42 3Ien and Things in Albany Two Centuries Ago. 



whose services were conducted iu a language unintelligible 

 to the new comers, and they determined to build a house 

 of worship. Taking no counsel of the Dutch, they fixed 

 upon a site at the head of State street, under the guns of 

 the fort, opposite Chapel street, and applied to Gov. Hunter 

 for the ground. He gave permission to take sixty by ninety 

 feet, and supplied all the stone and lime for the building. 

 The common council regarded this proceeding as an un- 

 warrantable infringement of their rights, claiming that the 

 charter conferred the title to the ground upon them, and 

 offering the English an eligible site for their church else- 

 where, forbade its location iu the street. The governor 

 and rector being inexorable to all remonstrances, and the 

 crisis being imminent, they sent an express to Xew York 

 in a canoe for the advice of two eminent counsel. Mean- 

 while the workmen disregarding the injunction of the 

 council, two masons were imprisoned for contempt ; but 

 they were admitted to bail or liberated by the governor 

 and the work went on to completion. It was a stone edi- 

 fice forty-two by fifty-eight feet, without a tower, and was 

 opened for service in 1716. 



The Dutch Eeformed, finding themselves unable to shape 

 the business to their liking, set ab ,ut a much wiser enter- 

 prise. They began the erection of a new church of stone, 

 on an enlarged scale, and pursued the work with a zeal 

 and alacrity which has ever since been a subject of admira- 

 tion to their posterity. The foundations were laid around 

 the old church, and the walls carried up and enclosed 

 before the old one was taken down, and carried out through 

 the doors and windows, so that the customary services were 

 interrupted only three Sundays, and they occupied it before 

 the English had completed theirs. It stood in use until 

 1805, a period of 90 years, and it is recorded in a Dutch 

 Bible now in the possession of Dr. Thomas Hun, that a 

 child baptized in the church on the first Sunday it was so 

 used, was EHzabeth Yinhagen, and that the church bell 



