The Kirk on Rutgers Farm Part 2

But the indefatigable Cuyler postponed the evil day, and for seven years of intensest activity he remained in Market Street.

To quote Dr. Cuyler: "I looked around me and saw there were a good many substantial families that could support a church and East Broadway swarmed with young men."

"Here was the lord of the manor, the nephew of Colonel Rutgers, Wm. B.

Crosby. What a devoted Christian he was. His good old gray head moved up to the pew every Sunday, rain or s.h.i.+ne. There was a deacons' pew, and in the center sat the best-known man in New York, Judge Joseph Hoxie. When we said the creed and n.o.body joined he shouted it, and in song his voice was heard above the choir. There sat Jacob Westervelt, the mayor of New York, and he boasted that he was the only member of the Dutch Church who could read a Dutch Bible."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Theodore Ledyard Cuyler]

The galleries were packed with young men. One, a young Irish boy, Robert McBurney, became the great secretary of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation. Charles Briggs was another young member, and around him later raged the bitterest theological controversy of the century.

During the summer of 1854 the service was changed to 4 P. M., 7:30 being resumed in September.

In 1855 the seats in the gallery were changed from four rows to three rows, and the infant school was held in the "scholars' gallery" of the church. The low seats are still in the second gallery.

A stove was put in, too, as the heating was not satisfactory.

In 1855, A. D. Stowell came as Bible cla.s.s teacher at a salary of $12 per month.

Dr. Cuyler rightly referred to it as a busy old hive, for from Market Street church emanated some of the greatest religious movements of the century.

Howard Crosby, son of William B. Crosby, and brought up in the Market Street church, was the first president of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation. Cuyler became interested in it the second year of its existence in New York, and during his long lifetime he never ceased to work for it. But if the church had done nought else than bring Robert McBurney to the a.s.sociation it would have been amply repaid. The master spirit in the a.s.sociation for thirty years McBurney's name is written in golden letters in the city's history. Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge, life-long friends of the church, were early a.s.sociation supporters.

A work typical of Market Street church was the Fulton Street prayer-meeting, started by Jeremiah C. Lamphier, who sang in the church choir. Dr. Cuyler credits this with being the first move in the tremendous revival that from 1856 to 1858 swayed the city, and went on to other cities, gathering momentum. Cuyler says: "In three or four weeks the revival so absorbed the city that business men crowded into the churches from 12 to 3 each day, and when Horace Greeley was asked to start a new philanthropic enterprise he said: 'The city is so absorbed with this revival that it has no time for anything else.'"

Market Street church gathered in 150 new members, and 1859 was one of the glorious ones in the history of the church.

Mr. Lamphier died December 26, 1898.

In the Temperance cause, Dr. Cuyler was also a ceaseless worker. From 1851 to 1857 he was in close alliance with Neal Dow, then at the height of his fame as a prohibition advocate.

Another organization that had an earnest supporter in Dr. Cuyler was the Christian Endeavor Society, tho Cuyler gives all the credit for its fatherhood to Rev. F. E. Clarke.

In a day when such things were not common Market Street church got deeply into matters civic. "The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the then famous Five Points," Baxter, Worth, Mulberry, Park Streets, not far from the church. An old building, honeycombed with vaults and secret pa.s.sages, called the Old Brewery, was the center of a locality that boldly flouted the police. Indeed, for years the Old Brewery was a harbor of refuge for any criminal, for the law never reached him there, nor were the Five Points ever a safe place to walk thru. At night no one dared be seen there. For some years the Five Points had played a physical part in the elections, and many a riot had its inception there.

Then the city put thru Worth Street, formerly known as Anthony Street, after a Rutgers, and the Old Brewery Mission was establisht there. Thru Mrs. Pease, a member of the Market Street church, whose husband was the brave projector of the Five Points House of Industry, the church became interested in improving conditions. When Mr. Pease went south, his place was taken by Benjamin R. Barlow, one of the Market Street elders.

In his autobiography, Dr. Cuyler tells how he "used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters" to keep public interest awake in the mission work at the Five Points. New Yorkers who remember the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look at Mulberry Bend Park may well thank the old Market Street church that the Cow Bay, Bandit's Roost, the Old Brewery and Cut Throat Alley are things of the past, and that the Five Points are known to this later day only as a name. No second Charles d.i.c.kens will cross the ocean to tell us that "all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Few men have been in touch with so many public movements as Dr. Cuyler.

He was the personal friend of statesmen, churchmen, professors, lecturers, teachers, philanthropists, diplomats, poets and presidents.

And as was the minister so were the people of the Market Street church: forward in every movement for the betterment of mankind, the coming of the kingdom. Some of the best families of New York were connected there, and as fathers bought pews for the sons when they married it was a family church. These names are frequent: Duryee, Crosby, Mersereau, Brinkerhoff, Poillon, Zophar Mills, Ludlam, Suydam, Westervelt, Waydell, Chittenden, Bartlett, McKee, Purdy and a host of others.

Small wonder that from among men like these great inst.i.tutions should come, that the Park Bank and the Na.s.sau Bank should be founded by Market Street church men. The annual pew rents were $5,000, then a large sum.

Perhaps it was their very farsightedness that made the people of the church think of moving uptown. The "brownstone front" was drawing people northward, and Dr. Cuyler started a movement "to erect a new edifice on Murray Hill, and to retain the old building in Market Street as an auxiliary mission chapel." Subscriptions were secured, William E. Dodge heading the list. But the new site at Park Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street did not find favor, and many were opposed to the whole project, so when in 1860 the consistory was to vote the first payment, the whole enterprise failed by one vote.

