What happened in the year 1908

Christ's Lutheran Church in 1908

Pastor Walter Frederick, 32, conducting services. The following are from the pastor's notes(1)

Quoted from Frederick, Walter, "Pastor's Notes." (Close) for January 26:

Special offering for the people of Monongah, W.V., because of terrible mine disaster. $6.15 [$123.98 in 2006 dollars] collected.

And here from the notes for July 13:

Pastor takes vacation to help his father in harvest.

And here from August 29:

Annual town SS [Sunday School] picnic in Riseley's grove. A band from Chichester furnished the music. Cost $45 [$907.20 in 2006 dollars].

And here from September 12:

Pastor receives call from Argusvill, NY.

And here from September 14:

Pastor resigns from Christ's Lutheran Church [to be effective during the coming winter].

And here from October 7, while attending Synod:

Was present this evening at the organization of the new synod, know[n] as the synod of New York. Mr. N. M. Nash was elected a delegate to the general synod.

This entry needs a bit of explanation. In 1830 the Hartwick Synod had seceded from the New York Ministerium and had united with the General Synod. The secession was in part because the New York Ministerium had refused to join the General Synod in 1818, because the Ministerium's president (our church's founder and former pastor, Dr. Frederick Henry Quitman, who, as a rationalist, denied the authority of both the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions) had not been able to abide the tenets of the General Synod--that is, the theological norms of the Reformation.(2) From Anderson, Mark J., For All the Saints: Christ's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, New York, 1806-2006 [Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006], draft, citing Schalk, Carl, God's Song in a New Land: Lutheran Hymnals in America [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995], p. 69. (Close) Even though Dr. Quitman had founded it, Christ's Church of Woodstock had joined with the Hartwick Synod. The secession remained in effect even after the New York Ministerium decided, after all, to join the General Synod, in 1836. Finally, however, in 1908, the Hartwick Synod, apparently satisfied that the theology of the New York Ministerium was sound, joined with it and with the Franckean Synod (which it had earlier considered very heretical) to form a single unit: the Synod of New York. Our church became part of the new New York Synod as well, continuing its tendency to be part of a regional organization that takes a fairly relaxed, or "liberal," view of Lutheranism.

Here some more tidbits from the pastor's notes, this one from October 28:

Funeral for Sally Ann Russell--buried at Chestnut Hill Cemetery.

And here from December 1:

Cottage prayer meeting at Shultis' Corners and farewell to those people.

[ Shultis Corners ]

(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].)

Here is from December 13 through 21:

Mr. Yettru, seminary student at Hartwick preaches, teaches Sunday School, conducts prayer meeting at Shultis Corners. [Pastor Yettru would be succeeding Pastor Frederick in the coming year.]

And here from December 27:

This morning our Sunday School was broken up by an accident. While Mr. Cramer Russell was turning into the church yard his sleigh was overturned and his horse ran away. Mrs. Cramer, Mrs. Ritch, Miss Annette Russell and Cramer Russell were in the sleigh when it turned over. No one was seriously hurt.

According to church historians Magda Moseman and Mark Anderson(3),

Quoted from Moseman, Magda, and Anderson, Mark, eds., Perspectives and Patterns: Christ's Lutheran Church, 1806-1976 [Woodstock, NY: self-published monograph, 1976]. (Close)

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 paid its full quota in advance to the synod annually and made other contributions.

Above is a postcard view of looking up Mill Hill Road in the earliest years of the twentieth century. Our church is in the distance on the left of the road, the parsonage on the right. (To enlarge the view, click it.) There is no Joyous Lake or Denny's or CVS (Grand Union), no Woodstock Meats, Catskill Mountain Pizza, or Cumberland Farms to interrupt the view.

The Woodstock Region in 1908

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The United States in 1908

Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) was President. The 60th Congress was in session. A dollar in that year would be worth $20.16 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.

Publisher George Harrison Mifflin, 63, took over the direction of the 44-year-old Hougton, Mifflin Co. in Boston, for which he had been a partner for the preceding 36 years.

This is a placeholder for information on the United States during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(5)

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The World at Large in 1908

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Notes

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