_http://www.packetonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18379811&BRD=1091&PAG=461&de pt_id=456072&rfi=6_ (http://www.packetonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18379811&BRD=1091&PAG=461&dept_id=456072&rfi=6) Historically Speaking 05/24/2007 (javascript: openEmailWindow();) _Email to a friend_ (javascript: openEmailWindow();) (http://www.packetonline.com/site/?brd=1091&pag=795&newsid=18379811&action=submit) _Post a Comment_ (http://www.packetonline.com/site/?brd=1091&pag=795&newsid=18379811&action=submit) (http://www.packetonline.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=1091&dept_id=456072&newsid=18379811) _Printer-friendly_ (http://www.packetonline.com/site/printerFriendly.cfm?brd=1091&dept_id=456072&new sid=18379811) Allentown: Its rise and progress, part 39 >From the NJ Historical Society's C. R. Hutchinson collection, the following short history of the Presbyterian Church. Although our region was predominately Quaker, Hutchinson claimed that the Presbyterians preceded them in Allentown proper. Advertisement The Presbyterian Church, which was the earliest religious organization at Allentown, was first located on the site of the old graveyard which still exists in the rear and on the southerly side of Main Street. This location was abandoned in 1756, when a brick building was erected on the one acre lot conveyed by William Lawrence in 1745. Rev. Charles McKnight, who, since 1744, had been the pastor both here and at Cranbury, on the erection of the new building resigned his charge at Cranbury and removed thence to Allentown, where he occupied the parsonage farm, which had then been recently acquired. He was a young man, licensed in 1741: married in 1746. David Brainerd, in his journal, under date of June 18, 1745, says: "In the afternoon came to place called Cranbury, and meeting with a serious minister (Mr. McKnight), lodged with him." He [McKnight] remained at Allentown until 1766, and appears to have prospered in a wordly sense, being taxed in 1758 for 200 acres of land, and in 1767, when the Allentown Mills were sold by sheriff as the property of James English, Junr. [father of revolutionary war heroine Jinnie Jackson], deceased, it was at the suit of Stoffil Longstreet for L1,000, and Charles McKight for L674. In 1767, he was settled as pastor of the churches at Shrewsbury and Middletown Point (Matawan), where, in the revolutionary war he made himself so obnoxious to the British that his church was burned, and himself seized and confined in one of the prison ships in New York Harbor, which, although soon released, caused his death shortly afterwards. He died in New York, Jan. 1, 1778, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard, where his grave may still be seen. >From 1766 to 1774 the church had no settled pastor, although the Rev. William Schenck, a graduate of Princeton, sometimes preached here and for the last two years of that time appears to have been (with occasional interruptions) a sort of stated supply, until, in 1774, he was regularly called to the pastorate. He was born in Monmouth County, near Marlboro, in 1740, and was a pupil of Rev. William Tennet, at Freehold. He remained here till 1778, when he removed to South Hampton, Pa. An account of him by one of his descendants says he was driven out of the state by the British in 1777. After other changes he removed in 1817 from Newark N.J. to Franklin, Ohio, where he died, at the home of his son, Gen. William C. Schenck, in 1823, aged 83 years. Hon. Robert C. Schenck, who entered Congress in 1843 and was United States Minister to Great Britain in the administration of President Grant, was his grandson. August 4, 1779, Rev. George Faitout was installed as pastor at Allentown, and also at Nottingham, to which charge he was to give a third of his time. He remained about two years. Little is known of him, but the minutes of Presbytery granting his request for dismissal, indicate that his pastorate, for some cause, had not been a success. He married Euphemia Titus, by a license dated November 4, 1779, and is then described as "of Monmouth County." In 1783, he appears to have been located at Pittsgrove, Salem County, where he preached the funeral sermon of Catherine, widow of the Rev. William Tennet, who died there, September 1, of that year. The next incumbent was the Rev. Joseph Clark, to whom a call was extended in the spring of 1784. He was born in Elizabethtown, N.J., October 21, 1751, and while a carpenters apprentice, studying at night, by the light of a pine knot, in two years fitted himself to enter the junior class at Princeton. When the war broke out he became a soldier, a private in Captain Samuel Stout's company of Hunterdon militia. When the war was over the returned to Princeton, graduated in 1781, and was licensed to preach in 1783. He remained at Allentown until 1796, when he removed to New Brunswick as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in that city. He died there in 1813. Hew carried away with him the records of the church at Allentown, and they were all burned when soon afterward his dwelling was destroyed by fire. For four years the pulpit was again vacant, and then, in 1800, the Rev. John Cornell became the pastor. He was born at Northampton, Pa. in 1774, and married Maria, daughter of Gen. Frederick Frelinghuysen of Somerset County N.J. who is mentioned as a woman of unusual ability and excellence, and as having been the founder of the first Sunday School in this locality. Mr. Cornell is said to have been a man of much personal dignity, a fine classical scholar, and an excellent preacher, but his pastorate of twenty years does not appear to have been to the advantage of the church, doubtless owing to the increasingly intemperate habits of the pastor, which resulted in the dissolution of the pastoral relation, and he removed to take charge of a classical school, first to Somerville and later to Millstone, Somerset County, at which latter place he died in 1835. A farm on the Yardville Road [opposite Merrick Rd.], about two miles west from Allentown, containing 216 acres, which he bought of Randal Robbins and wife, March 25, 1812, for $8,000, remained in his family as late as 1847, and is still know as "the Cornell Farm." The northerly part of it is now in the possession of Benjamin F. Stelle, and the southerly part, on which the original buildings were located, was until recently owned by Sarah B., wife of Washington P. Taylor. It is the same which was the homestead farm of Samuel Allen till his death in 1777. December 6, 1820, Rev. Henry Perkins was installed as pastor, and so continued until 1864, when the infirmities of age necessitated his retirement. His successors have been: Rev. Kneeland P. Ketcham, 1864-1871; Rev. Lawarence M. Colfelt, 1872-1874; Rev. George Swain, 1874-1912; and Rev. H.B. Strock, who is the present [1914] incumbent. The Presbyterian Church is given exceptional prominence in these pages because it was the only religious organization in Allentown during colonial times, and for many years after the revolutionary war. In the beginning it must have been very weak, for the meager population was made up mostly of Quakers, who had no sympathy or support to give to "steeple houses" or hireling priests or ministers." Nevertheless, it seems to have prospered from its birth, and thirty years afterward was able to provide its pastor with a farm of more than 200 acres for his maintenance. Of those who were responsible for its origin and support in its infancy, only a few names are known, but among them were Robert and James English, John Chambers, Tobias Polhemus, Guisbert Hendrickson, Robert Imlay, Henry Harper, James Jackson, Lefford Lefferson, and probably William Lawrence, since he conveyed to the trustees in 1744, for the nominal sum of five shillings, the lot of one acre on which the church now stands. Historically Speaking is a regular column presented by John Fabiano, M.A., designated historian for Allentown Borough. ©PACKETONLINE News Classifieds Entertainment Business - Princeton and ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.