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Almost 120 years ago, on June 14, 1900, Presbyterians assembled at the Old Scots Burying Ground in Marlboro Township, New Jersey and at the nearby Old Tennent Church for the unveiling of the “Presbyterian Historical Monument,” built near the place of John Boyd’s burial to commemorate the first first Presbytery in America. The details of this event can be found in the 2nd (1904) edition of Frank R. Symmes, History of the Old Tennent Church.

The “Presbyterian Historical Monument” at the Old Scots Burying Ground, Marlboro, New Jersey.

Addresses were given by several ministers and others, among whom was Parke Poindexter Flournoy, who spoke on the topic of “Presbyterians Before First Presbytery.” We have touched on this chapter of history before in a previous post titled The First Hundred Years of American Presbyterian History. Rev. Flournoy’s address was reprinted in the July 11, 1900 issue of The Central Presbyterian, and it has been added to his page on Log College Press recently.

His address, which is not lengthy, focuses on two ministers (Francis Doughty, Jr. and Matthew Hill) and three ruling elders (William Durand, Nianian Beall, and William Stevens). These are pioneers of American Presbyterianism that student of church history should know, although there are gaps in our knowledge of the details of their lives. Flournoy gives credit to Charles Augustus Briggs for the invaluable historical research he did in bringing to light, for example, Matthew Hill’s correspondence with Richard Baxter, adding that “Before Dr. Briggs took another path, he was a most efficient investigator of the facts of early American Presbyterianism.” Doughty and Hill predate the arrival of Francis Makemie, who is known to history as “the Father of American Presbyterianism” and, in fact, helped pave the way for his successful labors along the East Coast, and specifically, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Maryland.

Flournoy tells us in his concluding remarks:

… we have seen that there were Presbyterians before the first Presbytery; and I would claim the unseen foundation stones beneath the soil as the memorial of the long unknown, and still but little known, ministers, ruling ciders and good people who laid the foundation on which the first Presbytery was builded — for Francis Doughty and Matthew Hill, the faithful and earnest ministers; for William Durand, Ninian Beall and William Stevens, the ruling | elders; and for the “loving and willing people” of whom Hill tells, and for those companies of French [Huguenots, or] Presbyterians, the fellow-countrymen of Calvin, among whom were my own ancestors, who endeared such cruelties on the blood-stained soil of France, and contributed so largely to the establishment of civil and religious liberty in free America.

Take time to read this 120 year-old address by Parke P. Flournoy and learn more about the early American Presbyterian pioneers who helped lay the foundation for America’s first Presbytery in 1706.

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Much of our knowledge of American Presbyterianism is focused on the 300+ year period dating from the establishment of the first Presbytery in Philadelphia in 1706 under the leadership of Francis Makemie, known as the “Father of American Presbyterianism.” The title of D.G. Hart and John R. Meuther’s Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism, a wonderful book, is illustrative of this focus, which is a natural one given the nature of the event in 1706, and the challenges in documenting Presbyterianism in the earlier colonial era. But the organization of that Presbytery, which is an important historical marker in our timeline, presupposes the existence of Presbyterians and Presbyterian congregations which preceded it, a period which encompasses a full century prior. And there is much that we do know, or may reasonably conclude, about the first hundred years of Presbyterianism in America.

In fact, it is believed that colonial Jamestown, Virginia — the first permanent English settlement in North America, founded in 1607 — included among its company Puritan Anglican ministers of the Presbyterian persuasion, such as Robert Hunt (c. 1568-1608), Alexander Whitaker (1585-1616) and George Keith (c. 1585-?). These were men who did not conform to all of the rites and ceremonies of the Anglican church, but neither did they separate from it. Whitaker — most famous for baptizing Pocahontas and possibly officiating her marriage to John Rolfe — was a cousin to William Gouge, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and his June 18, 1614 letter to Gouge, constitutes the first written description of English ecclesiastical polity in America.

