THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF NEW YORK l\. HISTORY OF THE FRENCH CHURCH OF SAINT-ESPRIT THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF NEW YORK A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH CHURCH OF SAINT ESPRIT BY JOHN A. F. MAYNARD Ph.D., D.D., Th.D. Honorary Fellow of the Huguenot Society of London New York 1938 COPYRIGHT BY THE !:'RENCH CHURCH OF SAINT-ESPRIT 229 .EAST 61ST STREET, NEW YORK .A. M. T headore Selt=er Commandeur de la Legion D'Honneur Ami De Tout Ce Qui Represente Bien La France TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ............. ..................... ................ ..... ... .. .. ......... ....... 11 I Through the mist of beginnings ............................................... 21 II How the first Huguenot Walloon settlement came to be ........ 31 III An eclipse, a smoking flax, ::nd a new lamp . .. .. 5 0 1V The Refugees build their own church ....................................... 67 V Their home towns . .. 97 VI A critical period begins ................................................................ 114 VII M. Rou's ministry .......................................................................... 120 VIII Depression ...................................................................................... 13 9 IX The records of a faithful elder .................................................... 171 X Ministerial supplies ....................................................................... 179 XI The church reorganized .............................................................. 205 XII Dr. Verren's ministry .................................................................. 227 XIII Five difficult years ........................................................................ 261 XIV The church revivified .................................................................. 267 xv On the threshold of a new future ............................................. 286 XVI A vision of to-morrow ................................................................ 296 XVII Our ancestry .................................................................................. 299 Index .......................................................................................... 306 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. The Ribault pillar at the entrance of St-John's River ................ 17 2. Coligny, the master mind of New France ........................................ 2 5 3. The first church (Marketfield Street) ............................................ 70 4. Earliest picture of the second church (Pine Street) ...................... 117 5. A Huguenot field pulpit of the Church under the Cross ............ 151 6. The second church, later .................................................................. 161 7. Interior of the third church (Franklin Street) before the fire .... 23 3 8. Communion cup showing the seal and motto of the church .......... 243 9. The third church after the fire ........................................................ 247 10. The Rev. Antoine Verren D. D., third rector .................................. 2 5 3 11. The fourth church (22nd Street) .................................................. 260 12. The Rev. Victor Alfred Wittmeyer, fifth rector .......................... 273 13. The fifth church (27th Street) ...................................................... 279 14. The Rev. John A. F. Maynard, Ph. D., D. D., sixth rector .......... 285 0 "51 • T'ne present c h urcn• b u1··1d· mg l·61 st Street ) ..................................... .291 INTRODUCTION A Church is not a building, or else it may thin out to a shell. It is an organization and a life idea. This is true of the Old Huguenot Church of New York. Otherwise it should cease to exist. The origins of the French Church of Saint-Esprit go back to the very beginning of regular Christian worship in New Amsterdam, now New York, as early as 1628, as a part of what is now the Collegiate Church. Then in 1688, it de­ veloped a separate organization with a set of records of pas­ toral acts opening on Oct. 22nd of that year with the baptism of little Madeleine Sicard. These records, with a few others, were published, with a few minor errors, in the first volume of the Collections of the Huguenot Society of America. These records continued to the present time are kept in the church's safe. Photostatic copies of the more ancient parts made under the care of the New York Historical Society and its learned librarian, Mr. Alexander J. Wall form eleven volumes which can be consulted in the Library of that Society. Thus the printed records may be checked up where the spelling of proper names was wrong. As a matter of fact, there was no spelling at all for proper names. The Dutch recorders es­ pecially are very generous with porcupine-like consonants, THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF NEW YORK when they transcribe foreign names, but the French spelled also the names of their own people in a manner which al­ ternated between the mischievous and the naive. Specialists in genealogy should have our sympathy. The titles of the photostatic record books of the French Church are as follows: ( 1) Registers of the Births, Marriages and Deaths of Eglise fran<;oise a la Nouvelle York 1688-1804. (2) Accounts of Collections and :expenditures March 169 3-April 1699 kept by Gabriel Le Boyteulx. 