In the early 1800s church was held in log cabins, barns, and sawmills. In 1799 Isaac Sergeant helped organize the Narrows Falls Congregational Church, which became the Lumberland Congregational Church and eventually the Congregational Church of Eldred.
In 1816 Stephen Sergeant, son of Isaac and Mary Sergeant, held revival services in the barn of Asa Hickok, near Halfway Brook, two miles north of the future Barryville. Stephen pastored that congregation—the Lumberland (former Narrows Falls) Congregational Church, until 1826.
In 1832 the membership of the Halfway Brook/Lumberland Congregational Church, which had dropped to fifty people, met at a small schoolhouse. They still did not have a pastor.
In New York City schoolteacher Felix Kyte, from Lydd, England, advertised in the New York Observer for a position in a Congregational Church, because he had fewer students due to the cholera epidemic.
The deacons of the Lumberland Congregational Church saw Felix Kyte’s advertisement and encouraged James Eldred to respond to the ad.
James Eldred’s first letter invited Felix Kyte to pay them a visit at the Village in Lumberland, at least 90 miles away. Felix wrote back, and asked some questions, which James answered in his second letter, on August 7, 1832:
-
You ask the probable amount we would raise per Sabbath. I think we could raise $5 dollars per Sabbath for a season amongst ourselves…
At the place in which we live there is a school house in which we hold our meetings on every Sabbath on Halfway Brook, four miles from the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Several miles west, there is a meeting house, but few of our members are there and no meeting kept up.—James Eldred.
Short story: The Kyte family moved Lumberland and stayed in several different places before finally getting their own home which is shown on the 1870 Beers map.
In 1835 two Congregational Churches were built, one in Barryville and one which is still standing today, the Eldred Congregational Church
Rev. Felix Kyte performed the wedding ceremony for both sets of my great-grandparents, as well as other relatives.
