Christ's Lutheran Church in 1892

[ The old church ]

Pastor Martin J. Stover, 85, conducting services in the third church building, which, like the second one, was known as the "Church on the Rocks," because it sat on a rocky ledge overlooking the Sawkill (about ¾ mile east of our present location--that is, north of present-day Route 212, across from the country club). (To enlarge the picture, just click it.)

Pastor Stover decided to retire during this year and submitted his resignation at the end of the year. The congregation had by then developed strong leadership among its officers.

The Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the Lutheran Church of Woodstock held its first public meeting in the church.(1)

From Anderson, Mark J., For All the Saints: Christ's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, New York, 1806-2006 [Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006], p. 110, citing Lasher, Helen, "The Woman's Home and Foreign Mission Society" [paper delivered at the centennial celebration]. (Close)

The Woodstock Region in 1892

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The United States in 1892

[ Benjamin Harrison ]

Benjamin Harrison (Republican) was President. The 52nd Congress was in session. A dollar in that year would be worth $20.91 in 2006 for most consumable products.

Immigrants from the British Isles and western Europe (especially Great Britain, Ireland, and Germany)--the so-called "Old Immigrants," most of them boasting a comparatively high level of literacy and accustomed to some level of representative government, who were either Protestant (most of them) or Catholic, were arriving during this decade at an average annual rate of 111,000. The "New Immigrants," those from southern and eastern Europe (especially Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Russia), largely illiterate and impoverished, who tended to be either Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish and who had little experience with representative government, were arriving at an annual rate of 184,700--two-thirds again as much as the Old Immigrants' rate, a fivefold proportionate increase from a decade earlier and twice as many in raw numbers. The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

Solidly Democratic white supremacists held political power all over the South. Blacks (and poor whites as well) continued being forced into sharecropping and tenant farming; former slave masters were now bosses and landlords. Through the "crop-lien" system, the serflike small farmers could get food and supplies from storekeepers by agreeing to a lien on their expected crops, a lien they would never be able to fully pay off. The economically dependent blacks who tried to vote faced unemployment, eviction, and violence. The daily discrimination against blacks grew increasingly oppressive. "Jim Crow laws," systematic state-level legal codes of segregation, maintained a way of life for African Americans that was grotesquely inferior to that of whites. Blacks had inferior schools and assigned places on such public facilities as railroad cars, theaters, and restrooms. Blacks were continually assaulted by harsh reminders of their second-class citizenship, and the white supremacists dealt brutally with any black who dared to violate the customary racial code of conduct. Record numbers of blacks were lynched, often just for the "crime" of asserting themselves as equals.

There were 230 reported lynchings in the United States during this year; 161 of the victims were black, 69 of them white. (Apparently what terrible things that happened to Native Americans or to Asians did not get counted.)

All of the Solid South supported the Democratic candidate for President.


Presidential election of 1892

Though there was really little difference between Republican and Democratic voters or between official party platforms on such issues as currency, the tariff, and vain promises for civil-service reform, there was a pronounced difference in style, tone, and religious sentiment. Rank-and-file Republicans--particularly strong in the Midwest and the small-town and rural Northeast, among the grateful freedmen in the South, and among the several thousand Union veterans in the fraternal Grand Army of the Republic (GAR, often said to stand for "Generally All Republicans")--tended to adhere to Calvinistic creeds descended from Puritanism, stressing strict codes of personal morality and advocating government regulation of morality. Democrats, in contrast, still somewhat cursed with the Copperhead label from the Civil War, had a solid base among whites in the vanquished South as well as among immigrant Lutherans and Roman Catholics in the industrial cities of the North (where their votes were controlled by well-oiled political machines); the Northern Democrats, at least, took a less stern view of human weakness than their Republican neighbors and were more tolerant of imperfections. Education and prohibition figured large in local politics between the parties.

The spoils of patronage--the awarding of government jobs (especially in the postal service) in return for party service, kickbacks, and votes--was vitally important within both parties and was essentially a big business like any other Gilded Age capitalist enterprise.

Republicans and Democrats differed very little on issues, but the race between them was fiercely competitive nonetheless. Each party was tightly organized. On Election Day, hordes of party faithful tramped behind marching bands on the way to the polls. The parties were able to turn out huge numbers of voters--nearly 80% of those eligible. Most of them voted a straight party line, too.


Edward B. Smith, 30, started an investment banking firm in Philadelphia.

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The World at Large in 1892

Scots chemist James Dewar, 50, invented the thermos flask.

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Notes

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