1 (3) Records of the French Church du St-Esprit, New York City, 1689-1710. ( 4) Records of the French Church du St-Esprit, New York City, 1766-1768. ( 5) Records of the French Church du St-Esprit, New York City, 1771-1775. ( 6) Registre des Resolutions du Consistoire de l'Eglise fran<;oise de Ia Nouvelle York, 1723-1766. (7) Records of the French Church du Saint-Esprit, New York City, Minutes of the Vestry, Book A. 1796-1818. ( 8) Records of the French Church du Saint-Esprit, New -~{ork City Minutes of the Vestry, Book B. 1819-1837. (9) Account Book, 1801-1828. 1 The name is also spelled Le Boyteux. [ 121 INTRODUCTION ( 10) Records of the French Church du Saint-Esprit1 New York City. Baptisms 1797-1808, 1816-1852. Confirma­ tions 1842-1872; Deaths 1843-1852. (11) Marriages 1816-1835. The fourth, fifth and sixth volumes are the most important from an historical point of view, and should be edited except where repetitions occur. Other records too recent to be of historical value are naturally preserved in our archives, but no photos tat copy was made of them. These records are to us more than historical documents; we see in them as it were an outward and visible sign of a presence as well as an inheritance. The first attempt to write a history of this church was made by the Rev. A. Verren, DD The Huguenots in this country, New York, 1862. However he ignored the whole period previous to 1704. A good survey of the period ending with 1804 was con­ tributed by my predecessor, the Rev. A. V. Wittmeyer, in the first volume of the Collections of the Huguenot Society of America. This was reprinted separately as An Historical sketch of the Eglise Fran(aise a la Nouvelle York from 1688. to 1804, New York, 1866. This book may be supplemented by G. Chinard, Les Ref ugics Huguenots en A11ierique, Paris 1925; p. 143-164. Less reliable is L. J. Fosdick, The French Blood in America, New York, 1906; p. 212-230. A number of short articles, too hastily written, were con- THE HUGUENOT CHURCH OF NEW YORK tributed by me to a modest periodical first called Le Mes­ sager, founded in 1926, and now called Le Messager Evan­ gclique. They are listed in my article on the two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniz:ersary of the Eglise des Rcfugies de France a la Noui:elle York. (Messager Evangclique, July 1937; p. 7-8). My first attempt to write this history was made rather hastily in two Church directories issued in 19 3 2 and 19 3 3. These stories, for they were little more than that, should be judged with charity. They are too often inaccurate and con­ tain sad rnisprin ts, and sadder errors. I recommended t~e subject of our origins to my young friend, the Rev. F. A. Liotard, pastor of the French Congrega­ tion in Washington, as a subject of a dissertation for the degree of bachelor of theology, at the protestant Faculty of Theology of Paris~ under the title of: Les origines franraises de New York, June 1934. This thesis is only in typewritten form with the exception of one chapter: Le Village de Harle,n, printed in Le Messager Evangelique (Vol. 10, 1935, Nos. 2, 3, 5). In his last years, Mr. Wittmeyer had prepared the manu­ script of a volume on the history of the Wittmeyer family. The autobiographical part of this work is quite valuable. This typewritten manuscript is available at the New York Public Librarv., . Some information about the recent history of the Church was handed to me orally by some of its old members, more especially Mr. Eugene P. Megnin, now 82 years old, whose memories go back to the days of Antoine V erren. [ 14 l INTRODUCTION It would be useless to give a complete bibliography of the subject. A good deal of the scattered statements one finds on Huguenot history is well meant, but suffers from religious or national presuppositions, or from inaccurate or hastily gath­ ered information. Some of that material will be referred to in the footnotes.'.! Although the French Church du Saint-Esprit is the last Huguenot Church in the United States which still uses the language of the Huguenots and is in spiritual communion with the Huguenot churches of the homeland, and although it is the oldest Huguenot establishment North of Florida, we must not forget that Huguenot emigration in the provinces of Pennsylvania and South Carolina was larger numerically. Indeed, Huguenot emigration