The Town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, NY celebrated the installation of a historical marker at Quitman House on May 28th.
The building served as the Parsonage for the minister serving St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, better known as the Stone Church, located next door. The parsonage is known today as Quitman House and was built in 1798 to house the minister, Reverend Frederick H. Quitman, D. D.
Rev. Quitman, the son of Stephen Henry and Anna Quitman, was born August 7, 1760, on an island in the lower Rhine River in the Duchy of Cleves in Westphalia. His father held an important office in the Prussian Government.
For more than thirty years Dr. Quitman divided his time among a number of small and scattered Lutheran churches in the Schoharie and Hudson River Valleys. These congregations were dispersed groupings of German speaking farmers and craftsmen, many of which were Palatines. Quitman often preached seven or eight times a week in either German, Low Dutch, or English, first in the associated churches of Schoharie and Kobles Kill (Cobleskill) and afterwards in those of Rhinebeck, Wurtemburg, Germantown, and Livingston in the Hudson Valley.
The Quitman House today houses not only the Quitman Resource Center for Preservation but also the Museum of Rhinebeck History and the offices of Hudson River Heritage. The preservation and promotion of information about local history is a focus of all three organizations.
The Quitman House is located at 7015 Route 9 in Rhinebeck, about ¼ mile north of the intersection of Routes 9 and 9G.
The marker is the result of a grant from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation to the Rhinebeck Historical Society.
For more information, click here.
Photo of Museum of Rhinebeck History provided.
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