Lutherans in New Netherland

We do not have anything like a “membership list” that would tell us exactly who belonged to the Lutheran congregations in New Amsterdam (now New York City) and Beverwyck (Fort Orange) (now Albany) during the period of the New Netherland Colony. We do have some resources, however, that enable us to identify many of the families and individuals who were associated with these congregations.

The Lutherans in New Netherland wrote several letters to the Lutheran Consistory at Amsterdam, Holland. Copies of various petitions that they had sent to the Dutch colonial authorities were also forwarded to the Consistory. These documents dealt largely with the New Netherland Lutherans’ efforts to obtain the services of “a capable and faithful pastor of the Augsburg Confession,” and with the opposition that they encountered from the Director General and Reformed clergy of the colony. Most of them have been preserved in the Lutheran Church Archives at Amsterdam, and can be found (in English translation) in The Lutheran Church in New York, 1649-1772 (New York: The New York Public Library, 1946).

These letters and petitions were generally written and signed in Manhattan, “in the absence of others.” There were no doubt many Lutherans, especially at Beverwyck, whose names never appear in them. In a petition to the Directors of the Dutch West India Company, dated May 20, 1659, the Lutherans in New Netherland state that “at Fort Orange there are from 70 to 80 families, here at the Manhatans and on Long Island also fully that many, including permanent residents and mechanics, but mostly farmers” (LCNY, p. 39). The names that do appear in the body of these letters and petitions, and as signatories thereto, are given below, arranged chronologically according to the respective dates of the correspondence. Useful biographical information on most of these people can be found in Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630-1674 by John O. Evjen (Minneapolis: K. C. Holter Publishing Company, 1916).

The Beginnings of Lutheranism in New York by Harry J. Kreider (New York: 1949) is another excellent source of information on the Lutheran Church in New Netherland. Kreider identifies several Lutherans in the colony whose names do not appear in the material from the Amsterdam archives. The names on the following lists are taken from pp. 8-12 and 70 of his book. These lists also are not, and do not claim to be, complete.