MIDDLEBURGH REFORMED CHURCH

River Street

Middleburgh, New York

            The Reformed Church of Middleburgh has been and is a group of people who are committed to serving God and their community.  The church is not a building or group of buildings.  The church is the congregation and the service it provides to its community.  In its nearly three centuries in the Schoharie Valley, the Reformed Church has used many buildings to carry out its mission.

            The Reformed faith reached the Schoharie Valley in the early 1700s when German Palatines first settled among the dwellings and fields of Native American farmers who had called this valley their home for thousands of years. Dutch Americans, who also adhered to the Reformed faith, followed the Germans into the valley.  Although many of the Palatines soon left the valley, those who remained clustered in settlements, were near what is now the village of Schoharie, and the Dutch came to predominate in the locale that is now Middleburgh.  Although there were tensions between those two groups, they bonded to form the first Reformed Church in the Schoharie Valley.

            It was a highly diverse church.  In addition to the German and Dutch, Native American slaves joined the congregation.  As well, the African American slaves whom the Dutch Americans brought to the valley worshiped as part of the church.  For several decades, the Reformed congregants did not have their own pastor, and so they welcomed a variety of itinerant ministers and they regularly shared services with local Lutheran congregants.  At first the congregants had no particular building to use for a sanctuary.  It is likely that they gathered to worship in homes, barns, and possibly even outdoors.  By the early 1730s, however, the Reformed congregants of the Schoharie Valley were divided into two distinct congregations, and they worshiped in designated sites in the locales that are now Schoharie and Middleburgh.  The two congregations maintained close ties, nonetheless, and for the next several decades they shared ministers.

            The earliest known house of worship in Middleburgh for which we have evidence is the building, which the Reformed congregation built around the year 1732 at a site along what is now upper Main Street in Middleburgh.  (There is an historical plaque near the site.)  The building, which was said at the time to be “well finished within and out”, marked a rising prosperity among the adherents of the Reformed faith in the Schoharie Valley.  By the mid-1700s the valley’s farmers were widely reported to be “wealthy”.  We need recall, of course, that the valley’s wealth and prosperity was due in large measure to the work of the enslaved African Americans who did much of the work of building the farms and raising wheat and other crops on the fertile Schoharie flats.

            In the 1770s, however, the American Revolution spread violence and destruction across the Schoharie Valley.  Many of those living in the valley supported the rebellion.  Loyalist and Native Americans forces that supported the British made repeated raids on the prosperous valley settlements.  The most devastating of the raids was that of October 1780 when the Reformed Church’s building at Middleburgh was burned.  Once again the faithful had to conduct services in a variety of buildings.  It was not until 1786 that the Reformed congregation, with the help of much outside assistance, was able to construct the brick building, which still serves as its sanctuary.

            The church members did not rebuild on the site of the original sanctuary along upper Main Street.  Instead, they chose the present site, which was at the center of the new, post-war village that was growing up at a fort across the Schoharie River.  The decision to place the building in this spot, however, has been a fateful one for the Reformed Church of Middleburgh.  It was a choice that has forced members of the church to confront much adversity over the years.  That is because the same river, which has brought so much prosperity to valley residents, has also taken its toll by flooding.

            The site of the 1786 building has been particularly subject to flooding.  Although the floods have not come every year, during the last 200 years they have come often.  Over the decades the church members have been forced to accept the numerous floodings of their sanctuary and other buildings as a trial to be borne.  Many of those floods have been ruinous, but the most disastrous was that of 1955 when floodwaters undermined and nearly destroyed the sanctuary.  For two years the congregation had to hold services in another building as they rebuilt the sanctuary.  Thanks to the commitment of the church members in the face of adversity, the building still stands and serves as their sanctuary.

            The 1786 sanctuary has been the most prominent of the Church’s buildings, however, it has been only one of the church’s many buildings.  There have been parsonages for ministers.  The church has owned buildings that it rented for income.  It has even had to maintain horse sheds.  Among these many other buildings is the one known as the “Church House”.  This building, located just to the east of the 1786 sanctuary, was built in the late 1700s and served as a private residence until it was purchased by the church in 1953.  From then until 1999, when the new church hall was built, the Church House served as the congregation’s community center.

            The Church House accommodated the variety of functions one could expect of a church.  There have been meetings in the Church House.  Sunday School classes have met there, and the building provided nursery rooms for the small children of those attending church.  Above and beyond these integral church functions, however, the building helped the church serve a mission that extends beyond the immediate needs of the congregation to the wider community.  The Church House accommodated a local food pantry.  For a time the carriage house adjacent to the Church House hosted a whole foods cooperative and a youth group coffee house.  Local theater groups rehearsed plays in the Church House.  (They even staged one play within the sanctuary itself.)  Self-help groups for those suffering from alcohol and drug abuse met in the Church House.  Boy Scouts regularly held meetings there.  Musical recitals and ballet lessons were conducted in the Church House.  It served at times as a temporary refuge for the financially desperate and for those displaced by fires and other calamities.  Local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution as well as the Order of Eastern Star held meetings there.  Local groups of senior citizens held meetings and dinners in the Church House. The first Head Start program in the county originated in the Church House.

            For more than 40 years, the Church House performed great service to the congregation and the community.  But it had many limitations, not the least of which was that it was located a distance from the sanctuary.  This was a small matter on pleasant days, but a serious problem during inclement weather.  Nor did the building have a room large enough for large dinners and celebrations, so the congregation had to go elsewhere to hold these events.  Moreover, by the mid 1990s the building was in need of overall repair, and so members of the congregation began to plan for the church’s future.  They were mindful of the historic significance of the Church House, and they were committed to restoring and revamping the building in order that it might serve the community well into the 21^st century.

            It was at that moment, however, that adversity forced the congregation to reconsider their primary purpose and the task that God was asking that they perform in their community.  In January 1996 as the congregation started to make plans to revamp the Church House, another devastating flood swept through the Schoharie Valley.  This flood was particularly disheartening.  It occurred in the middle of winter and what the water alone did not damage, ice destroyed.  Lives in the village were lost in the flood, and destruction was widespread up and down the Schoharie Valley.  The Reformed Church’s sanctuary, parsonage, and Church House were all flooded.

            In that very low moment as the members of the church assessed the damage to their various buildings they came to a realization.  They saw that roles and functions within the church had become somewhat reversed.  The church’s buildings were not serving the congregation in its mission to worship God and benefit the community.  Rather, the church itself had become the caretaker of buildings that consumed the congregation’s limited resources and did not provide them with the space they needed to carry out their mission.  So it was in the face of that adversity that the church came to a new vision.  If they were to dedicate themselves to God and to His community, they would need an entirely new building to serve as their church’s community center.      They would need a building modern enough to carry them into the 21^st century; a building spacious enough to serve the many needs of the congregation and the community; a building fully able to withstand the flooding that is sure to occur again; and a building sturdy and efficient enough to serve the church’s needs and not tax their resources.

            The decision to build anew, rather than restore the old was not taken lightly.  So in building anew the Church has been ever mindful of its history.  This is a history, however, not of buildings but a history of worship and of service.  It is a history of events that took place within and without buildings.  As the congregation planned and built the building, they were careful that it blended in with the old sanctuary.  They were careful as well that it would be capable of serving the community in many ways for many years to come.

            As you tour this building you will quickly see that it is an exceptional structure.  It is a vision that has become a reality.  It is, nonetheless, only a building.  As with all the buildings that the Reformed Church has used in its’ nearly 300 years in the Schoharie Valley, this building has a purpose.  That purpose is to help this congregation worship God by serving their community.