Queens County was created in 1683 as one of the original counties of the colony or province of New York. It included what are today the counties of Queens and Nassau (and Lloyd's Neck, ceded to Suffolk County in 1886). From the first European settlement in 1642 until 1664 most of the area had been part of New Netherland, and from 1664 to 1683 it was included in the entity known as Yorkshire.
Queens County originally consisted of five towns, each of which was older than the county itself. The towns were Newtown (started as Maspeth, 1642), Hempstead (1644), Flushing (1645), Oyster Bay (1653), and Jamaica (1656). After the Revolution, in 1784, Hempstead was divided into two towns, called North and South Hempstead; twelve years later South Hempstead became plain Hempstead again. The next change was in 1870, when Long Island City was separated from Newtown.
In 1898 the western third of the county was annexed to New York City as the Borough of Queens; the following year the eastern two-thirds became the new county of Nassau. The Borough of Queens was created from Long Island City and the towns of Newtown, Flushing, and Jamaica, plus the Rockaway Peninsula which had been part of the Town of Hempstead; all of those local jurisdictions ceased to exist as of 1898. Nassau County was formed in 1899 from North Hempstead, Oyster Bay, and the rest of Hempstead, and it is still divided into those three towns today (plus two cities: Glen Cove, formerly part of Oyster Bay, and Long Beach, formerly part of Hempstead). In doing Queens or Nassau research, catalogs and indexes must be checked for both of the county names and for the names of both present and former subdivisions.
Records kept by religious bodies form a major resource for research into Queens County families, and many of those records for the earlier years are available in libraries, including the NYG&B Collection at the New York Public Library. The genealogist's first task is to determine which houses of worship existed in the place and time period being researched. The search can be further narrowed if it is certain that the family adhered to only one denomination, but particularly for Protestant families it is usually unwise to assume that this was the case.
Once the potential churches, meetings, etc., have been identified, the next task is to find out what records have survived and where they can be accessed.
WPA Guides
The best place to begin is with the guides produced by the Work Projects Administration (WPA); though published 70 years ago, they are still valuable finding aids. For present-day Queens County see the WPA's Guide to Vital Statistics in the City of New York: Borough of Queens: Churches (1942). For Nassau see Guide to Vital Statistics Records of Churches in New York State (Exclusive of New York City) (1942), vol. 1, pages 1-28. (note that despite the use of the word "Churches" in these two WPA titles, both include lists of Jewish congregations). Present-day Queens is also covered in much more detail in the WPA's published inventories for the following denominations of New York City: Eastern Orthodox and Armenian, Lutheran (all Lutheran denominations), The Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Protestant Episcopal Church/Diocese of Long Island, Reformed Church in America (Dutch Reformed), and Society of Friends (Quakers). Only the last volume includes Nassau County. See "The W.P.A. and New York Genealogy," NYG&B Newsletter 11:2 (Spring 2000):29-30.
The People
In terms of its ethnic and religious makeup the European population of Queens in the colonial period was notably different from that of Long Island's other two counties, Kings and Suffolk. Kings County's population was largely Dutch and Dutch Reformed, while Suffolk's was almost entirely English and predominantly Presbyterian. In Queens, by contrast, there were significant numbers of both English and Dutch, whose religious affiliations included Presbyterian, Anglican, Dutch Reformed, Quaker, and Baptist, with no denomination having anything close to a majority.
There are no surviving 17th century religious records for the county except those of the Quakers, but some Queens residents appear in Dutch Reformed records of New York City and Kings County during that period. For later years when Queens County church records do exist, it continues to be wise to also check New York City, Kings County, and western Suffolk County churches, as Queens people often went outside the county especially to be married.
There were also Native American and African American communities in colonial Queens County. The surviving early church records do not appear to contain any references to the Native population, but may occasionally identify persons as African American; that community would establish its own churches in the 19th century.
