Finding Meeker’s Meeting House, the story of an overlooked Revolutionary War era church near the New York – New Jersey border.

Finding Meeker’s Meeting House, the story of an overlooked Revolutionary War era church near the New York – New Jersey border.

By Rev. Douglas J. Douma, Pastor of First Presbyterian Church at Unionville, NY

In the year 1780—or sometime previous—a meeting house was built on the land of Samuel Meeker in northwestern New Jersey near the New York border. People came there for worship over a period of only ten or twenty years but left just a scant record behind. In this article I seek to piece together the record of Meeker’s Meeting House and tell its history, arguing that upon its closure the people who had worshipped there went on to establish three area churches with long histories. The founding of one of these churches, Westtown Presbyterian Church, I contend, brought the place name of the former meeting houses’s location (West Town) with it and led to the naming of its hamlet (Westtown, NY) after the church. Finally, I will argue for the identification of the meeting house’s location long obscured by the ravages of time.

Samuel Meeker (1747 – c. 1804) was a landowner and major in the Sussex County, NJ militia, known for his bravery—or perhaps bravado—in the lead up to a patriot defeat in the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Minisink on July 22, 1779 where forty-eight patriots were killed and Meeker himself wounded. Meeker owned a number of properties in New Jersey including an 186-acre farm in Wantage Township where by 1773 he resided after financial difficulties forced a sale of his previous residence.¹ Part of the property extended beyond the border with New York, a line which was disputed between the two provinces and was only settled in 1769 and first surveyed in 1774.

That a meeting house was built on Meeker’s Wantage farm is first known from the will of Mary Lockwood, dated Oct. 1, 1780 which speaks of the Presbyterian meeting house on Samuel Meeker’s land. The witnesses on the will included Nathaniel Meeker (Samuel’s brother) and Cotton Mather who would later be connected with the Presbyterian Church of Westtown. Such connections will become important later as we show continuity from Meeker’s Meeting House to the Westtown Presbyterian Church.²

Who built the meeting house—whether Meeker himself, or someone else with his permission—is unknown. Given Meeker’s known financial strain it is possible that others would have footed the bill while he allowed use of the land. However, when Meeker sold the farm the “edefices buildings emoluments advantages hereditaments and appurtenances,” according to the deed, went with it. Half of the farm was sold in 1787 and the remainder in 1792. From the description of the property boundaries it appears that the sale in 1787 intentionally avoided the land where the meeting house sat. But certainly when the remainder of the land sold in 1792 the meeting house was no longer on Meeker’s land but on that of Samuel Cole, the new owner of the whole farm. But, as one researcher has suggested, perhaps to respect the efforts of others who contributed to the building of the meeting house a stipulation in the deed of sale stated that the grantee (Cole) could not interfere with the Presbyterian meeting house and its operations. Thus worship could continue there, and did for about another ten years.³

Equally unknown is why a Presbyterian meeting house was built at that location. The need for such a place of worship may be explained in part by the fact that there were no other Presbyterian churches in the area at that time. Such a need also may partially be explained in noting that the Meeker family had Presbyterian connections in generations past.

While the meeting house was called Presbyterian there is no record of a Presbyterian minister ever preaching there. Rather, the only man known to have preached there was a Dutch Reformed minister. The records of the Dutch Reformed churches show that starting in 1788⁴ Rev. Elias Van Bunschoten (1738-1815) of the Clove Dutch Reformed Church preached also for a congregation in “Westtown.” Because the Clove was unable to meet Van Bunschoten’s salary, an arrangement was made in 1791 for the Westtown congregation to share a portion of his time and contribute to his pay. In 1793 the Clove and Westtown Churches united together and sent a request to the clerk of the peace for the county of Sussex to record them by the name and title of “The Trustees of the United Dutch Reformed Congregations of the Clove and West Town.”⁵ In the introduction to Minisink Valley Reformed Dutch Church Records, Royden Woodward Vosburgh refers to the group Van Bunschoten preached to as “The Dutch Reformed Church of Westtown” and claims that they were “probably located in the present village of Westtown, in the town of Minisink, Orange County, N.Y.”⁶ Vosburgh, as we shall see, incorrectly identified the church’s location.

