Christ's Lutheran Church in 1902

[ Pastor Walter Frederick ]

Pastor Walter Frederick, 26, newly graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, PA, and having received on July 20 his license to preach from Reverend J. H. Weaver, president of the Hartwick Synod, and Rev. A. L[?]. Hain, the Synod secretary. The congregation had been without a pastor for 10 months. Pastor Frederick began conducting services in the new church building (the present one) on Mill Hill Road in the village.

(To enlarge either picture, just click it.)


According to church historians Magda Moseman and Mark Anderson(1),

Quoted from Moseman, Magda, and Anderson, Mark, eds., Perspectives and Patterns: Christ's Lutheran Church, 1806-1976 [Woodstock, NY: self-published monograph, 1976]. (Close) [ Our church at about this time ]
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 purchased a new parsonage for the pastor for $600 [$13,542 in 2006 dollars]: a small house and lot in the village. The old parsonage was sold for $575 [$12,978].

The Bible School was flourishing.

The English-language New York and New England Synod seceded from the New York Ministerium. (The Hartwick Synod, and Christ's Lutheran Church in Woodstock with it, had already seceded from the Ministerium 72 years earlier; the English-language New Jersey Synod had seceded 41 years earlier; and the New York Synod had seceded 35 years earlier. The New York Synod and New Jersey Synod had merged into the New York and New Jersey Synod 30 years earlier, but the Hartwick Synod with Christ's Lutheran Church had not been part of that merger.)

[ View looking up Mill Hill Road ]

Above is a view looking up Mill Hill Road just after our new church was built. It is in the distance on the left of the road. (To enlarge the view, click it.) There is no Joyous Lake or Denny's or CVS (Grand Union) to interrupt the view.

The Woodstock Region in 1902

Regional newspapers reported claims of sightings of the once-plentiful passenger pigeons. After this year there were no such reports.

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The United States in 1902

[ Theodore Roosevelt ]

Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) was President. The 57th Congress was in session. (The midterm elections that year would elect the 58th Congress.) A dollar in that year would be worth $22.57 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.

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The World at Large in 1902

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Notes

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