by David Flint
Old-timers remember the beautiful, old, white “Dutch Church” with its simple and clean lines that stood on Berlin Mountain at the top of Bly Hollow Road at the intersection of Miller Road and Taborton Road in Berlin. Speaking at the Stephentown Historical Society on Monday, Berlin Town Historian Sharon Klein pointed out that it was really not a Dutch church but a “Deutsch” or German church, formally named Zion’s Evangelical Reformed Church of West Berlin. It was the center of a German community that formed in that area beginning with the arrival in Berlin in 1834 of two families, the Gutermuths and the Jordans.
[private]These immigrants from the Rhineland-Hesse region, at that time ruled by the Kingdom of Bavaria, after having been at sea for 80 days, were met in New York City by German residents of Sand Lake. Genealogical records show that second generation Palatine Germans had settled earlier in Sand Lake and established the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church there.
Their forbears were part of a group of some 3,000 Palatines fleeing from wars, political upheaval and crop failures in their homeland. They were imported by the British government in 1709-10 to start a tar and turpentine industry along the Hudson River. The enterprise failed and the immigrants dispersed around the colony. Conditions in Germany had not improved all that much into the 19th century, and Germans, especially from the southwestern part of the country, continued to seek land and better fortune in the USA.
The Settlers
The group that arrived in Sand Lake in 1834 spent only a short time there before moving on to Berlin Mountain. There they engaged in the business of making charcoal, a trade they had practiced in Dalherda, Germany, where they came from. For many years they, and those who came later, constituted a self-contained community holding on to their language, customs and social standards.
Services in the Dutch Church were held in German up until close to 1920, Klein said. There was little interaction with folks in the valley until later on. It was only by coincidence that the name of the town they settled in bore the same name as the capital city of Germany. Klein believes the name was bestowed by the first Town Supervisor who came to the area from Berlin, Connecticut. Some of the other family names in the Berlin Mountain community were Willibrandt, Teal, Schlotzhour, Ernst, Miller, Momrow and Shuhart.
The Schoolhouse
One of the first buildings the settlers put up was a schoolhouse that became one of the ten school districts in Berlin. The schoolhouse stood across the road and a little to the west of where the Church would later be constructed in 1862. Klein showed a picture of a very beautiful and ornate chandelier that was placed in the Church in the 1880s. The bill for this chandelier came to $46.25.
The Dutch Picnic
An annual summer fundraiser that became known as the “Dutch Picnic” became a big attraction for folks far and wide around eastern Rensselaer County. The first one was reportedly held at a charcoal site, but after that it was held in the grove behind the Church. Klein said that Doree Cox recalled grab bag presents, bingo, her father dishing out ice cream, Charlie Momrow selling baloney sandwiches, Rena Goodermote making coffee in huge blue enameled pots on a wood stove, her own family one year providing 22 homemade wild blueberry pies and round and square dancing behind the Church that continued later down at the fire hall. Klein recalled how her grandmother, who lived in Stephentown, spoke of traveling to this picnic up Bly Hollow Road with horse and wagon and her five sisters and seven brothers. They all had to get out and walk up the steep hill because it was too much for one horsepower. Then, too, there was always a Harvest Festival held in the fall. On this occasion the farmers would share their crops with the minister.
In September 1934 a stone and bronze plaque was erected at the site as a memorial to the Gutermuths and Jordans by their descendants. A picture that Klein had shows Doree Cox as a young child unveiling the plaque.
A fire in 1967 damaged the rear part of the Church. This was soon repaired but worse was to come. The Church was completely destroyed in October 1968 by fire set by arsonists. Church members were determined that the Church be restored exactly as it had been. Construction started in November and was completed in the following spring. An overflow crowd attended the rededication of the Church. But then, in 1982, the building was again totally destroyed by fire. Arson was deemed the cause but no one was ever caught. Now at the site one can see only the memorial to the first families, a newer memorial stone describing the history of the Church and the well kept cemetery. Services continued to be held at the Church grounds until about 1980.
On July 15 this past summer the Taborton Lutheran Church, which for many years shared pastors with the Berlin Mountain Dutch Church, organized a memorial service at the site to commemorate 150 years of its founding. Klein said it was well attended by Church members, descendants of the immigrants and interested townspeople.[/private]