§4 Bethel Churches - An Introduction

The Bethel area has the distinction of being what has been called the earliest holy ground in Dutchess County We must wonder at what life and living conditions confronted the first white settlers of two hundred fifty years ago. Certainly the early history of Bethel can be said to be a story of spiritual growth and decline, and the churches that were established here during this period of about one hundred years became the shining focal point of an otherwise harsh existence.

When the German Palatines disbanded in 1713 and left their immediate work areas on the Hudson, over a period of years some of them found their way onto the lands of the Little Nine Partners Patent, where they began the task of clearing the land and building primitive shelters. However, in addition to the physical necessities of life there was an unfulfilled need for the worship of God in permanent churches.

The first house of worship to be established in what would become the Town of Pine Plains was erected by the Moravian missionaries in 1743. The Moravians had come into the region to administer to the spiritual needs of the Mahican Indians, journeying almost miraculously from their headquarters in Bethlehem, a town in southeast Pennsylvania. But as white settlers gradually moved into the area, many of them welcomed the opportunity to attend worship services at the chapel and to hear the good preaching of the deeply spiritual men who from time to time arrived here. In 1745, the mission was forced to close, much to the sorrow of their Indian converts and white communicants.

Shortly thereafter, the need in the vicinity for a new house of worship and burying ground led to the construction in 1746 of "Old Round Top." In 1769, this church was officially established as a Lutheran church, denoting the prevailing Palatine influence on the region. There were actually two Round Top churches, the second one built in 1780 on the site of the first. However, as the population of the hamlet of Pine Plains began to grow (the Town of Pine Plains having been organized out of the Town of North East in 1823), the preeminence of the hamlet of Bethel began to subside, and in 1827 the second Round Top was dismantled.

In 1839, the need once again for a house of worship they could call their own led to the construction, in close proximity to the site of the Round Top churches, of the Bethel Union Church. This church was nondenominational. In those days, due to a lack of ministers churches were not as strictly denominational as they are today and most such churches were called 'union' churches.

Bethel also had become home to a small community of Quakers and a Quaker meeting house was erected in 1806

The nineteenth century continued to be marked by a gradual decline in interest in the Bethel churches, and by the early years of this century the only two surviving churches, the Bethel Union Church and the Quaker Meeting House, were also no more.

Land Grants and the Little Nine Partners Patent	Table of Contents		The Moravian Mission
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