GERMAN CHURCH, PINK’S CORNERS

CLASSIFICATION: Churchyard.
LOCATION: Three miles north of the village of Rhinebeck, at Pink’s Corners (or Way’s Crossing) on the New York and Albany Post Road, at the site of the former German Reformed Church.
CONDITION: Overgrown and deserted.
INSCRIPTIONS: 24 in number. Copied June 30, 1913, by J. W. Poucher, M. D., and Mr. George S. Van Vliet.
REMARKS: A church was erected on this site in 1716 which stood for nearly a century. It was the first church building in Dutchess County, ante-dating the Dutch church at Poughkeepsie by about seven years. The congregation that built the church was composed of German Lutherans and German Calvinists. In 1729 the Lutherans withdrew and organized St. Peter’s Lutheran Church of Rhinebeck, see the list of inscriptions following this one). The Calvinists continued to use the original church building from 1729 to 1802. The congregation as a unit passed out of existence about 1802, individual members of it being absorbed in a new German church in the village of Red Hook. The ground around the church at Pink’s Corners was used for burials from early in the eighteenth century. It is now abandoned.