A few months ago we took a tour throughout Downtown Brooklyn and Brooklyn Heights led by the Brooklyn Historical Society. We made many stops on this tour, which were all informative. The stop that drew most of my attention and interest was the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. I believe that our tour should have spent more time at this stop. The church was and still is a huge part of the Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights community and I don’t believe we got the chance to fully grasp that.
The tour lead by the Brooklyn Historical Society took us from Downtown Brooklyn to Brooklyn Heights. I became more and more interested as we moved further into Brooklyn Heights. About half way in the tour we came across the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. The architecture is like nothing I have ever seen before and I found it very intriguing. At first glance you I immediately began to wonder how old it was and what was the story behind.
On the tour we learned much about the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims. We talked about the church’s first pastor, who they assigned in 1847, Henry Ward Beecher. We mostly talked about his abolitionist sentiments. Beecher was very vocal when it came to his feelings on slavery. The church knew of his activism against slavery and still decided to have him be their first pastor which showed their support of the abolitionist movement. An example of Beecher’s activism would be his mock slave auctions in which he urged church members to buy slaves’ freedom. We also learned of a sex scandal that centered on Beecher’s marital infidelity. Although this was informative, there is more information on Beecher that could’ve been shared if more time was taken at the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims stop on the tour. For example Henry Ward Beecher is brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe who shared her brother’s ideals and showed those ideals in one of her well-known writings, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
Henry Ward Beecher and many of the Church’s members, to this day, claim that the Church was a major stop on the Underground Railroad route. Some say that church members harbored runaway slaves in the churches basement and in their homes before helping lead them to Canada. Beecher is said to have received death threats for his participation in such acts against slavery. Although certain historical groups have found no proof of the Plymouth Church being a stop on the Underground Railroad route, the church members stand behind the idea and celebrate it.
Henry Ward Beecher’s preaching drew many people to the Plymouth Church. These were not only people from the Brooklyn Heights area but well-known people from all over 19th century United States. Some of these visitors included abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison, Sojourner Truth, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, and Booker T. Washington who all spoke at the church. Other speakers include Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, and William Thackery. Another famous speaker to visit church was Martin Luther King Jr., although he did so well after the Beecher era. King Jr. delivered a speech in February 1963 which was an early version of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and was called “The American Dream.” The most notable person to ever visit the Plymouth Church was Abraham Lincoln. Although Lincoln did not speak at the Church he did attend a service there. He is honored by the church with a bas-relief in their courtyard which sits right next to a statue of Henry Ward Beecher.
The Plymouth Church was a big part of the Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights area and still is to this day. The Plymouth Church of today offers many services to the community, other than the obvious church services every Sunday. The church has an outreach program to help those in need. They also offer preschool, Sunday school, summer camps, and music education for children and adults. The church has also hosted a concert series which includes a variety of music. Most recently the church hosted the first annual Underground Railroad festival in June of 2010.
As we can see the Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims is a very important building in the Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights area. It is rich with not only Brooklyn history but American history. It is my hope that in future tours led by the Brooklyn Historical Society, more time is taken out to reflect this amazing landmark.
