LENG: ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF STATEN ISLAND 125 
front of the pulpit, and had a rod, on the end of which were | 
placed notices to be read, and which he thus quietly passed up to 
the dominie for publication” (p. 328). 
The church did not immediately secure a pastor. Baptisms are 
recorded in 1715, 1717, 1718 by Dominie Freeman, of Long Island, 
and in 1717 also by Dominie Antonides. It was not until 1718 
that Rev. Cornelius Van Santvoord accepted a call from the united 
French and Dutch congregations, and the church was fairly started 
on a career that has endured until the present time. 
The facts that I have thus briefly given have been gleaned by 
Mr. Vosburgh’s competent and painstaking search of the records 
of this church. Thanks to some departed worthy unknown to us, 
this church, alone in that respect on Staten Island, possesses an 
unbroken record from 1696 to date. The binding of the first rec- 
ord is gone, the pages do not follow their original sequence, but 
it is all there. It needs to’be studied by an expert who could re- 
store the original pagination and then to have each page protected 
as has been done elsewhere, but even as it is now, it goes back 
into the past further than any church building, further than any 
gravestone, further than any other similar record on Staten Island. 
In tabular form the early ecclesiastic dates on Staten Island are 
therefore: 
FRENCH DutcH ENGLISH 
Drisius 1663-4 
Vanzuuren 1681-2 
Daillé 1683-6 N. Y. 
Van den Bosch i687 
Congregation org4 
Church built 1698 
De Bonrepos 1693-1717 
United in the call to 
Van Santvoord 1717 
Merged with English 
1734 
Vital records lost 
Tesschenmacker 1683-6 
Varick 1686-90 
“Voorlezer ” 1696 
Vital records begin 
Bertholf 1698-1713 
Freeman 1715-1718 
Antonides 1717 
Was mA 
Church built 1716 
Van Santvoord 1718-42 
Vital records 1696 to 
date 
Keith 1702 
Talbot 1702-4 
Mackenzie 1705-23 
Church built 1709-12 
Vital records 
date 
7D WC 