Beginning in the 1840s there was a marked increase in European immigration to the county, particularly from Ireland and Germany, which added Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches to the religious landscape. This immigrant flow has never ended. The some 3.5 million people who live in Queens and Nassau today come from nearly every corner of the world and represent a great variety of religions. Only a few of today's residents have colonial roots in the two counties, but there are large numbers of Americans and Canadians who can trace part of their ancestry to colonial Queens.
In addition to the WPA guides, the bibliography Long Island Genealogical Source Material [LIGSM] by Herbert F. Seversmith and Kenn Stryker-Rodda, published by the National Genealogical Society in 1962, is valuable for identifying published and unpublished transcripts of religious records held by various major libraries, mostly in New York City and Long Island. Catalogs of those libraries should be checked for post-1962 acquisitions. Also, do not overlook the holdings of local public libraries or historical societies in the two counties, which were not covered in LIGSM.
Titles cited in this article are available at the New York Public Library (items from the NYG&B Collection have call numbers prefixed NYGB). Most of the same titles, and others including manuscript items listed in LIGSM. have been filmed and can be accessed through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Some of these sources are also available at various websites, some of which are indicated below.
For churches of all denominations attended by the German community in present-day Queens County see Richard Haberstroh's The German Churches of Metropolitan New York (NYG&B, 2000), 98-106. Also useful is Haberstroh's list of addresses of various church archives (ibid., 49-50).
Following is a summary of available records by denomination, with some additional historical background. Denominations listed in the order in which they first appeared in the counties.
Puritan/Presbyterian
All of the colonial towns were founded by English settlers, the majority of whom appear to have been Puritan members of the Church of England. Thus in Newtown, Jamaica, and Hempstead the Puritan settlers established churches which were considered to be part of the Church of England, and which functioned like the parish churches in the old country. However, some of the Queens settlers distanced themselves from the established church and were ripe targets for Baptist and Quaker missionaries who soon appeared in the county. These dissenters were numerous enough in Flushing and Oyster Bay that a traditional church was not formed in either place.
During this same period the Puritans in England fought the Civil War, overthrowing the monarchy and gaining control of both church and state (the Commonwealth under Cromwell). After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the Puritans were excluded from the Church of England and classed as dissenters (Non-conformists). However, many years would pass before this change had any effect in Queens. The Ministry Act, passed by the New York Assembly in 1693 but not fully implemented until 1704, formally established the Church of England in Queens County, and an attempt was made to convert the existing English churches to Anglican worship. This attempt succeeded in Hempstead but was met with angry resistance in Jamaica and Newtown (see Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, vols. 2 [1901] and 3 [1902], passim). Realizing that they could not survive on their own (as "Independents" or Congregationalists), the English congregations in those towns sought support from the Church of Scotland, which welcomed them into the Presbytery of Philadelphia. Thus the Newtown and Jamaica churches became Presbyterian and have continued that affiliation to the present day. A Presbyterian congregation was later formed in Hempstead as well, and all Presbyterian churches in Queens and Nassau are "descendants" of these three churches.
Records of the Newtown Presbyterian Church 1709-1882 were published in the Record vols. 55-56 and in the Collections of The NYG&B Society, vol. 8 (1928), available in the NYG&B eLibrary (Religious Records no. 25), but Henry B. Hoff, “A New Look at the Newtown (L.I.) Presbyterian Church Records,” New York Researcher 21 (2010):62-63, explains that a more complete version of the records is found in James Riker, “Historical Notes of Newtown,” on film from the NYG&B Collection at NYPL Milstein Division call no. *R-USLHG *ZI-1309, and also on FHL film 17805 items 3-6. [Note that while this church is still called “Newtown,” the neighborhood in which it is located is now known as Elmhurst.]
Records of the Jamaica Presbyterian Church 1775-1848 (with some births as early as 1679 but recorded in or after 1775) are available in “Presbyterian births recorded, Jamaica, Long Island, New York,” copied by Josephine C. Frost, 1914, NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-342, also in Frost’s Long Island Church Records 1775-1848, NYGB AZ Loc 09-340 (which includes marriages 1775-1848 and deaths 1750-1848). Jamaica marriages 1775-1848 were published in the Record vols. 129-131.
