APPENDIX.

ORIGIN OF SABBATH SCHOOLS OF BROOKLYN, VOL. II. p. 29.

See Historical Sketches of the Churches of the City of Brooklyn, 1850, p. 19. In addition, we may add that a communication in the New York Religious Chronicle, dated July 26, 1826, and signed by Robert Snow, as “one of the superintendents of the Brooklyn Sabbath Union School,” says that the name of that organization was “more especially of Presbyterian origin,” his own preference having been for the name of the Village Sunday School. Also, that “when the school was first got up, it was a union, not of churches, but of individual Christians of different religious persuasions, for neither the Presbyterians nor the Baptists had any church in the village, when the school was first formed; that all joined except the Episcopalians.” Our union then may be said to have been Reformed Dutch Presbyterian, Baptists and Methodists; but the Presbyterians and the Baptists have gone from us, and have formed schools for themselves, and we certainly wish them every success; but still the Brooklyn Sabbath Union School exists, and will, we trust, so exist while it is a school. In reply to the charge made against the school, that it was wholly under the control of one society (i. e. the Methodists), he denies it explicitly, adding that “as regards our school and the Methodist society in this village, it has been rather a matter of complaint with us from the beginning, that the society never patronized us as we thought they might have done; and, so far have they been from exercising any control over us, that to this hour some of their principal members, and pious good men too, do not, as far as we can learn, believe in the utility of Sunday schools as we do, who attend it.” As to the building, then erecting for the school, in Prospect street, Nos. 33 and 35, and the cornerstone of which had been laid July 4, 1826,1 he says: “six gentlemen in the village have agreed to erect it at their own expense, and to assign it by a fair deed or obligation, to, and for the benefit and use of the Brooklyn Sunday School Union, reserving to themselves the use of, it when not occupied by the school. Two are members of the Dutch Reformed church; one is an Episcopalian; two are members of the Methodist society, and the other is not a member of any religious society.” The “furniture of the school house, not being considered as belonging immediately to the building itself,” is to

1 Patriot, July 6, 1826. Robert Snow, on this occasion, deposited in the cornerstone, a few days after it was laid, a tin box, containing sundry papers, etc., of the times, as well as a full account of our Sunday School; and with such arrangements made as shall secure it against being opened until the year 1876 ; then it may be opened and examined, and such matter copied from thence as those then living and present, may think proper, and then to be replaced for fifty years more; after that time posterity may do what they think proper with them.