No. 56 February 2006
The authoritative source on early churches in New Jersey

ISSN 1543-3250

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— Highlights —

Last month's feature
the state's oldest churches, part 1

Book reviews
Henry Adams Histories

Can you identify this church?

Trenton - Word to the World

Vintage photo of the month

Newark - St Patrick's

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Feature of the month

Oldest churches & meetinghouses in New Jersey, part 2

This month we'll pick up where we left off, continuing our list of the oldest religious building of each denomination (not the oldest congregations). I expect partisans of a couple of old churches may quarrel with my identification—I have heard from partisans of St. John's in Newark in the past, but they were unconvincing. The existence of a foundation or a partial wall has been used to justify a claim of priority over a couple of the churches included here, but I have chosen to use the continuing existence of a substantial structure as the determining criterion. I have an open mind, however, and sincerely welcome any evidence that might cause me to modify my list. In most cases there is little significance to me in which church or meetinghouse is actually the oldest. Where a matter of architectural style is involved, the issue may be a significant one, as I try to establish, or at least infer, the origins of a building tradition or architectural style. All of these buildings have separate entries on the site, so I provide here little more than the basic information about founding and construction dates.

Colemantown Meetinghouse, Mount Laurel Township, Burlington County, 1813.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in Philadelphia in 1816, but this congregation in Mount Laurel predates the formation of the AME by three years. It was started in 1813 by free blacks in the area and has never ceased services. There are actually two old churches on the site. The Colemantown Meetinghouse, which dates to 1813, was moved here from another location. Jacob's Chapel was erected on the site, given to the congregation by a local Quaker, in 1859.

First Congregational Church, Westfield, Union County, 1820. Among the first settlers in New Jersey after the English takeover of New Netherlands were Puritans (Congregationals) from Connecticut. They soon realized that the Scotch Presbyterians were better organized and had more political clout, so by 1710 or so, most of the early Congregational churches, including the ones in Newark and Elizabeth, affiliated with the Presbyterian church. But here is an early Congregational church. Published sources say this building was erected in 1820; although I am a bit hesitant to endorse that date, there is nothing in the style—an obvious Congregational Wren-Gibbs building right out of New England—that is inconsistent with that date. My unease is due largely to the sophistication of the design at a time when most rural congregations were erecting much ruder structures. I call attention to my doubts in hope it will prompt someone with more information to contact me.

Seventh Day Baptist Church, Shiloh, Cumberland County, c.1820. There are two accounts of the Seventh Day Baptists in the state—one identifies them as a division of German Baptists who split off to form the Seventh Day sect in 1728; the other says they immigrated generally from Wales directly to Cumberland County. Both may be correct. In any case, they were established in south Jersey by the early 1700s. My reading of the record is that the congregation in or near Shiloh erected this small meetinghouse with a Greek Revival portico about 1820. There is also an 1860 Greek Revival building on the site, which was later converted to a school.

Free Union Church, Liberty Township, Warren County, 1843. Union churches arose not from an early spirit of ecumenicalism, but because the low population densities of much of the state moved families of one sect to join with families of another to jointly build a church or at least a lecture station. In many cases there was not a settled minister, but the congregation depended on occasional visits of itinerant preachers. There are a dozen remaining union churches in the state—ones built by congregations that included Reformed, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist members. The congregations usually lasted only until one group gained ascendancy, at which time they bought out the others and converted the church to their own denomination. This union congregation was formed in 1841 and the small frame building was erected two years later.

Little York Christian Church, Alexandria Township, Hunterdon County, 1844. Several religious movements in the early part of the 19th century sought to avoid the fractionalization of Christian denominations. Alexander Campbell became the best-known of the leaders, and the church was often referred to as the Campbellite church. It was later known as the Disciples of Christ, and it grew rapidly between 1825 and the 1850s. There are ten remaining Campbellite churches in the state, mostly stucco-over-stone buildings of a common design; all but a couple have been converted to other uses. This one is now used as a barn and gives no sign of its original use.

