Christ's Lutheran Church in 1914

Pastor Edgar Sutherland, conducting services. The following are from the pastor's notes(1)

Quoted in Anderson, Mark J., For All the Saints: Christ's Lutheran Church, Woodstock, New York, 1806-2006 [Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006], p. 211. (Close) for January 13:
Coldest day so far -20.
And for February 17:
Roads and paths full of snow. No service.
And for May 3:
Regular services.
That was the last entry for ten years.

With the beginning of the Great War in Europe, members of German-speaking Lutheran congregations--and German speakers in general in the United States--were subject to hate crimes by many other Americans, who sympathized with the Allies and who believed the propaganda about German atrocities in Belgium. English-speaking Lutherans did not want to be "stewed in the same kettle" as the German-speaking Lutherans; they wanted to make it known to the general population that they were not German but rather American, that they did not support the Kaiser and his policies. At the same time, many German-speaking Lutherans were making their own moves to dissociate themselves from the Fatherland. An example of a German-speaking congregation was the Atonement Lutheran Church in Saugerties. The congregation of Christ's Lutheran Church in Woodstock had been English-speaking since its founding.

[ View looking up Mill Hill Road ]

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 1914

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The United States in 1914

[ Woodrow Wilson ]

Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) was President. The 63rd Congress was in session. (The midterm elections that year would elect the 64th Congress.) A dollar in that year would be worth $19.00 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 54,000. 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 292,800--five and a half times as much as the Old Immigrants' rate, about the same proportion as a decade earlier and about half in raw numbers. (The significant overall decline during the decade was a result of World War I.) The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

The annual average number of lynchings of blacks during the six-year period 1914-1920 was 64.

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The World at Large in 1914

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Notes

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