attle shed" on the southwest corner of Broadway and Rector
Street was torn down and a stone building erected which was dedicated in
1729 and named Trinity church.

The parish which Berkenmeyer inherited from Falckner, extending from New
York to Albany, and including many Dutch and German settlements on both
sides of the river, proved to be a larger field than he could cultivate.
He therefore sent to Germany for another minister, and resigning at New
York, took charge of the northern and more promising part of the field,
making his home at Loonenburg (Athens), on the Hudson. For nineteen
years he labored in this field. He died in 1751.

Berkenmeyer was a scholarly man, a faithful minister, and an impressive
personality. He belonged to a different school from that of his great
contemporary, Muehlenberg, and the rest of the Halle missionaries, and
his correspondence with them frequently savored of theological
controversy.

His successor in New York was Knoll, a native of Holstein, who spent
eighteen years of faithful work in Trinity church under trying
circumstances. He had to preach in Dutch to a congregation that had
become prevailingly German. There was a growing dissatisfaction among
the people. During the first half of the century Dutch influence
gradually declined and German grew stronger. The ministers were all of
them German, although they preached chiefly in Dutch, with occasional
ministrations in German. At last the Germans, feeling the need of ampler
service in their own language, took advantage in 1750 of the presence of
a peripatetic preacher and instituted the first "split" in the Lutheran
church of this city by organizing Christ Church. Knoll resigned soon
after and removed to Loonenburg, where he again became the successor of
Berkenmeyer.

[illustration: "Henry Melchior Muehlenberg (Otto Schweizer's Heroic
Stone Figure)"]

In the Eighteenth Century
1751-1800

The resignation of Knoll and the difficulties of the mother congregation
were the occasion of calling to New York the most distinguished minister
the American Church has ever had.

Henry Melchior Muehlenberg came to America from Halle in 1742 to
minister to the congregations in and near Philadelphia. The disordered
condition of the American churches opened a wide field for his
administrative ability, and for the rest of his life, in addition to his
pastoral activity, he accomplished a great task in the planting and
organization of churches.