As this year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence we will be publishing a series of monthly posts highlighting collection materials that illuminates different aspects of the lives and activities of Moravians during this tumultuous period in history. Want the next post delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to our mailing list here! 

In previous posts in this series we highlighted the desire of the Moravian Church not to get drawn into the Revolutionary War and a member who nevertheless was an active supporter of American independence. Today, we would like to look at a different response from a Moravian, that of a pastor in New York City who favored the British in the conflict.

Gustaf Ewald Schaukirch (which was later anglicized as Gustav Ewald Shewkirk) was born in Szczecin, Poland, then part of Prussia, and came to North America in 1774. Shewkirk was the pastor of First Moravian Church in Manhattan, New York City [1], from 1775 to 1783, after which he also served in the West Indies and Ireland before his death in Herrnhut, Germany, in 1805. The Moravian Church was present in New York City by the 1740s, and its first church building was constructed in 1751. As shown on the map on the left First Moravian Church was located on Fair Street, now Fulton Street, and had more than 200 members when Shewkirk became the congregation’s pastor in 1775. He arrived at a time of great worry and turmoil, as tensions between the American Colonies and Great Britain were rapidly heading towards open conflict.

 

In the congregational diary of First Moravian Church, Shewkirk wrote extensively about the impact the war had on both his congregation and on the city as a whole. One of the most dramatic impacts was that many people left the city, including nearly three quarters of the people who attended First Moravian Church. Shewkirk touches on this in the pages shown above, writing on Monday, February 5th “One could not pass the street without feeling a great deal; and at last we were obliged to encourage it that our sisters and young People might retreat”. Despite this, Shewkirk continued to hold regular services and First Moravian Church was the only congregation in Manhattan to remain active throughout the Revolutionary War. The diary is a fascinating account of the period as Shewkirk also wrote about many other dramatic events that occurred that year, including tensions between Revolutionary and Loyalist citizens, ministering to wounded soldiers, fires, and a home being hit by a errant cannon ball.

Shewkirk support for the British in the conflict is made especially clear in the entry shown above from Sunday, September 15th, 1776, when British forces under the command of General Howe crossed the East River and took control of New York City. Shewkirk’s diary entry reads in part “The king’s flag was put up again in the fort, and the Rebels’ taken down. And thus the city was now delivered from those Usurpers who had oppressed it for so long.” It is not clear from the sources we’ve examined why Shewkirk was a Loyalist, but Harry Emilius Stocker suggests in his 1922 book “A history of the Moravian Church in New York City” that it may have been connected to Shewkirk having arrived in the colonies only two years before and having previously lived in England.

Like William Henry and his ardent support of the Revolution, Shewkirk’s Loyalist beliefs put him at odds with the Moravian Church’s desire to stay apart from the wider world as much as possible. However, whereas Henry openly expressed his views and became a prominent figure in the Revolutionary War, Shewkirk appears to have largely kept his views private and focused on his responsibilities as a Moravian pastor. The lives of these two people clearly show the wide range in both what Moravian’s believed about the American Revolution and how they chose to handle these views. We hope you will join us next month when we look at how future generations of Moravians would view the American Revolution through a 19th century scrapbook prepared by the Moravian artist Rufus A. Grider.

[1] At this time New York City was primarily the southern portion of the island of Manhattan, the modern city formed in 1898 with the consolidation of several previously independent municipalities.

Further Reading:

1776 diary of First Moravian Church of New York

—–> Digitized and can be viewed in its entirety through our online finding aid here

—–> Excerpts from the diary can be read in this two-part article (with free JSTOR account):

• A.  A. Reinke,  “Occupation of New York City by the British, 1776”, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol.1 no. 1 (1877): 133-148, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20084272

• A.  A. Reinke,  “Occupation of New York City by the British, 1776 (concluded)”, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol.1 no. 3 (1877): 250-262, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20084290

Plan of the city of New York, in North America: surveyed in the years 1766 and 1767

—–> Can be viewed in its entirety through the New York Public Library:

• The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Plan of the city of New York, in North America: surveyed in the years 1766 and 1767” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1776. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/3fbbc0c0-c5ed-012f-4157-58d385a7bc34

Stocker, Harry Emilius. A history of the Moravian Church in New York City New York City, 1922

This book is another valuable resource for learning more about this period

—–> Part of our library collection (call number: Eac 80) and available in our reading room

—–> Available online through the Internet Archive here

Zach Sanders, “British Occupation of New York City”, In The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, edited by Zoie Horecny and Alexandra Montgomery. Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 2012

This interesting article discusses the British occupation of New York City in broader terms and provides further context for the events referenced

——> https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/british-occupation-of-new-york-city