Records of the Hempstead Presbyterian Church 1805-1894 were published in the Record vols. 53-54.
Presbyterian church records of Suffolk County (especially Huntington 1723–, and Babylon 1785–) include marriages of Queens people particularly from Oyster Bay, while some Queens names may also surface in New York City Presbyterian records, see Presbyterian Records of New York City (Manhattan). Consult the WPA guides for later Presbyterian churches in Queens and Nassau.
Society of Friends (Quakers)
Many of the English settlers whose ties to the Church of England were weak or already broken were readily converted by the first Quaker missionaries who arrived in 1656. This turn of events alarmed the Dutch authorities, but their attempted repression of the Quakers inspired the famous Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 and orders from Amsterdam to tolerate the sect. Thereafter the Society of Friends flourished in the county, and there are still active meetings in Queens and Nassau today.
At first the Queens County meetings came under the Monthly Meeting at Flushing, but in 1697 those in Hempstead, Oyster Bay, and points east were set off as the Westbury Monthly Meeting. In 1789 Westbury was divided into the Westbury and Jericho meetings; meanwhile the Flushing meeting moved to the City and was renamed New York, after which a separate new Monthly Meeting was established at Flushing in 1805.
Volume III of William W. Hinshaw's Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (1940) contains abstracts of vital records from all of these monthly meetings and some other sources. Details of the earliest vital records were published in the Record vols. 3-7 (1872–76). Consult LIGSM for other abstracts and transcripts, some of which are available in the NYG&B Collection at NYPL. The original record books, including the valuable men's and women's minutes, are preserved at Swarthmore College, with film copies in the NYG&B Collection at NYPL, Milstein Division microfilm *ZI-1376, and at the FHL (see Records of the Society of Friends (Quakers), New York Yearly Meeting, and New York Yearly Meeting: Microfilmed Records). A transcript of the earliest minutes was published as "The People Called Quakers," Records of Long Island Friends 1671-1703, ed. Natalie A. Naylor (Hempstead: Long Island Studies Institute, Hofstra University, 2001).
Anglican/Episcopal
As already noted, the Church of England or Anglican Church became the "established church" in Queens County at the end of the 17th century, which meant it was supported by public taxation. Two parishes were created, Jamaica and Hempstead, roughly coinciding to today's two counties. The minister of Grace Church, Jamaica, also served Newtown (later St. James's) and Flushing (later St. George's), while Hempstead also served Oyster Bay (later Christ Church) as well as Anglicans in Suffolk County.
The Jamaica and Hempstead Anglican records must be checked regardless of a family's religious background, because many people who had no formal church affiliation went to the Anglican ministers to be married or have their children baptized. The number of Anglican communicants, however, remained small. In 1784 the establishment of the Church of England was ended in the county and the parishes became part of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The county came under the Diocese of New York until 1868 when the Diocese of Long Island was created. WPA guides should be consulted for details of all parishes and their records.
For the church at Jamaica, the register of the Rev. Thomas Poyer (1710-32) survives, see Record vol. 19; then there is a gap until 1769 when the registers resume. Horatio O. Ladd, The Origin and History of Grace Church, Jamaica, New York (1914), includes all baptisms and marriages to 1866 as well as sexton's records for grave digging, bell ringing, pall and attendings 1773-1820.
Until after the Revolution, records of the Anglican churches at Flushing and Newtown were included in those of Jamaica. Records (1782-1896) of St. George's, Flushing, were transcribed by Kenneth Scott and published in the Record vols. 110-113. Dr. Scott also transcribed records (1830-1880) of Zion Episcopal Church of Little Neck at Douglaston (est. 1830 from St. George’s), see Record vols. 96-101, also film of original records 1830-1900 in NYG&B Collection, NYPL Milstein Division call no. *R-USLHG *ZI-1252. The records (1803-1888) of St. James, Newtown, have been transcribed and published by Arthur C. M. Kelley (Rhinebeck: Kinship, 2001). That publication includes a few records (1833-37) of St. George's, Astoria (est. 1827 from St. James), and there is an inventory of that church's records in the NYG&B Collection [not yet in NYPL catalog].
