Three Rivers
Hudson~Mohawk~Schoharie
History From America's Most Famous Valleys

History of The OLD FORT HERKIMER CHURCH
German Flatts Reformed Church, 1723
By W. N. P. Dailey, D. D.
Published by the
St. Johnsville Enterprise and News
Lou D. MacWethy, editor
St. Johnsville, NY (Price 35 cents)

Thanks to Betty Hoagey for sending this for the web site!

Organized in 1723. Land given 1730 and 1773. Present edifice begun about 1730. A story of the Palatine people and their early struggles. Many names of first settlers. By Rev. W. N. P. Dailey, DD. Author of History of the Montgomery Classis, R.C.A.

Official Title of the Church

Turning back to the Session Laws of the State of New York for 1797 we find the official title of the church on the south side to be (at least since 1797), "The Ministers, Elders and Deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch church in the town of German Flatts in the County of Herkimer." Running through the records of the Herkimer Reformed Church one will find a great many comments about that church and its ministry which relates directly to the church and its work and its ministry on the south side. Because there were as many settlers in the very beginning on the Fort Herkimer side of the Mohawk as there were on the north side, and because the road ran first, and for a century, on the south, and because of the greater increase of the population there, not to speak of the post that was later established where many soldiers were quartered from the time of its first building, nearly, we have always been persuaded to believe that the religious conditions and needs were paramount with the same on the Herkimer side of the river, and that from the original settlement by the Herkimers and others, religious services were begun and conducted as early as 1723, if not the year before, when the Palatines began to come into the upper Mohawk Valley.

In an address by the late Hon. Robert Earl, Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals, who was a life long resident of Herkimer, and whose people at first were attached to the Dutch church there, and who continually was researching the history of Herkimer County, he said, (May 11, 1880) speaking to the Oneida Historical Society, that "in the settlement of the upper Mohawk Valley the Palatines built their first Church on the south side of the river." He quoted Smollet (Vol. II, 163) showing that the land carriage at Little Falls and the road up the valley was on the south side. This fact gave the settlers there a certain vantage and caused the south side for many years to be larger in population than the north side, where the Palatines, at the very beginning also built their village.

Church and Fort During War (1754-60)

After the French and Indian War the villages on both sides of the river prospered for a quarter of a century. In 1756 Col. Wm. Johnson stockaded Fort Herkimer and 1,000 troops at one time were posted there. In the Documentary History of New York is a description of Fort Herkimer by a French spy. Benton's History and Lossing's Field Book have a view of the fort in 1756. It has always seemed singular to us that directly after the devastation of the Palatine village on the north by the French that a spy of that nationality could go up and down the river unmolested. He described Fort Hunter also but placed it on the wrong side of the Schoharie. He does not mention the church at German Flatts; he was more interested in forts than in churches; he does not mention a school house, nor does the 1756 view of the fort show a school house, but there must have been one for that large population. If there was an uncompleted church edifice naturally that would not be mentioned. The French spy called the place Fort Kouari, which is said to mean "a bear."