Dr. Cuyler said he would thank the good old man who cast that vote--Meade was his name--if he ever met him in the other world. He resigned from Market Street church, his ministry ending April 7, 1860, and accepted a call from the little Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. His friend, Henry Ward Beecher, did not see how he could get a congregation there, but after many years of ever-increasing usefulness Mr. Beecher lived to say to Dr. Cuyler: "You are now in the center, and I am out on the circ.u.mference."

It was strange that a man of the forceful type of Cuyler should leave a church because it would not move away, and that thirty years later he should preach in it, rejoicing in its continuing prosperity. Strange, too, that Cuyler left the Dutch Church for the Presbyterian, and that the old building "changed its faith" in like manner.

Rev. Chauncey D. Murray was the next pastor of the Market Street church, the cla.s.sis installing him March 10, 1861, and he was succeeded in 1863 by Rev. Jacob C. Dutcher. William B. Crosby, of beloved memory, came forward with very liberal contributions to sustain the church, but the depletion went on. In Mr. Murray's time another attempt to move uptown had failed.

In December, 1859, the courts had already given permission for a sale, but on condition that another church be built uptown with the proceeds.

This having failed, under a revised order of the court the building was deeded to Hanson K. Corning in 1866, another congregation having meanwhile inaugurated services there.

The old consistory lived on till June 2, 1869, when it held its last meeting at the home of R. R. Crosby, in Twenty-second Street. A committee had secured the necessary legal modifications so that the temporalities could be disposed of. The distribution was as follows:

To St. Paul's Reformed church on Twenty-first Street, $15,000; $8,000 to the Prospect Hill Reformed church on Eighty-fifth Street, and about $18,000 to the Northwest Reformed church on Twenty-third Street. A $500 United States bond was given by William B. Crosby to the Sunday school of the Twenty-first Street church. The baptismal font was presented to St. Paul's church, the splendid communion service to the Prospect Hill church. All these churches have past out of existence. The organ was presented to the Church of the Sea and Land; "the property right in the Henry Rutgers tablet was given to R. R. Crosby; the McMurray tablet to Henry Rutgers McMurray. A vault in Twenty-second Street was given to the Prospect Hill church. The bell, now loaned to the Church of the Sea and Land, was given in a revisionary right to the consistory of the Collegiate church, in case it ever ceases to ring for a Protestant church." It still rings undisturbed, tho it has not in the memory of man swung on its wheel. Only recently has it been given back one of its earliest powers: it is to ring the alarum if all modern means fail. It was cast in Troy in 1847, and the committee (Crosby, Conover and Lyles) spent $365.14 for it. The congregation thought too much of it in 1848 to allow its use by Engine Company 42 for fire alarms. The books of the Market Street church were left to the Collegiate church and are now at New Brunswick.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

All this having been done, the president of the consistory, Mahlon T.

Hewitt, handed out the remaining letters of dismissal to D. W. Woodford, Robert R. Crosby, William Lain, Dr. Vera.n.u.s Morse, John Van Flick, Henry Taylor and Albert I. Lyon, and made a formal closing address in which he offered "a sincere prayer that its old walls may still stand, and that it may continue to be the birthplace of souls into the kingdom of Christ." The prayer has been answered.

Thus ended the Protestant Reformed Dutch church in Market Street after just fifty years.

III

While the Market Street Reformed Church was fighting its last fight, a little congregation had come to life in the parlor of a sailor's boarding house. It was intended chiefly for "seamen and others," the "others" referring mostly to those who no longer sailed the seas. The first meeting was held June 7, 1864. Those were the days of sailing vessels; the New York of the thirties had been the s.h.i.+p building center of the world, especially from Pike Street up. At every pier sail boats were moored, coming from all over the world, and as they dismist their crews on arrival it left the men on sh.o.r.e unoccupied until their meager wages were gone, when they were crimped for another voyage. Low dance halls and worse were all along the river front and the sailor was their prey. The American Seamen's Friend Society sprang into being to improve the situation, and erected a fine building in Cherry Street, to give the men surroundings that were clean physically and spiritually. With the present federal laws for the protection of seamen the condition in the sixties can hardly be appreciated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sailors' Home]

Where Fulton had built his first steamboat fifty years before huge yellow dry-docks now rose. Additional land had been gained so that Water, Front and South Streets grew out of the river. All along the river front sailing vessels pushed their bowsprits and gilded figureheads far over the streets almost into the windows of the sail-lofts that were numerous along South Street.

For these men then the Presbytery of New York on December 29, 1864, at 52 Market Street, organized the Presbyterian Church of the Sea and Land, with thirty-two members. Dr. Phillips, Rev. Rice and Rev. A. E.

Campbell, and Elders A. B. Conger and A. B. Belknapp, were Presbytery's Committee, and John Simmons and John H. Ca.s.sidy were the first elders.

Rev. Alexander McGlashan was installed as pastor, February 2, 1865, serving for a little more than a year. Ill health was the reason for his leaving. He died in 1867. The deacons were Henry H. Smith and Henry Harrison; also Philip Halle, who served for only a short time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 52 Market Street]

On December 26, 1865, the following trustees were chosen: John H.

Ca.s.sidy, John Simmons, Henry H. Smith, Henry Harrison, David Robb, John Neal, and Jas. McGlashan. At this time there were 74 members and the year's receipts were $2,372.67.

The Sunday school was organized January 1, 1865, 25 being present, soon growing to 80. It had a library of 400 volumes, costing $122.25. John H.

Ca.s.sidy was superintendent and T. M. May secretary. Wm. McCracken was president of the Temperance Meeting and Joseph W. Ca.s.sidy president of the Band of Hope.

But the man that was most prominent at this time in the church's history is never mentioned in the official records.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hanson K. Corning]

Hanson K. Corning was a s.h.i.+pping merchant, who knew from his own business connections the helpless condition of seamen when in port.