THE RISE OF THE BAPTISTS IN PINE PLAINS, NEW YORK 1812 - 1912 by Mrs. Philip A. Lyons
Part One: The Earliest Years Isaac Huntting had access to a Record Book of the Baptist Society as is evident from the account in "Little Nine Partners", his book about Pine Plains, and from a newspaper article he did for the Pine Plains Register about 1890. After the death in 1912 of Harding Gale, who had been a Trustee of the Baptist Society, the books in his estate were sold to a dealer. Happily, Charlotte Slingerland Kester, rummaging in a book dealer's in Canaan, Connecticut, saw the Record Book, paid five dollars for it and she and her sister, Julia Slingerland Jordan, both direct descendents of one of the founders of the society (Cornelius Huested) presented it to their cousin, Dr. Paul Duxbury, who was living in the Cornelius Huested house so often alluded to in the Record Book. When Dr. Duxbury died some years ago, both ladies searched the house for the book. In spite of the extremely neat housekeeping of Mrs. Duxbury, they couldn't find it. Giving up the search, Mrs. Jordan was going out of the house through the kitchen and, as a last hope, opened the dutch oven door. The book was there, safely hidden from fire and mice! This Record Book, and Huntting's "Little Nine Partners" provide the source records for this research paper. Because the Record Book includes the names of every member , many of whom were not among the leaders of the community who have been memorialized by Isaac Huntting, and because such as these reveal the human side of any historical era, this record is a special treasure. Besides the weekly records kept by an elected clerk, the first twenty pages of the record book refer to the circumstances from 1812 on, which led to the founding of the Baptist Society and which inadvertantly revealed the distress and heartache of a minority group "left out" of the orderly progress of a community. These were prepared by Justus Boothe. As early as 1740, there was Christian religious activity in Pine Plains. The Moravian mission existed for 6 years in the Bethel area at the southeast part of the town, working among the Shecomeco Indians. In Bethel itself, a church was built in 1746 on Lot No. 30, Little Nine Partners, by Lutherans including Johan Tice Smith and Michael Rowe. In 1769, the deed to that property was acquired from Peter Livingston, honoring a verbal promise of his father-in-law, James Alexander, to the acre of land for 23 years (occupied but not owned by the Lutherans) to "erect a new edifice or church thereon, or keep the old church in repair for the worship of the Almighty God as practiced by the Lutheran Evangelical Church." Other Germans and Dutch built the Red Church in 1772, east of the village about two miles on the present Route 199. The Methodists used a building at Attleburg in the most northern part of the town of Stanford. The Quakers met first at Charles Hoag's house in 1799 in Bethel and then built a meeting house in 1807. 105