We must understand that “Westtown” in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries applied not to the present hamlet, but to an area centered near the New York / New Jersey border.⁷ The term “Westtown” (and its variants Westown, and West Town) is thought to derive from the fact that the area is “West of the drowned lands,” a swampy lowland through which the Walkill river passes. On John Eddy’s 1818 Map of New York, the label “Westown” is applied to today’s Unionville which only chose its present name at a village meeting on Feb. 1^st, 1822.⁸ Tanner’s 1819 Map of New York shows less detail but again locates “Westown” near the New York / New Jersey border at present day Unionville. Finley’s 1827 Map of New York continues to call the border village “Westtown” (now with two t’s) even though it’s name had officially been changed four or five years earlier. Only starting in 1828, with Thomas Gordon’s Map of New Jersey (and its detail over the border into New York) do we see Unionville and Westown located and labeled as they are now known. The fact also that the “Trustees of the United Congregations of the Clove and West Town” sent their incorporation document to Sussex (in New Jersey) and not also to some jurisdiction in New York, further evidences the fact that the “West Town” church was in New Jersey.

Today’s hamlet of Westtown, NY seems to have only taken that name after the original Westtown Church (Meeker’s) closed and some of its people established the “Presbyterian Church and Congregation of West Town in the Town of Minisink” as it is named in an 1803 deed. Previous to that time the area of the modern hamlet of Westtown was only known as the Town of Minisink, and “Westtown” had only been applied to Meeker’s Meeting House (as it did on the 1793 deed). Only in 1811 (five years after the church was built) is the hamlet first mentioned without specific reference to the church when a farm was offered for sale “Lying on the main road from Deckertown and Westown.”⁹ Shortly thereafter, in 1812, the “Goshen and West Town Turnpike Company” was established, the act of which mentions “the village of West-Town.” Therefore, I contend, the placename “Westtown” moved when the church did. Former Minisink Town historian Doris Cole reached the same conclusion years ago, writing, “The village of Westtown probably derived its name from the church.”¹⁰

While it is known from the records that a late 18^th century meeting house existed on Meeker’s land, there is no known evidence of any church in the hamlet of Westtown prior to the Westtown Presbyterian Church erected in 1806. Thus it is likely at Meeker’s Meeting House where the Presbyterian Society at Westtown regularly came together for worship. This society met for legal organization on Jan. 26, 1790 at the house of Sylvanus Loree and while the deacons who signed the certificate, John Hazen and James Brown, were indeed from the hamlet later called Westtown, of the trustees listed Amos Wilcox was from Waterloo Mills, and Henry Tucker was an early resident of Unionville. We can see then that it was a presbyterian society for the whole area stretching north to the hamlet of Westtown, west to Waterloo Mills and Unionville, and south to Meeker’s Meeting House.¹¹

While there is no record of Meeker’s Meeting house as an organized Presbyterian church, the Presbyterian Society at Westtown appears to have joined the Associate Presbytery of Morris County in 1790.¹² This presbytery, which existed from 1780 to about 1820, was independent of the main body of Presbyterians and functioned in an almost congregationalist manner. But while the group was Presbyterian in its charter, they eventually hired the Dutch Reformed minister Elias Van Bunschoten to preach for them and in 1793 even incorporated as a United Congregation with the Clove Dutch Reformed Church. According to Vosburgh, Van Bunschoten preached at “Westtown” from 1791 and “at least until May 4, 1802 when the parsonage jointly owned by the two churches was sold.” Vosburgh calls Westtown a Dutch Reformed Church but then notes that later it “was organized as a Presbyterian church on March 10, 1803.”¹³ That is, he sees the Westtown Dutch Reformed Church as one and the same church with the Westtown Presbyterian Church whose certificate of organization, dated March 10, 1803, he is referring to.

