to all the dwellers on old "Nassau Island":
"Inhabitants of Long Island! Remember your high descent, and emulate the example of your pious ancestors."
CHAPTER XXV The Catholic Church on Long Island REVEREND JOHN K. SHARP
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