The colony on the James River, in Virginia, was established in 1607, by the Virginia Company of London. This company was to a great extent under the control of English Puritans who remained within the Established Church and were seeking to reform it from within. Some of the colonists sent to Virginia by the company were Puritans. Among these was the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, the “Apostle of Virginia,” son of Dr. William Whitaker, Puritan Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and cousin of Dr. William Gouge, member of the Westminster Assembly of divines. Whitaker organized a congregational presbytery in the colony as may be seen from a letter written by him in June, 1614: “Every Sabbath day we preach in the forenoon, and catechize in the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale’s house. Our church affairs may be consulted on by the minister and four of the most religious men. Once every month we have communion, and once a year a solemn fast.” — Henry Alexander White, Southern Presbyterian Leaders, p. 12

The Collegiate (Dutch Reformed) Church in New Amsterdam (New York City) in 1619 was the first in America to be organized under the “Presbyterian Plan,” according to Robert L. Welsh, The Presbytery of Seattle, 1858-2005: The “Dream” of a Presbyterian Colony in the West, p. 14. This fact highlights the close relationship between Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian polity. Willem Apollonius (d. 1657), for example, was a “Dutch Presbyterian,” who won the approbation of the Westminster Assembly for his 1644 treatise on church government. The New Castle Presbyterian Church in New Castle, Delaware, one of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in America, had its origins due to the labors of the Dutch Reformed Church.

The first Presbyterian religious service in what is now Delaware appears to have been conducted in New Amstel (New Castle), in 1654, by the Dutch Domine Johannes Theodorus Polhemus, on his way to New Amsterdam from Brazil. The first pastor sent to this church by the Classis (Presbytery) of Amsterdam was Everardus Welius, in 1657. Previous to Welius’ coming Evert Pietersen, sent out as a schoolmaster, had opened there Delaware’s first school, enrolling twenty-five children. This church had a precarious existence, being without a pastor for long periods. After the English took the colony from the Dutch in 1664 some of its services were conducted in English. The last recorded services under Dutch religious auspices were in midsummer 1690, when Domine Rudolphus Varick preached three Sundays, and administered the communion. As was natural the next pastor was not Dutch. He was the Rev. John Wilson, from New England. He arrived in 1698, and preached in the court house, because the old Dutch church building had gone to decay. In 1707 a new church was erected. The New Castle church, therefore, appears to be the oldest Presbyterian church, and its building the oldest fabric still in use as a Presbyterian church, in Delaware. -- John W. Christie, Presbyterianism in Delaware

The Puritan emigration from Old England to New England in the late 1620s and early 1630s included thousands of Presbyterians. John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester, and a Westminster Divine, helped to establish a Presbyterian colony at Salem, Massachusetts in 1629 (C.A. Briggs, American Presbyterianism, p. 93). A Presbyterian group under the leadership of Abraham Pierson and Edward Howell left Lynn, Massachusetts in 1640, landed at Conscience Point, and ultimately established a Presbyterian congregation in Southampton, New York, paving the way for other Presbyterian congregations to be built on Long Island or near there: Southold (1640); Hempstead (1643); East Hampton (1648); New Castle, Delaware (1651); Newtown (1652); Huntington (1658); Setauket (1660), and Jamaica (1662). The Long Island congregations, some of the oldest Presbyterian congregations in America, did not unite to form the Long Island Presbytery until 1717, but there is no doubt that their Presbyterian beginnings long preceded that date.

The names of John Youngs, Sr. (1598-1672); Richard Denton (1603-1662); Francis Doughty, Jr. (1605-1683); John Moore (1620-1657); Thomas James, Jr. (1621-1696); Nathaniel Brewster (1622-1690); Matthew Hill (?-1679); Zechariah Walker (1637-1699); among others, represent Presbyterian ministries in the middle colonies that all, mostly, predate those of Francis Makemie. The story of the first 100 years of American Presbyterianism spans the Eastern Seaboard, includes many heroic pioneers and brave heroes and heroines of the faith, whose adventures are known in part, and paved the way for the establishment of that first Presbytery in 1706. The 1640 Declaration of the Company by Edward Howell and the Southampton colonists, a document worthy of comparison to the Mayflower Compact, signified the goal of those early Presbyterians:

Our true interest and meaning is that when our Plantation is laid out by those appointed that there shall be a Church gathered and constituted according to the mind of Christ, that there we do freely lay down our power of ordering and disposing of the Plantation and of receiving inhabitants thereof or any other thing that may tend to the good and welfare of the inhabitants at the feet of Christ and His Church.

The English Puritan-Dutch Reformed-Scottish Presbyterian roots of what became a distinctly American form of Presbyterianism over the first century of the colonial era constitute a chapter much larger than what has been written here. But at Log College Press, we aim to shine the spotlight on that first hundred years, as well as on the three centuries since the founding of the first Presbytery. It is a rich history worthy to be more fully explored.

Some authorities consulted in the writing of this post include:

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