Doris Cole also reached the conclusion the Westtown Dutch Reformed Church met at Meeker’s Meeting House. After laying out essentially the same facts as I have above, Cole concluded, “These facts plus W. J. Coulter’s [a respected local historian] opinion and my own opinion the Pres[byterian] Meeting house and the Westtown Dutch Ref[ormed] Congregation are one and the same and are the roots of the present Westtown Presbyterian Church. These facts give that it was Pres[ent] in 1780, and perhaps due to the lack of ministers joined with the Clove for a minister supply. I find more reference to it as just the Westtown Congregation rather than the Westtown Dutch Reformed Church.”¹⁴

Assuming Cole’s conclusion (held also by King¹⁵ and by Stephens¹⁶) and assuming that this group was meeting for worship at Meeker’s Meeting House, it is natural to ask why did they cease worshipping there? We likely will never know precisely. But the death of Samuel Meeker some time before 1804 (perhaps in 1802)¹⁷ may have affected the situation such that the owner of the land, Samuel Cole, no longer desired to continue the agreement in the deed allowing the congregation to use the meeting house on his property.¹⁸

In a sermon in 1844 Presbyterian minister Peter Kanouse, who had preached in a number of area churches including Wantage (Clove) and Unionville, claimed that Van Bunschoten withdrew from preaching at Westown when the Clove grew in membership and was able to pay his full salary.¹⁹If such is the case then perhaps the lack of an available preacher contributed to the lack of use of the meeting house, and it would tell us that the connection to the meeting house was ended by Van Bunschoten himself, not the congregation or the owner of the property. But I suspect Kanouse may have the order reversed—Van Bunschoten’s congregation grew only after Meeker’s Meeting House was closed down. One writer tells us “He [Van Bunschoten] seems to have enjoyed a precious season of revival in 1803, during the spring and summer of which forty-two were added, by confession, to the communion of the Church.”²⁰ This is near the same time (March 1803) that Westtown and Unionville were having meetings to begin their churches. It seems likely that the Clove’s influx of parishioners in 1803 was not the result of a sudden revival but an increase in membership due to transfers from the recent closure of Meeker’s Meeting House.

As Meeker’s Wantage farm sold through the years it found it way into the ownership of Samuel Christie who at some point removed some of the headstones from the cemetery associated with the meeting house and used them as a walkway on his property.²¹ Four of those moved stones still exist at the farmhouse, and all of them are Meeker’s or related to the Meeker’s. The extant gravestones have the names Jephtha Meeker, Asa Meeker, Isaac Dixson, and Thadeas Dixon.²² Jeptha Meeker (1767-1812) was a nephew of Samuel’s, the son of his older brother Nathaniel Meeker. Asa was a son of Jeptha’s who died as an infant. Isaac Dixon (1786-1814) is connected to the family through marrying Jeptha’s niece Phoebe Clark (1792-1874) and Thadius Dixon (1761-1814) was Isaac’s father. A fifth stone found by local resident Harold Ayers in the 1960s is that of Samuel’s brother, Nathaniel Meeker (1741-1804). In addition to these stones, the history says Samuel Meeker was buried at the same location.²³ This makes at least six burials there ranging from 1798 to 1814.

After the Presbyterians left the meeting house it may have been used by the Baptists. One writer in (and its not clear if this comment was original in 1874, or added in revisions in 1903 or 1955) referred to it as a Baptist church saying, “The writer has always understood from oldtimers that a Baptist Church stood somewhere in the vicinity of the present Christie [Samuel Christie, the third owner from Samuel Meeker] place just south of Unionville.”²⁴ This would indicate that by that point (whether 1874, 1903, or 1955) the structure was derelict or removed rather than being used for some other purpose. While the building did remain, it may have been used by the Christie family as a schoolhouse or as part of a nearby tannery.²⁵

However Meeker’s Meeting House ended, it is clear that from its people arose three other churches: First Presbyterian Church of Wantage, First Presbyterian Church of Westtown, and First Presbyterian Church at Unionville.

