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Archiver > Dutch-Colonies > 2002-12 > 1039188512


From: "David Roberts" <>
Subject: [D-Col] Jesuits & Others in New Netherland
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 10:28:32 -0500
References: <20021205.010732.-4186991.0.sealover2@juno.com> <000b01c29c74$147449e0$5dcb4242@nycap.rr.com>


Peter:

Living as I do in the center of Colonial English Roman Catholicism - St.
Mary's County, Maryland - I've gotten interested in Roman Catholicism in
Colonial America. Do you find any record of the English Jesuits from
Maryland coming up to New Netherland to preach, baptize, marry, celebrate
Mass ? A few Dutch families do end up in St. Mary's & live here as
Catholics. If they were Catholic in New Netherland or if they became
Catholic after moving here, I don't know.

I'm not sure if there were any Baptists on Long Island that early. Most of
the English settlements on Long Island were Puritan -
Congregationalist/later Presbyterian with a minority of Quakers. There is an
old Baptist church at Coram in Brookhaven Town, Suffolk County, but I don't
think that was organized until, maybe, the 1720's/1730's or so.

I just was interested if you have found Jesuits from St. Inigoes and Newtown
in St. Mary's, St. Thomas in Charles, or Bohemia on the Eastern Shore
travelling to New Netherland. Those were 4 of the largest Jesuit manors in
Maryland & each was a center of Jesuit activity to evangelize the Indians,
convert the Protestant servants sent to Maryland, & serve the spiritual
needs of the Catholic gentry that ran the colony under the Lord Baltimore
regime. These Jesuits were very active in education, as you might expect.
Currently, plans are underway to rebuilt the Jesuit church at St. Mary's
City. It was supposed to have been the largest church in the colonies of any
denomination when built in the 1670's. It was pulled down by the Protestants
after the Lord Baltimore regime was overthrown in 1689 and a Protestant
government set up directly under the Crown. After a later Lord Baltimore
jumped the fence & became an Anglican, the colony went back to the Lords
Baltimore.

David


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter R Christoph" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 10:36 AM
Subject: Re: [D-Col] Re: NA/NY RDC marriage records and practices


> None of the Lutheran documentary collections in the Netherlands or
Lutheran
> histories in this country that I have seen suggest any attempt to send a
> minister to New Netherland prior to Gutwasser in 1657. The synod in
> Amsterdam was in a shaky legal position and would do nothing to
deliberately
> provoke the government. Its records are full of pleas from New Netherland
> Lutherans for a minister, which were always met with polite refusals until
> 1657. West India Company officials on both sides of the Atlantic made
every
> effort to keep non-Reformed clergy from leaving the Netherlands or setting
> foot in the colony.
>
> The only non-authorized clergy that turned up occasionally in the records
> were Jesuit missionaries out of French Canada, but they seem to have left
no
> record of marriages performed in New Netherland. I suppose the English on
> Long Island might have had Congregationalist, Baptist, and Quaker
weddings.
>
> Peter
>


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