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by Stefan Bielinski The last European-born domine, Eilardus Westerlo was Albany's patriot minister during the American Revolution. Born near Groningen, the Netherlands in October 1738, Eilardus was the son of Reverend Isaac Westerlo - domine of the Reformed church of Denekamp. Young Westerlo graduated from the University of Groningen in 1760. He came to America in that year to become pastor of the Albany Dutch Reformed Church. Westerlo's long tenure in Albany mirrored his own transition from the formality of a European education and ecclesastical background to that of a more spirited and practical leader of a large and diffused congregation of "plain and experienced Christians." From the beginning, his commitment to the task made Westerlo a respected member of the Albany community. During the early 1770s, he became an active supporter of the "Plan of Union" adopted in America to heal a doctrinal rift in the Dutch Reformed Church. From his Albany base, he reached out to budding Reformed congregations across Albany County. In July 1775, he married Catherine Livingston - the young widow of patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer II. Already well-connected in the Albany community, that marriage carried the thirty-six-year old cleric to the top rung of the community's social ladder. For the next decade, the Van Rensselaer Manor House served as Westerlo's parsonage as well. By 1783, the marriage had produced three children. Westerlo was considered a warm supporter of the American cause - offering daily prayers for safety and victory and also ministering directly to the troops. He conducted a church school and trained a number of future clerics. Interested in secular as well as theological education, in 1779 he was named one of the trustees of the short-lived Clinton College. Westerlo preached primarily in Dutch. But, after 1782, he held an English-language service as well. With the end of the war and the coming of age of Catherine's son, Stephen, the Westerlos moved back to Albany to the Market Street parsonage the domine occupied for the rest of his life. By that time, his health had begun to fail. In 1787, Brooklyn-born John Bassett was made associate pastor and preached in English. Housebound, Westerlo still maintained an active correspondence with some of the leading clerics of his day. Domine Westerlo died in December 1790. He was scarcely fifty-two-years-old and the last of the Dutch-speaking domines. His three-decade tenure stands as the longest in church history. The Albany County "hilltown" of "Westerlo" was named for him in 1815. Westerlo Street in Albany's South End also commemorates his illustrious career. 
Plan of Union: For more on this, see the memorial of Westerlo's friend, Reverend John H. Livingston. His obituary appeared in the Albany Gazette on December 26, 1790: "Rev. Eilardus Westerlo, senior pastor of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, died aged 53, in the thirty-first year of his ministry. He was greatly respected for his piety and learning, and his funeral was attended by a large concourse of the people of the city and neighboring towns, who followed his remains to the vault of the Van Rensselaer family, where he was interred." first posted: 8/28/01; revised 3/15/09 |