WANTAGE

Of these three churches it is perhaps fitting to begin with the First Presbyterian Church of Wantage for it is in a sense the continuing Clove church but under a new name. The fact that this is called the “First” Presbyterian Church of Wantage indicates that no other presbyterian church had yet been established in the township. That is, Meeker’s Meeting House never took up that name.

When forty-two members were added by confession to the Clove Church in 1803 it is likely that some (or many) of these came from “Westtown” as that church closed down. Since the Clove and Westtown had been united—at least in having the same minister if not the same session of elders—a connection already existed making it easy for those worshipping at Meeker’s to easily join the Clove. Those who either liked Van Bunschoten’s preaching or who were geographically closer to the Clove than to the new church being built in the hamlet of Westtown would have found reason to continue under his preaching at the Clove.

Others from Meeker’s seem not to have officially joined the Clove, but to have moved in next door for a time only to later to join together with the Clove in forming a new—and presbyterian—church. Some from Meeker’s Meeting House, says Stephens, “chose to build a small structure right next to the Clove Church and continued to occasionally borrow Reverend Elias Van Bunschoten of the Dutch Reformed Church. After his death, the Presbyterians, in their small and informal church, outnumbered the Dutch Reformed Church’s membership. In 1817, the Clove Church was dissolved and the Dutch Reformed congregants joined the Presbyterians, converting the Clove Church into the First Presbyterian Church of Wantage.”²⁶ According to King, “This church [the Clove] flourished until the death of Rev. Van Bunschooten in 1815. After his death another pastor of the Dutch Reformed denomination could not be obtained due to a shortage of pastors.”²⁷ And Rev. Kanouse explained, “Soon after the demise of the Rev. Mr. Van Benschooten the Clove Church was dissolved by a vote of its members, passed November 24^th, 1817, and merged in the First Presbyterian Church, Wantage, which was organized under the Jersey Presbytery, August 11^th, 1818 with twenty-five members, viz. twelve males and thirteen females.”²⁸

The First Presbyterian Church of Wantage continued operations for over one hundred years, even splitting off members who formed other area churches. Today the 1829 building is in the National Historic Register and managed by the non-profit Friends of the Clove Church who hold an annual service at the church.

WESTTOWN

While some of the members of Meeker’s then-closed meeting house transferred over to the Clove, others continued to work for a Presbyterian Church closer to the original meeting house location. Their efforts succeeded when they built Westtown Presbyterian Church in 1806 a few miles north of their previous worship location.

One of the strongest points of connection and continuity between Meeker’s Meeting House and the Westtown Presbyterian Church is seen in that Jeptha Meeker (Samuel’s nephew) is on the list of contributors to the building of the Westtown Presbyterian Church in 1805, giving $10, yet when he died in 1812 he was buried back at the Meeker’s cemetery by the meeting house.²⁹ Also notable is that four of the nine men who signed the 1793 Clove and Westtown incorporation (Jacob Cole, John Neely, Robert Robertson, and Henry Tucker) are later involved at the Westtown Presbyterian Church.

With repeated names shown in bold, the following documents show considerable continuity across the three organizations, from the Presbyterian Society at Westtown to the Westtown Dutch Reformed Church (Meeker’s Meeting House) and finally to the Westtown Presbyterian Church:

1780 Will of Mary Lockwood (mentioning the meeting house): Nathaniel Meeker, Cotton Mather.

1790 (January 26^th) Presbyterian Society at Westtown: Sylvanus Loree, John Hazen, James Brown, Frederic Delano, Henry Tooker, Amos Wilcox, John Davis Jr., John Whitaker.

