The Dutch Reformed Church at Lunenburg (later Presbyterian), formally established in 1770 by Swiss, German and Netherlands immigrants to Nova Scotia, is the oldest Calvinist congregation in Canada. As such, the vital registers of the Dutch Reformed Church at Lunenburg are important to the study of the history and genealogy of the early settlement of Nova Scotia, and especially Lunenburg Co., one of the more vibrant parts of the province which has colonized many other areas of maritime Canada and New England. The Calvinist portion of the German speaking (primarily Plattdeutsch and Svitzerdeutsch) Foreign Protestant immigrants who founded Lunenburg in 1753 were more easily assimilated into the mainstream of British culture (Calvinism being closely related to Scottish Presbyterianism). While the francophone Calvinists among the foreign Protestants, mainly from Switzerland and Montbéliard, preferred to attend St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg because the Jean Baptiste Moreau, the rector there, was also a francophone, the creation of the Dutch Reformed Congregation at Lunenburg was essential to the preservation of Calvinist doctrine among a goodly portion of the persons who arrived in Nova Scotia within the first five years after the establishment of Halifax in 1749.

The Dutch Reformed Church at Lunenburg survived as a German language congregation until 1837, when Rev. Adam Moschell, the second and last of the German born pastors of the congregation, left Lunenburg in poor health to return to Germany. Rev. Moschell was replaced in that year by Rev. Donald A. Fraser, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. Thus began the history of the Calvinists in Lunenburg as an anglophone congregation, in which form it continues to thrive today as St. Andrew’s United Church.

During the German language period of the church, the parish registers (which were kept in handwritten German script), there were 4556 baptisms recorded, 623 confirmations (from 1788 to 1815 only), 842 marriages and 289 burials. These documents were first partially translated and transcribed (for the 1770 1818 period, the pastorate of Rev. Bruin Romkes Comingo) in 1916, and the typescript of the initial translation and transcription of these registers is in the National Archives of Canada (NAC) and widely available on microfilm. The records 1818 1837 have been available on microfilm in the original German at Lunenburg, Halifax, Ottawa and Salt Lake City, but they were only recently translated by volunteers at Salt Lake and still have not been distributed widely on microfilm.

In preparing the detailed genealogical index below, I worked with hard copy prints taken from the original German records on microfilm, and with the 1916 and later translations and transcriptions. There is also a series of baptisms performed by Rev. Comingo on 11 April 1793, after the death of Rev. Seccombe for the Congregationalist parishioners at Chester. These are recorded as well in the archives of St. Stephen’s, Chester, and those records contain details that differ from those recorded later by Rev. Comingo in his baptismal register at Lunenburg. For these entries I have chosen from the options available guided by secondary sources.

My goal was not to create merely a transcript in digital format of the various Dutch Reformed Church records, but rather to utilize the capabilities of the computer to sort these records into a series of usable indices that would benefit the genealogist even more than a simple transcript. Spelling in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was flexible, to say the least, even in German, and there are entries where the same surname is spelled three different ways within the same entry. While these orthographical differences are interesting and offer good clues to the way the name was pronounced at the time (often very different from today’s usage), for the purposes of a computer driven index the spelling differences were superfluous, and for the these indices I have standardized the orthography to what appears to be the most common current usage in Lunenburg County. To assist the researcher, when the original and modern versions of the surname may not be instantly recognizable as identical, I have used both separated by a slash (/), but sorted only under the modern surname.

In addition to spelling, there are also quite a few entries where there can be no question of misreading the spelling, but where the surname given did not exist in Lunenburg County at the time. These are simply errors in the original, perhaps caused by a less than contemporaneous recording of the data into the church records or a mishearing of the name when spoken to the minister, especially for those names not of Germanic origin. In addition to this confusion, both males and females, but especially the latter, usually were baptized with multiple given names, and over a lifetime the common usage as to which name often changed. So a John Nicholas X married to an Anna Catherine Barbara Y could lead to a variety of entries for the same couple. While a transcription would preserve these errors and differences, perhaps with a footnote appended, the computer will not accept them that way for sorting, I have indexed these entries under what I believe the surname or given names should have been, based on other entries in the register and secondary sources, such as wills and census schedules. I believe, and hope the user of the index will agree, that this is “value added” to a simple transcription, but I also accept that there is debate within the genealogical community over the practice. This is also a translation as well as an index, and all given names have been rendered in their modern English versions, Johann as John, etc. The inclusion of a chronological index in this publication will permit the researcher to quickly locate the entries which have been translated, modernized or corrected in the index. At this point in time some 150 200 years after the records were created, it seems to be impossible to tell what language was in use by which families of the congregation, and when those who had come from a Germanic cultural background assimilated into the use of English at home and in naming their children. What is clear, however, is that the records were written in German, and all names were rendered as if they were German one of my ancestors from England married a Baker girl, and he is listed in the registers as Johannes Watson. I doubt that Johannes is the Christian name his mother gave him, demonstrating that name translation worked both ways. For the purists who believe that the written word in a document is untouchable, even in an age of massive illiteracy and in zones of linguistic transition, I invite them to return to the original records and do their own thing. For the rest of us, mostly anglophones now living in North America, having an index available based on modern surname spelling and English given names will assist in research. If is for you that this publication was prepared.

