Schoonmaker, Martinus

Schoonmaker, Martinus a minister of the (Dutch) Reformed Church, was born at Rochester, Ulster Co., N.Y., in 1737. He studied under Goetschius and Marinus, and was licensed to preach in 1765. His ministry was spent on Long Island, embracing the churches of Brooklyn, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Flatlands, Bushwick, and Gravesend. From 1765 to 1783 Harlem was also included in his extensive bishopric. All of these have long been separate and important churches. His labors were necessarily very arduous, but he bore them with untiring zeal and energy down to his old age, which was so vigorous that at fourscore his sight, hearing, and other faculties were as perfect as in former years. He was universally beloved and revered, without an enemy, and yet living in troublous times. He resided at Flatbush, while the care of all the churches of Kings County came upon him daily. During the Revolutionary war he was an ardent patriot, and it is related that on his personal word and statement he secured from the Congress in session at Harlem the release of a person who was suspected and imprisoned as a Tory. He preached only in the Holland language. His memory is held in high esteem as one of the fathers of the Church and a relic of the old race of venerable Dutch dominies. He died in 1824. See Corwin, Manual of the Reformed Church. (W.J.R.T.)