1793 (April 20^th, recorded August 24^th) Clove and Westtown incorporation: Benj. Coykendall, Jacob Cole, Abraham Quick, John Neely, Jacob Dewitt, Robert Robertson, Peter Bahm, Peter Vanaten, Henry Tucker.³⁰

1803 (March 10) Westtown Presbyterian Church incorporation: Paul Lee, Jacob Cole, Ezra Corwin, Richard Whitaker, Joshua Sayre, and Cotton Mather.³¹

1805 (July 10) List of contributors to the building of First Presbyterian Church of Westtown. This has two pages of names including notably: Benjamin Cole, Jacob Cole, Ezra Corwin, Abraham Hazen, Samuel Hazen, Israel Lee, Paul Lee, Sylvanus Loree, Cotton Mather, Jeptha Meeker, John Neely Jr., John Neely Sr., Roberts Robertson, Joshua Sayre, Henry Tucker, and Richard Whitaker.

1805 (August 19^th) Westtown Presbyterian Church incorporation: Sylvanus Loree, Cotton Mather, David Christie, Ezra Corwin, Joshua Sayre, Israel Lee, Henry Tooker.

1807 (September 14^th) Westtown Presbyterian Church incorporation: John Neely, Benjamin Cole, Cotton Mather, Ezra Corwin, Israel Lee, David Christie, Joshua Sayre, and Henry Tooker.

Westtown Membership List³²: Many names including Henry Tucker (12 Jan. 1811), Jacob Cole (2 May 1812), John Neely (21 Dec. 1808), Paul Lee (20 May 1809), Ezra Corwin (14 Jan. 1809), Richard Whitaker Jr. (12 Feb. 1816), Joshua Sayer (15 Dec. 1820), Catherine Meeker (Wife of Jeptha) (1 Nov. 1816), David Christie (3 Dec. 1815), Benjamin Cole (12 Jan. 1809)

It is apparent that there was a single movement of presbyterianism in the area which underwent change from a mere society without a place to worship, to a church with a relatively short-lived meeting house, to finally building in a permanent location before later connecting to the national denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America.

UNIONVILLE

The third church which arose from those who previously worshipped at Meeker’s Meeting House is the one closest to it, First Presbyterian Church at Unionville, just one mile away.

Shortly after the meeting house ceased to be used, meetings were held in Unionville and Westtown in the very same month, March 1803, to form their own Presbyterian societies and seek to build their own churches. (Thursday the 10^th of March at Westtown and Sunday the 20^th of March at Unionville) It is no coincidence that these meetings happened near the same time, but surely relate to each place having their own desire for a house of worship following the closure of Meeker’s Meeting House. Without the finances to immediately build their own church, the people of Unionville likely met in houses for a time or attended the Westtown church. Around 1815 and 1816 a large number of Unionville people joined the church at Westtown, and Samuel Van Fleet was chosen as an elder there. In time, however, the people of Unionville saved enough money to build their own church. Since the name “Westtown” was already taken, they needed a new name for both their church and for their town. The village in 1822—in a meeting Samuel Van Fleet attended—then voted to change their name to Unionville. Shortly thereafter, in 1824 or 1825 the church building was completed and it took the name First Presbyterian Church at Unionville. For the next few years the people of Unionville either continued to worship in Westtown and/or borrowed the services of Westtown’s minster Thomas Grier at their own church. Finally Unionville was recognized as a particular church by Hudson Presbytery on September 20^th, 1831 with Samuel Van Fleet as the first member listed and among the first elders of the church.³³

One connection from Meeker’s Meeting House to Unionville is seen in two marriages between the Meeker and Clark families, prominent in the founding of the Meeting House and Unionville Church, respectively. Lt. James Clark and Sarah Van Auken Clark had eight children including Abraham Clark (1783-1861) who sold the land to the Unionville Church on which the it was built, Catherine Clark (1766-1846) who married Jeptha Meeker, and James A. Clark (1768-1855) who married Jeptha’s sister Mary Meeker Clark (1770-1836). James A. and Mary are all listed among the charter members of the Unionville Church. One Catherine Clark is also listed but this is more likely Abraham’s wife Catherine or James A. and Mary’s daughter Catherine since the surname Meeker is not used. Shortly after the church’s founding, Sarah Meeker (likely Sarah Jane Meeker (b. 1791 – d. Nov. 25 1863), the daughter of Jeptha Meeker and Catherine Clark)³⁴ also joined the church (Nov. 15, 1831) as did Miss Malvina Meeker (1833).

