The Historic White Church on Wurtemburg Road
by Karla R. Cook

Rising above the trees on top of a hill not far from the intersection of Routes 9G and Slate Quarry Road stands a white wooden church in classic Georgian architectural style surrounded by three cemeteries. Off to the side on a knoll behind the oldest of the cemeteries is a white wood-frame parsonage. Founded in 1760, St. Paul's is approaching its 250th Anniversary in 2010 (the current structure of St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Wurtemburg, dates back to 1802). The church and its pastor, the Rev. Dr. Mark D. Isaacs, are currently planning a series of special activities to mark this milestone.

The Wurtemburg Church, the parsonage and three cemeteries stand as silent witnesses to another era. The German immigrants who built the church and most of their descendants have long since vanished, but are not forgotten. Most were farmers, from a region near the Rhineland in west central Germany known as the Palatinate, and dubbed Palatines by historians. The Palatines intermarried with the Dutch settlers in the area. If you drive slowly down the side roads off Route 9G and Wurtemburg Road near the church — for example, Frost Road — you can catch glimpses of the stonewalls the farmers built throughout the area to fence their land. These walls dot the landscapes of Dutchess and Columbia counties and some are in remarkably good shape. The original humble dwellings of these people are long gone, as the first settlers lived in little more than log cabins. However, white farmhouses and barns with green trim, most likely built by the Germans, punctuate Dutchess and Columbia counties. A few of their descendants live on in the mid-Hudson Valley, such as the Fraleighs, the Ackerts, the Deckers, the Travers, the Cookinghams, the Funks, and the Kips, but the majority moved to points west years ago — Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri and beyond, in search of better farmland.

Pastor Isaacs, called "Pastor Mark" by the parishioners and his friends, is an industrious and highly educated man — an adjunct professor at several area colleges who holds several advanced degrees who has also had a career as a journalist specializing in economics, business and history. Pastor Mark also has written three books. His latest, The 250th Anniversary History of St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Wurtemburg, is based on his D. Min. dissertation and focuses on the "microhistory" of Wurtemburg Church and the German Lutheran and Reformed settlers in the region dating back to the early 1700s, including a portrait of their lives in Germany long before they emigrated to America at the invitation of Queen Anne of England. In addition to a detailed history of the Church, the book features profiles of the 30 ministers who have served the church over the past 250 years. Among the clergy discussed are the Rev. Henry Muhlenberg, the "father" of the American Lutheran Church, who visited the area in 1752 to settle a dispute between the congregation and the Rev. John Hartwick, an eccentric Lutheran clergyman from the University of Halle near Martin Luther's hometown of Wittenberg. Hartwick later gave a massive tract of land to found what became Hartwick College. Also discussed is that career of the Rev. Frederick Henry Quitman, D.D., of Rhinebeck's Quitman House fame.

Until the 1830s, these immigrants from Germany continued to speak German in the new land, necessitating churches with German-speaking pastors. To defray expenses, Lutherans and German Reformed settlers often pooled their resources to form union churches until financially they were able to split into Lutheran and Reform congregations. Besides anecdotes of the ministers serving the Wurtemburg Church, the "mother church" St. Peter the Apostle (better known locally as the Old Stone Church, which closed in the 1930s due to declining membership and lack of funding), and sister churches, Pastor Mark discusses renovations and modifications to the church and the three one-room schoolhouses that served the congregation and the neighborhood. Among the photos included in the book are some of former one-room schoolhouses and the sheds that once stood on the other side of Wurtemburg Road to protect the horses while the congregation worshipped (passed down from father to son for generations and torn down in the 1960s).

Many of the materials in Pastor Mark's book were gleaned from the church archives, carefully assembled and maintained by Wurtemburg Church Historian Barbara Frost. Mary Lown Traver Baas, the oldest living member of the congregation, also helped with her recollections. Area residents Patsy and Craig Vogel researched old maps, deeds and charts in an effort to locate the site of the Old Staatsburg Church, the predecessor church which is thought to have been somewhere southeast of the current church close to the old Albany Post Road on a farm owned by Stephanus Fraleigh (also spelled Froelich or Froelick), who is considered to be the common ancestor of all the Fraleighs in the area.

