a second freshet came and carried it away. The dam was now entirely rebuilt and with great strength. But the freshet again returned and destroyed the work. Frederick was now much distressed. Meanwhile, his slave, Harry [Cuffy], had a dream. The dream was repeated and he felt compelled to tell it. It was that God was displeased with his master for stopping work on the church to repair the dam. He must go on with the church, and then build the dam and it would stand. Frederick heeded and followed the warning and the dam stood.
Rev David Cole D.D., 200th Anniversary Speech
Rev. Cole tells this story in an attempt to make sense of the various dates attached to the origins of the church. He believes the work may have started in 1684 and continued on and off until it was finally completed. Cuffy’s story gives a possible explanation. But to the modern ear, and I’ll use my own experience, the story sounds a bit fabricated upon first hearing. How is a slave, who may have recently arrived after a prolonged journey and illness, who is then force marched across Westchester county, capable of communicating to a master whose language he does not share and whose station in life would generally have prevented him close personal contact? When I became a docent at the Old Dutch Church, I stopped telling this story because it felt like a “magical negro trope”, in that it falls on the black slave to tell his white master how to do his job. I had to ask myself, what is the purpose of this story? Does it somehow make us feel better about Cuffy’s status as a slave?
The historian Dennis Maika reminds us that, “When they arrived at Philipes’s Upper Mills, the Kongolese cohort would have survived war and captivity at home, the cruelties of the Middle Passage, and illnesses that sent them from Barbados to New York.” He goes on to say that their Kongolese culture would help them recover and adjust. He shares some cultural insight into the nature of the first cohort of enslaved Africans at the Upper Mills. The Kongolese were an agricultural society who planted root vegetables, maize, fruit trees and understood how to care for the soil. Their proximity to the Congo River made them river traders and navigators and brought them in contact with a variety of other cultures. All of these skills would prove valuable to the work of the Upper Mills. But what about the church? What significance would that have to Cuffy? Why would this construction mean anything to him, or be different from any other building project at the Mills? Maika points out that Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries had been present in the Kingdom of the Kongo as early as the 1491 conversion and baptism of King Nzinga to Christianity. The nobility followed suit and Christianity would become the principle religion of the kingdom. A catechism translated from Portuguese to Kikongo was available in 1624. We can surmise that the former passengers of the ship Charles were Christians, who would have been familiar with the sign of the cross, standard Catholic prayers and liturgy. In Maika’s words, “For African Christians, basic principles of a proper Christian life, including divine intervention in daily affairs and the importance of a place of worship, were understood.” Further,
Dreams were acceptable conduits for such revelations and, in Kongolese culture, special individuals known as ngangas served as interpreters of dreams. Given his cultural heritage, we should not be surprised that an enslaved Kongolese at Philipsburg shared a dream suggesting divine intervention in building the Church.
This story about Cuffy and Frederick Philipse, repeated for generations, sounds more true to me when viewed from the perspective of Kongolese culture. A shared faith may be the key to understanding why Cuffy would feel compelled to approach Philipse the way he did.
Once the church was completed, both tenant farmers and enslaved Africans attended services, but the latter, who could be baptized, would not be admitted to full membership in the church. This practice was already in place in the churches of New