The registers of St. George's, Hempstead, commence in 1725, but some records as early as 1705 were found in vestry minutes at the town hall (Record, vol. 54). The registers for 1725-1786 were transcribed by Benjamin D. Hicks and published in the Record vols. 9-15, 24; Josephine C. Frost transcribed “Baptisms: St. George's Episcopal Church, Hempstead, Long Island, New York” (1914), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-144 v. 1-2, covering 1725-1847, and “Marriages: St. George's Episcopal Church, Hempstead, Long Island, New York, 1787-1845” (1914), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-145. Marriages to 1812 and baptisms to 1791 are also found in John Sylvanus Haight, Adventures for God (1932), for which the NYG&B Collection has a separate index by Frances Bergen Cropsey (1962), NYGB N.Y. L H378 H37.1 INDEX; however, the Haight version should be checked against the others for accuracy.
St. George's records include numerous entries for baptisms and marriages performed at Oyster Bay (and Huntington), where separate parish records do not begin until the 19th century. Henry B. Hoff, "Baptisms at Islip, Long Island, 1782-1789," Record 121:135, includes some baptisms at Oyster Bay South (Massapequa). In the NYG&B Collection is a photocopy of the original register of baptisms 1824-59 of Christ Church at Manhasset/North Hempstead (est. 1803) [not yet in NYPL catalog].
Among records at other repositories are "excerpts" from registers of Trinity Church, Hewlett (est. 1830) at Brooklyn Historical Society, and a transcript of records of St. Paul's, Glen Cove (est. 1833), at the Long Island Studies Institute.
Dutch Reformed
There were some Dutch among the earliest residents of Newtown, and in the late 1600s more Dutch from Kings County and New York City began to move into that town as well as to Jamaica, Flushing, and the western part of Hempstead. This migration continued in the first half of the 1700s with the development of a significant Dutch community in Oyster Bay — but few Dutch ventured further east. The “Dutch” were actually a community of mixed ancestry — descendants of the Dutch, French, German, Scandinavian, English, and other settlers of New Netherland — united by a common language (Dutch) and religion (Dutch Reformed).
At first the Dutch were served by the Reformed ministers in Kings County and New York City, and records of the churches there should be checked for their names. The first Dutch Reformed Church in Queens was that of Jamaica (1702), followed by Newtown (modern Elmhurst, 1731), Oyster Bay (at Wolver Hollow, now Brookville, 1732), and Success (1745). The last-named church, in the town of Hempstead (later North Hempstead) near the Flushing town line, was later moved to Manhasset. In searching for these churches, check all of the locality names mentioned here.
All four churches have extensive 18th century baptismal records, but their marriage registers begin in the 19th century. It should be noted that English families occasionally had children baptized in the Dutch churches, and the records should be checked for their names (often written phonetically in Dutch).
For the Jamaica church the most reliable transcript is that by Kenn Stryker-Rodda, published in the Record vols. 105-112; this covers baptisms 1702-1873 and some other 19th century records
For Newtown, the NYG&B Collection has “Baptismal record of the Reformed Dutch Church at Newtown, Long Island, New York, 1736 to 1846, [with] marriages by Rev. Garretson at Newtown from 1835 to 1846,” copied from the original by Henry Onderdonk, Jr., typed from his manuscript by Josephine C. Frost (1913), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-341, also at Olive Tree Genealogy. James Riker incorporated many of this church's records into the genealogies in his Annals of Newtown (1852).
