At the beginning of the eighteenth century the population of Manhattan Island had increased to 5,000 souls, chiefly Dutch and English.  These figures include about 800 negro slaves.  The slave trade and piracy were at this time perfectly legitimate lines of business.

For ten years the Lutherans had been without a minister.  In 1701 they invited Andrew Rudmann to become their pastor.  He had been sent by the Archbishop of Upsala as a missionary to the Swedish settlements on the Delaware.  Rudmann accepted the call, but after a severe illness, as the climate did not agree with him, he returned to Pennsylvania, where in 1703 he ordained Justus Falckner to be his successor in New York.

Falckner was a graduate of Halle.  It was a kind Providence that made him pastor of the Lutherans in New York at this time.  Events had happened and were still happening in Europe that were destined to make history in America.

Germany, paralyzed by the results of the Thirty Years’ War, and hopelessly divided into a multitude of political fragments, had become the helpless prey of the spoiler.  The valley of the Rhine was ravaged from Heidelberg to the Black Forest.  To this day, after more than two centuries, the ruins may still be traced.  Upon the accession of the Catholic House of Neuburg to the throne of the Palatinate the Protestants were subjected to intolerable persecution.  Their churches and schools were taken from them.  Frequent raids were made upon the helpless border lands by the armies of Louis the Fourteenth.  In a time of peace the Lutheran house of worship in Strassburg was wrested from its owners and transformed into a Catholic cathedral.

This devastation of the Rhine Valley caused an extensive emigration by way of London to New York.  In the winter of 1708 Pastor Kocherthal arrived with the first company of Palatine exiles.  In succeeding years many others followed, most of them settling on the upper Hudson and in the Mohawk Valley, but some of them remaining in New York.

The inhuman treatment which they received during the voyage, followed by hunger and disease, decimated their ranks.  Of the 3,086 persons who set sail from London only 2,227 reached New York.  Here they were not permitted to land, but were detained in tents on Governor’s Island, where 250 more died soon after their arrival.

One of the men thus detained was destined to take a prominent place in the subsequent history of his countrymen, Johann Conrad Weiser.  His descendants down to our own day have been filling high places in the history of their country as ministers, teachers, soldiers and statesmen.  His great-grandson was the Speaker of the first House of Representatives of the United States.  Another great-grandson, General Peter Muehlenberg, was for a time an assistant minister in Zion Church at New Germantown, N. J. He accepted a call to Woodstock, Virginia, where at the outbreak of the Revolution he startled his congregation one Sunday by declaring that the time to preach was past and the time to fight had come.  Throwing off his ministerial robe and standing before them in the uniform of an American officer, he appealed to them to follow him in the defence of the liberties of his country.  He became a distinguished officer in the army and subsequently rendered good service in the civil administration of the new republic.