St. Patrick's Pro-Cathedral, Newark, Essex County, 1849.
Catholic organizations had few rights recognized by law until the state's constitution was amended in 1840. Rapid growth fueled by immigration from Ireland and Catholic areas of Germany lead to formation of more than twenty parishes in the 1840s. St. Patrick's was begun in 1846 and completed three years later. Its French Gothic style, credited to architect Patrick Keeley and the priest at St. John's church (located less then a mile away) is much finer (to my eye) than the heavy Gothic employed by later architects. This is one of the state's exceptional churches. National Register.

Sandbrook Church, Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, 1849. German Baptists, sometimes referred to as Dunkards (watch your spelling and pronunciation on that one, folks), were as schismatic as other Baptists; one splinter group became the Church of the Brethren, another formed the Ephrata settlement in Pennsylvania, and a third affiliated with the Seventh Day Baptists. This small stucco-over-stone meetinghouse is the result of a further schism in a Brethren congregation. It was known as the Sandbrook church from the name of the leader of the congregation. I suspect there are older German Baptist buildings in the state, but this is the oldest one I have found to date.


Holmanville Mormon Church, Jackson Township, Ocean County, 1857. Mormons were actively organizing in the region between Tom's River and New Egypt in the 1840s. Mormon stakes were visited by both Joseph Smith, who founded the church, and Brigham Young, his ultimate successor. Many emigrated to Utah in the 1860s, and Protestant yahoos ran off most of the remaining Mormons in 1869. It is possible that another of their early churches exists in the region, for several were built; this is the only well-documented survivor, and may be the oldest Mormon church in the country. It now serves a Pentecostal congregation.

Adas Emuno Synagogue, Hoboken, Hudson County, 1883.
By the end of the nineteenth century, there was a sizable Jewish population in Paterson, Newark, Elizabeth, Trenton, Passaic and throughout Hudson county, but only Hoboken and Newark in north Jersey have surviving nineteenth-century synagogues. There are only five other early synagogues in the state, all in south Jersey. The Congregation Adas Emuno was organized in 1871 and built the vaguely Romanesque building on Garden Street in 1883, which they occupied until at least 1940. It served as a Christian church for a time but now has been converted into an apartment building.

First Unitarian Church, Plainfield, Union County, 1891.
Given the strength of the Unitarians in Boston and northeastern Massachusetts—they had essentially taken over Harvard which had been founded as a college to train Congregational ministers—by the middle of the nineteenth century, it is surprising that the earliest Unitarian church in the state was not built until 1891. In the pre-war period, Unitarians were practically deists—Jacobeans who denied the divinity of Christ—so it is not surprising that an intellectual backwater as this state was had no room for yet another sect. This is a small but very stylish building; the architect was Oscar Teale who is responsible for half a dozen of the most imaginative churches in the state.

A list of the oldest religious structures in itself is not exceptionally significant; what I do find of more than passing interest is the religious diversity of the state that can be seen in this list. It is doubtful that any other state, with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, exhibits the diversity that we find here in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Nine denominations erected meetinghouses and churches that have survived more than two hundred years, and two more of that age served union or non-denominational congregations. Another ten denominations built churches or synagogues in the nineteenth century, and that does not count several small splinter sects such as the Protestant Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, or the German, Danish and Swedish Congregational churches , for example. Much of the state's demographic history can be read from the list of early churches—Quaker, Calvinist, and Anglican initially—then a few of the pietist sects from Germany and Bohemia, followed by the rise of newer denominations in the Second Great Awakening of the early nineteenth century—Methodist, AME, Campbellite, and Mormon, along with the arrival of Roman Catholicism by the middle decades. To date I have not found evidence of an Eastern or Orthodox church dating to the nineteenth century although there was significant immigration from areas where those denominations flourished well before the turn of the century.

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