For Success/Manhasset, the NYG&B Collection has: “Baptisms from Reformed Dutch Church at Success, Long Island, New York: 1742-1793,” copied by Josephine C. Frost (1913), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-567; “Marriages recorded at Reformed Dutch Church, Manhasset, Long Island (formerly Success, then North Hempstead) 1785-1878, 1826-1859, also a few deaths 1841-1878,” copied from the original records by Henry Onderdonk Jr., typed from his manuscript by Josephine C. Frost (1913), NYPL Milstein Division call no. APR (Manhasset, N.Y.) (Reformed Dutch Church, Manhasset, N.Y. Marriages recorded) [duplicate from NYGB kept off site]; and “Minutes of the Reformed Dutch Church at Success : now known as Manhasset, formerly known as North Hempstead, Long Island, New York, 1731-1847,” copied by Josephine C. Frost (1913), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-568.
For the Wolver Hollow/Oyster Bay/Brookville church, see Record vol. 73 for baptisms 1741-1834. These were taken from “Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of Oyster Bay, L.I. 1741-1835: The Wolver Hollow Church,” transcribed for NYG&B from a copy in the possession of Dr. Joseph Hegeman Bogart of Roslyn, and including deaths 1772-1860, marriages 1776-1811, and some other vital records all kept by families in the congregation; NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-70. Josephine C. Frost’s transcript (Long Island Church Records 1775-1848, NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-340) has baptisms 1741-1847, marriages 1826-47, and lists of families 1831, 1827, 1845. Both the Bogart and Frost transcripts are available. Additional records of this church and genealogies of the families (including some from the other Dutch congregations) are found in Henry A. Stoutenburgh, A Documentary History of het Nederduytsche Gemeente, Dutch Congregation of Oyster Bay, Queens County, Island of Nassau, now Long Island (1902-07). The original records of the church to 1911 are available on film at the Glen Cove Public Library.
Locust Valley Reformed Church . . . record of marriages 1872 to 1936, by Julia Clark, Hellen Simons and Ray Sunderland, Jr. (Locust Valley Historical Society, 1987), with separate index (NYG&B, 2000), NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB N.Y. L OY8 L81.3 and INDEX. This church was formed from Brookville 1871. The Locust Valley Historical Society also has a transcript of the church’s baptisms 1872-1935, and Glen Cove Public Library has a copy of the church’s records 1871-1950.
Dingman Versteeg's transcripts of records of the four original Queens County Dutch Reformed churches are available at the Holland Society of New York and have been filmed for the FHL. For later Reformed churches see the WPA guides and Haberstroh’s book cited above, plus Guide to Local Church Records in the Archives of the Reformed Church in America . . . , ed. Russell L. Gasero, 1979.
Baptist
While there were Baptists in the county as early as the mid-17th century, the first Baptist church was founded about 1700, in Oyster Bay. The NYG&B Collection includes George W. Cocks’s transcript of the marriage register 1805-1855 of Oyster Bay's Rev. Marmaduke Earle, who married many couples who were not members of his church, typed by Josephine C. Frost, 1914: “Marriages on Long Island, New York, 1802-1855,” NYPL Milstein Division call no. NYGB AZ Loc 09-167; another version of these marriages by Charles T. Gritman. Also in the NYG&B Collection is a list of marriages 1841-1854 [not yet in NYPL catalog] performed by Marmaduke's son the Rev. Samuel H. Earle of the Baptist church in Cold Spring Harbor, which includes some Oyster Bay residents. The Diary of Molly Cooper, Life On a Long Island Farm 1768-1773, ed. Field Horne (Oyster Bay Historical Society, 1981) was kept by a member of the Oyster Bay church and mentions many members. At the Oyster Bay Historical Society is a transcript of this church's membership records and minutes (some of which note baptisms, deaths, dismissals, etc.) beginning in 1789. The transcript includes a short history of the church written in 1774. The church no longer exists, and some of its original records (1833-90) are at the American Baptist Historical Society now located at Mercer University in Atlanta, Ga.
