1904

Pastor Walter Frederick, 28, conducting services in the new church building (the present one) on Mill Hill Road in the village.

(To enlarge either picture, just click it.)

Miss Evadora Russell, 24, led church services on several occasions in the absence of Pastor Frederick. Together with no fewer than 14 other women (Helen Wolven Lasher, Josie Krack Twadell, Florence B. Shultis, Lydia Russell, Miss Martha J. Shultis, Margaret Overbaugh, Mrs. George W. Shultis, Edna A. Herrick [who later married John H. Garrison], Mrs. Walter Frederick, Mrs. C. H. Cooper, Elizabeth Dederick, Miss Ethel Croswell, Miss Elizabeth Britt, and Mrs. Joseph W. Van Gaasbeck), she occasionally led church services for the next 3 years, a ministry very unusual in a Lutheran church in those days.

According to church historians Magda Moseman and Mark Anderson(1),

The new church building was illuminated by a large, ornate chandelier hanging in the center of the chapel. It was balanced by a counterweight. Miss Florence Peper recalls helping her mother light the circle of kerosene lamps. The chandelier was pulled down with a long hook and the task took about ten minutes.

The congregation also purchased from the Eaton and Main Publishing Company for $100 [$2,090 in 2006 dollars] a 40-foot lot on the east side of the church. This purchase

brought the congregation in possession of the beautiful maple trees on the east line of the present lot.(2)

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Quoted from Frederick, Rev. Walter, "Historical Address, Woodstock, N.Y., May 3, 1931," p. 12. (Close)

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Also, after six years of negotiations with prospective buyers, the congregation sold the old church (the "Church on the Rocks," so called 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) and lot to Carl Linden, a leader of the bohemian artists of the time, for $350 [$7,315 in 2006 dollars]. (The building was renovated and enlarged, and was for many years in the late twentieth century the residence of town historian Edgar Leaycraft.)

During the winter season, Pastor Frederick conducted midweek cottage services for 26 worshippers to the community at Shultis Corners (the intersection of current Route 212 and Glasco Turnpike east of Woodstock; see the map).

A meeting of the local Hartwick Synod Conference was held in our church. Many attendees commented favorably on the music, both vocal and instrumental, produced by the choir.

The congregation paid its full quota to the synod annually and made other contributions.

The Bible School was flourishing, with a membership of 73.

Above is a view looking up Mill Hill Road just after our new church was built. It is in the distance on the left of the road. (To enlarge the view, click it.) There is no Joyous Lake or Denny's or CVS (Grand Union) to interrupt the view.

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Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) was President. The 58th Congress was in session. A dollar in that year would be worth $20.90 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 106,900. 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 578,900--five and a half times as much as the Old Immigrants' rate, more than a threefold proportionate increase from a decade earlier and more than a threefold increase in raw numbers. The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

Arkansas Governor Jefferson Davis informed President Roosevelt of the following defense of lynching(4):

The only good Negro is a dead Negro.

Above all other men, Governor, you and I as exponents and representatives of the law, owe it to our people, owe it to the cause of civilization and humanity, to do everything in our power, officially and unofficially, directly and indirectly, to free the United States from the menace and reproach of lynch law.

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