Transcripts of early Newark, Delaware, church records

The "Transcripts of Early Newark, Delaware, Church Records" collection is a compilation of transcriptions from the records of five Newark churches: the Village Presbyterian Church, the First Presbyterian Church, the Welsh Tract Baptist Church, the White Clay Creek Presbyterian Church, and the Head of Christiana Church. Spanning the years 1739-1906, the church records include minutes from meetings; lists of births, deaths, and church membership; records of dismissals, admissions, and resignations; as well as copies of indentures and deeds. Though originally four separate documents, the collection was subsequently bound into one volume. At the bottom of each introductory page is a note stating who the copyist was and the year the record was transcribed.

This collection was the result of a 1936-1937 National Youth Administration project, supervised by Henry Clay Reed, the noted Delaware historian and University of Delaware professor. The National Youth Administration was authorized by the Federal Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, and was intended to keep high-school and college students in school and out of the job market by offering them part-time employment. This Depression-era relief program aimed to further education through work, thus, jobs tended to be in such milieux as libraries, laboratories, or administrative offices. By 1941 the program had provided assistance for about 1.5 million individuals. The Transcripts of Church Records collection is interesting because one can see the NYA project at work, providing employment in the transcription of church records. Inconsistencies in recording procedures as well as the changing hand of numerous copyists are quite evident.

The transcripts yield valuable information to researchers who are interested in historical demographics of the Newark area. The records not only provide lists of members (though in only one case is this list complete), but also provide often-detailed information regarding the process of admission into and dismissal from the church. As documented in the church records, personal behavior and participation demanded by the church of its members was rigidly defined and closely scrutinized in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is interesting to note the dismissal of individuals from the congregation for such sins as infrequent church attendance or keeping an unclean home. This scrutiny was also borne out in the process of admission, whereby one could be received into a church only through character examination or by means of a certificate of reference from another church.

For the specifics of church administration and leadership, it is possible to reconstruct the tenures of individual ministers during the time span covered by the collection, how much they were paid, and why they either resigned or were dismissed.

Mitchell, Broadus. Depression Decade: from New Era through New Deal, 1929-1941. vol.IX. New York: Rinehart & Co., Inc., 1947.