The next Baptist church in the county was organized at Flushing 1856. For this and later churches see the WPA guides.
Methodist
After the American Revolution the Methodist Episcopal (M.E.) Church was formed and the first Methodist preachers appeared in Queens County. Despite the variety of religions already existing in the county, a significant part of the population was still "unchurched," and many of them found a home in Methodism. By 1855 it was the county's largest denomination (the 1855 state census reported 73 churches in Queens County, including 20 Methodist Episcopal and 3 African Methodist Episcopal, 14 Protestant Episcopal, 10 Quaker, 7 Roman Catholic, 7 Dutch Reformed, 7 Presbyterian, and 5 other).
According to the WPA guides the oldest Methodist churches were formed at Middle Village (in the town of Newtown, 1784), Searingtown (in North Hempstead, 1785) and Glen Cove (then Musketa Cove in Oyster Bay, 1785), but none of these has records before the second half of the 19th century. The WPA guides should be consulted for later churches and for information on record holdings; however, the WPA's record of Methodist churches in Nassau County is known to be incomplete. For Methodist churches attended by the German community in present-day Queens see Haberstroh, p. 104. Records remain at the churches that still exist, but many churches have gone out of existence and locating their records may be a challenge.
The NYG&B Collection includes A. Higbee Sammis's transcription of records of the Flushing M.E. Church [not yet in NYPL catalog]; marriages 1835–1878 were published in the Record vol. 125. The NYG&B Collection also has records of the East Norwich M.E. Church 1865-1923, in “Miscellaneous town and church records of Queens,” NYPL Milstein Division microfilm *R-USLHG *ZI-1307. "Marriage Records of the Rev. E.K. Fanning [1855-1908]," Suffolk County Historical Society Register vols. 4-5, are the personal records of a Methodist minister who served at Cold Spring, Farmingdale, Roslyn, Amityville, Rockaway, Woodsburgh, Lawrence, and Cedarhurst, as well as locations outside Queens/Nassau.
Among holdings elsewhere are the records of the Huntington or West Hills Circuit of the M.E. Church, at the Huntington Historical Society, which include events at churches in the Town of Oyster Bay; Peter L. Van Santvoord's transcript of records of the Glen Cove M.E. Church (Carpenter Memorial), at the Glen Cove Public Library and Long Island Studies Institute; and "Marriages in the Methodist Protestant Church by Rev. George H. Jackson at Lynbrook 1826-27," a manuscript at the Brooklyn Historical Society (The Methodist Protestant Church was a small separate denomination from 1830 until 1939 when it merged with the Methodist Episcopal Church and M.E. Church, South, to form the Methodist Church; a subsequent merger with the Evangelical United Brethren produced the present United Methodist Church).
Records of some closed churches may be found at the C. Wesley Christman Archives of the New York Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, in White Plains, New York.
African Methodist
In Philadelphia in 1787 and New York City in 1796, Methodists of African descent formed their own congregations, which led to the creation of the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church and African Methodist Episcopal Zion (A.M.E.Z.) Church. The listings of churches of these denominations in Queens and Nassau in the WPA guides appear to be incomplete and inaccurate. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle Almanac, 1914 edition, the oldest A.M.E. churches in the two counties were those at Flushing (Macedonia, 1810), Little Neck (1830), Newtown/Elmhurst (St. Mark's, 1830), Jamaica (Allen, 1843), and Glen Cove (1843), while the oldest A.M.E.Z. churches were at Lakeville (1835) and Hempstead (1850). The WPA inventories indicate that records generally begin many years after the founding dates, and were available only at the churches (as of 1942).
Roman Catholic
Today roughly half the population of Queens and Nassau counties is Roman Catholic. According to Priests and Parishes of the Diocese of Brooklyn 1820 to 1900, ed. Harry M. Culkin, 3rd ed., 2 vols. (the Diocese, 1990-91), a priest may have visited Hempstead in 1686 (during the administration of Gov. Dongan, a Catholic), but the area's modern Catholic history probably began in 1826 when a priest from Brooklyn celebrated mass at Flushing. Queens County came under the Diocese of New York until 1853 when the Diocese of Brooklyn was created. Present-day Queens is still in that diocese, while Nassau County has been in the Diocese of Rockville Centre since 1957.