While Westtown may have a stronger claim to be the continuing church from Meeker’s Meeting House, Unionville must be considered as the younger sibling of Westtown with inheritance rights from Meeker’s all its own.

THE LOCATION OF MEEKER’S MEETING HOUSE

While Meeker’s Meeting House is no longer standing, it may be possible to determine where it once stood.

I first found reference to the meeting house in Doris Cole’s notes in the Minisink museum. She wrote “Early records seem to point to the fact that our church was first located near the New Jersey border on the lower road.” Trying to track down the location more precisely, a local man informed me of a church once standing on the corner of Lower Road and Oil City Rd., but that turned out to have been the Orange Baptist Church which resided there from 1822 to 1852 before their congregation built anew in Unionville. I then got in contact with Jennie Sweetman, a long time writer of local history for the New Jersey Herald, who informed me that the Meeker property is now the Stephen’s farm in Wantage, NJ.

When I visited the Stephen’s Farm, Jon Stephens pointed out the location of the meeting house as across the highway on an old road bed on land now owned by the Federal Government. Yet on that site there were a number of candidate locations for the meeting house. At least three ruined structures are present at that site.³⁵

There was also Lawrence E. King’s claim that Samuel Meeker was buried “between the junction of two old roads.” Ignoring Highway 284 which was built in 1923, there were still multiple candidates for a “junction of two old roads.”

A breakthrough in the search for the meeting house location occurred when local resident Mark Wallace contacted Ray Ayers who’s father had found the Nathaniel Meeker stone. Ray Ayers (1945–), the son of Harold Ayers, makes for the vital link to finding the meeting house location. When he was a child his father bought the farm from Harry W. Christie and Harry told them where the meeting house was located. And Harry (1875-1961), the son of Samuel Christie (1840-1918), would have been the person best situated to know the location of the meeting house, having grown up near the site. According to Ray Ayers, none of the three present ruins are from the church. One of those buildings, he recalled was used as a tenant house for workers on the farm. (And this, the largest of three, is likely what is shown on topographical maps of the area in 1906 and 1908.) The two smaller structures nearby were associated outbuildings. All of these seem likely to this author to have been originally part of the Christie Tannery being as they are near the creek providing the water necessary for the tanning process.

As for finding the precise location of the meeting house, on the morning of July 23, 2022, walking to the site, Ray informed Mark Wallace and I of what he had heard from Harry Christie. The meeting house was located there on the SE corner of two old roads that form a “T” within a stone’s throw of the Appalachian Trail, now covered in part by boulders which were pushed there from above by a bulldozer in Ray’s lifetime to clear land for farming. And, he informed us, his father found the Nathaniel Meeker gravestone while harrowing the ground up the hill to the east of that location. Unfortunately no foundation stones are present at the site, possibly having been taken away for use in other places in years past.

Since Unionville was in the early years called “Upper Westtown” it is plausible to think the original location of “Westtown” was somewhere “lower.” And it was near Lower Road, near the drowned lands, on which Meeker’s Meeting House was built. The elevation readings I took support the theory that Westtown was originally near or at Meeker’s Meeting House. Each of today’s Unionville and Westtown sit at about 550 ft elevation above sea level, but the site of Meeker’s meeting house is at about 450 ft elevation. So Unionville (once referred to as Upper Westtown) is only upwards compared to the old Westtown, not any higher than the modern hamlet. This correlates well with the proposed site of the meeting house.

The proposed location in part explains why the meeting house has been overlooked. So close to the New York – New Jersey was Meeker’s Meeting House that it seems to have largely been off the radar of historians of Orange County (NY) and Sussex County (NJ) alike.

While there should be much confidence in this proposed site as the actual site of Meeker’s Meeting House, a “smoking gun” is needed for confirmation. Perhaps someday confirmation would come by way of a found Samuel Meeker gravestone or an old metal communion token or some other artifact. Until then the remnants of Meeker’s Meeting can best be seen as the living witness continuing in the churches its people helped to form.