I have kept the use of abbreviations to the minimum, expanding those used in the original records when possible. Information contained within parenthesis () is contained within the original record, though perhaps not in exactly the form used here. Material contained within square brackets [] has been added from other sources for the convenience of the researcher. The abbreviation (N) stands for a Negro, a black person, most of whom during this time had no last names and were known by their given names only, (I) stands for an Indian, a Mi’kmaq, and (w) means a widow/widower. Letters before a slash (s/, d/, c/, w/, wid/) refer to son of, daughter of, child of, wife of, widow of, respectively. All surnames beginning in either Mc or Mac have been uniformly rendered as Mc, and Mc surnames are indexed in their appropriate order under M, not as a separate letter. In a date 00 means that no data was given in the original register, the 00 being a necessary addition for the computer to sort numerically.

While many Lunenburgers had their strong religious preferences, the time period covered by these registers was also a time when those preferences could not always be carried out, given the scarcity of clergy and difficulty in travel, especially in the rural areas. Many Lunenburg families have their records spread out between all of the churches present in the county, as well as at Halifax and Liverpool. The genealogist searching for what appears to be a hole in the family groups present here would be well advised to consult the registers of the other Lunenburg churches (Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Baptist), as well as those of Chester (Anglican, Congregationalist and Baptist). When the immigration agents for the British crown were scouring Europe looking for families to emigrate to Nova Scotia, they were authorized to promise the new immigrants full religious freedom, within the confines of Protestant Christianity, and Judaism. This was not an empty promise, but Great Britain did have a state religion, Anglicanism, and British authorities also saw no reason why tax monies should be used to sponsor Protestant sects other than the official one.

The Calvinists from the continent, therefore, suffered no religious oppression in Nova Scotia, but neither did they receive official encouragement to create their own religious institutions when a perfectly good Protestant Church, St. John’s Anglican, was available for their use. In modern times when state religions are very much out of favor in North America, and all religious institutions are privately sponsored, the difference may seem arcane, but it was not so at the time. For European Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists and Presbyterians alike, religion was very much of a matter for state intervention and support.

Fortunately for the Calvinists at Lunenburg, even though official state support would not be forthcoming for their congregation, there was an ecumenical spirit among the Protestant clergy at Halifax, Lunenburg and Chester. In 1769 the Calvinists of Lunenburg (led by the Kaulback and Shubley families) organized a congregation, built a church and started a search for a minister to serve it. A delegate was sent to Germany, who returned with some money and a communion service, but no minister. The Dutch Reformed Church had its North American headquarters in Philadelphia, and the nascent congregation at Lunenburg asked for help from there only to be advised that there were no ministers to spare.

Thrown onto Nova Scotian resources, the Anglican church in Halifax did assist, and ordained of 3 July 1770 Rev. Bruin Romkes Comingo. Comingo was born in 1723 at Leuwarden, The Netherlands, and had come to Halifax, and later to Lunenburg County, with the original Foreign Protestant immigration. He was one of the original grantees at Chester, and worked with Rev. John Seccombe, a congregationalist minister there. The entries in Rev. Comingo’s baptismal register noted as having taken place at Chester from 1778 to 1793 were performed at Rev. John Seccombe’s church, and there are duplicate entries (not always with the same data) in the Congregational registers at Chester. Comingo was not seminary educated, but all decided that he would do in a pinch, and this was a pinch. He served the church at Lunenburg for nearly half a century, retiring two years before his death on 6 Jan. 1820 at Lunenburg. The records in the 1916 transcription are all his. Rev. Adam Moschell was the second rector of the Dutch Reformed Church at Lunenburg, arriving in Lunenburg from Mannheim, Germany, in 1817. For a part of 1817 18 he overlapped with Rev. Comingo.

The Lutheran pastor at Lunenburg, Rev. Temme, was instrumental in securing this German for the rectorship of the Dutch Reformed Church. Rev. Moschell while in Lunenburg married a local girl, Mary Ann James, on 20 April 1820, and remained at Lunenburg and at the Dutch Reformed Church until 1837. In the summer of 1837 he left Lunenburg in ill health, returned to Germany and died shortly afterwards.

This ended the history of the Dutch Reformed Church in Lunenburg as a German-speaking congregation. Later in 1837 it took an anglophone Presbyterian pastor, and morphed into St. Andrew’s Presbyterian (now United) Church, which still exists today.

Kim Stevens