After 1826 the arrival of Irish and German immigrants in the county caused the Catholic population to grow rapidly. According to Culkin, the earliest parishes were St. Michael (Flushing), Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (Astoria/Long Island City), St. Monica (Jamaica), St. Mary Star of the Sea (Far Rockaway), Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians (Winfield/Woodside), and St. Fidelis (College Point), the last two being German parishes. By 1900 there were 23 parishes in what is now Queens County. The WPA guide should be consulted for holdings of parish records, all of which remain in church custody. To aid researchers the Archivists of the Diocese of Brooklyn have compiled Chronological List of Churches of the Diocese of Brooklyn: Queens Parishes (3rd ed., 2001); parishes are annotated to indicate ethnic makeup when applicable, and there are also separate lists of German, Polish, and Italian parishes in the Diocese. For the German parishes see also Richard Haberstroh's book cited above. All these publications are available in the NYG&B Collection at NYPL, along with the manuscript "Parochial Boundary Map of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn" showing exact parish boundaries in Queens, now at NYPL Map Division call no. NYGB Map Div. 10-1291.
In Nassau County (again according to Culkin) the first Catholic church was Our Lady of Loretto (Hempstead, 1840), followed by St. Brigid (Westbury), St. Patrick (Glen Cove), St. Boniface (Foster's Meadow/Elmont), St. Mary (Manhasset), and St. Ignatius (Hicksville). The WPA guide lists all parishes up to 1942 and indicates record holdings, though some of the dates given may be inaccurate. As in Queens, registers are accessible only through the parishes, addresses for which can be found in the Official Catholic Directory or at the website of the Diocese of Rockville Centre.
Joseph M. Silinonte's Bishop Laughlin's Dispensations, Diocese of Brooklyn 1859-1866, Volume I (1996) lists Queens County residents who obtained a marriage dispensation from the Bishop. These records can be of great value to the genealogist. The compiler died before he could publish any further volumes.
Congregational
19th-century migration from New England led to the founding of several Congregational churches, beginning in 1852 at Flushing. The oldest Congregational church in Nassau County is that of East Rockaway, 1885. Records, if they survive, remain in church custody.
Lutheran
Early Lutheran records for New York City may contain a few references to persons who lived in Queens County or subsequently lived there, but there was no Lutheran church in the county until 1857 when St. John's in College Point was founded by recent German immigrants, followed by churches in Middle Village (Trinity), Winfield/Woodside (St. Jacobus/St. James), and Woodhaven (Christ). For record holdings of these and later churches see Haberstroh, the WPA guide for Queens, and the WPA Lutheran inventory. The first Lutheran church in what is now Nassau County was Trinity at Hicksville, 1863.
Jewish
Colonial records contain occasional references to Jewish residents of New York City who owned land or had other interests in Queens County, but there was no Jewish house of worship in either Queens or Nassau until Temple Israel was established at Rockaway Beach in 1895, followed by Tifereth Israel at Glen Cove in 1899. Today there is a very substantial Jewish population in both counties. The WPA guides list congregations as of 1942 and their record holdings.
Eastern Orthodox
Queens and Nassau counties today have many Orthodox churches, but none was established before the early 20th century. The first seems to have been the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, at Whitestone (1917), followed by Greek Orthodox churches at Corona (Transfiguration), Astoria (St. Demetrius), and Jamaica (also St. Demetrius). The WPA Eastern Orthodox inventory mentioned earlier provides details of these and other churches and their record holdings.
by Harry Macy Jr., FASG, FGBS
Originally published in The NYG&B Newsletter, Spring 2003
Updated June 2011
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