The first Palatine settlers lived in relative isolation much like today's Amish and Old Order Mennonites, because they had little trust of either the Dutch or the English in the New World. When they originally were settled in West Camp (now Saugerties) and East Camp (now Germantown) by the first Robert Livingston and his English financial backers, they survived their first winter by eating boiled grass. Livingston's intention had been to produce rope, pitch and tar for the British Navy on his vast estate, but the trees in the area did not produce the quality sap needed to make tar so the enterprise failed. The immigrants, who were farmers and vineyard keepers in the Old World, fanned out on Livingston and Beekman lands on both sides of the Hudson; and many of the original farmers in our region moved east, away from the Hudson River, as the region became more secure from hostilities with the native inhabitants.

Wurtemburg Church was pivotal to the surrounding farming community because it served as the neighborhood gathering place as well as a house of worship. In a time when farmers could not travel far without endangering their lives, crops and livestock, it was important to have a nearby meeting place and house of worship.

The mother church, the Old Stone Church, is located a few miles north near the "Five Corners" intersection of Routes 9 and 9G and today is less than a 10-minute drive by auto. In the time of the horse and buggy, however, it took hours to travel between the two churches. The same was true of the sister churches in Red Hook, Germantown, and Manorton. Circuit-rider preachers, who traveled on horseback between the Old Stone and Wurtemburg and the other sister churches in Red Hook, Germantown, and Manorton, conducted services. Usually, the preacher would conduct one or two services a month at each church, rotating the Sundays, and when he was not present, a layman typically led the local service.

Beginning in 1797, the Wurtemburg Church also provided the site for "Wurtemburg School No. 8." Generations of area farm children were educated in the one-room schoolhouse located near the church until consolidation took hold in New York State in the 1920s and the children were bussed into the village of Rhinebeck. Four successive one-room schoolhouses served the children of the Wurtemburg area. The first structure also housed the schoolmaster, who was also church sexton and groundskeeper. The last schoolhouse was moved from the original site in 1954 and is now a private home.

When the church was originally built, the inside looked vastly different from today. The sanctuary was set up like a lecture hall and faced east, with the pulpit and altar being on the same level on the east side of the building. The pulpit, being taller than the altar, represented the Reformed belief of Word over Sacrament. A basement was added in the 1860s to provide a social hall for such functions as Wurtemburg's famous Turkey Suppers, traditionally held on the third Saturday of October prior to elections (held for 146 consecutive years with only two exceptions, in each of the World Wars because of food shortages). In 1965, Eleanor Roosevelt attended a Turkey Supper, the last public appearance of the world-famous stateswoman before her death.

During its long history the Wurtemburg Church and the sanctuary have been modified several times to reflect theological trends and worship styles. At present the sanctuary faces north and the altar is higher than the pulpit, representing Sacrament over the Word. When the basement underwent a recent renovation, rough-hewed support beams were found, and appear to support the oral tradition that lumber was used from the original Staatsburg Church to build the Wurtemburg structure.

St. Paul's Wurtemburg, which for most of the 250 years of its existence was a tight-knit rural congregation, hosted many associations and societies, including the "Wurtemburg Union Lyceum" in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which had a program of "declamations, essays, debate and complete dramas." In 1868 the men of the congregation formed The Zelosophic Society of Wurtemburg to discuss literature and carry on debates. There also was the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society, formed in 1879. During this period, a Singing School was also held during the long winters. Today, the church still is used as a community-meeting place for groups such as AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). After years of steady decline, it is enjoying a renaissance under Pastor Isaacs' leadership. In the past seven years, the church has grown from an average Sunday attendance of 23 members to 125.

To learn more about the influence of St. Paul's Wurtemburg on the Town of Rhinebeck, you can buy The 250th Anniversary History of St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Wurtemburg soon from Amazon.com. The church, located at 372 Wurtemburg Road in Rhinebeck, has a handicap-accessible sanctuary. You can learn more about the church from its website on the Internet at stpaulswurtemburg.org.