Schoharie County's Oldest Building - The Palatine House

129 Main Street,Sharon Springs NY 13459

13 February, 2023

Description

Schoharie County’s oldest building, the Palatine House (a. k. a. the Old Lutheran Parsonage), will be two hundred and eighty years old this year. By the year 1742, the German Lutherans in the Schoharie Valley were well enough established, and prosperous enough, to build a church and to put in a call for a Lutheran pastor, ordained in Germany, to minister to the community. Peter Nicholas Sommer, from Hamburg, Germany, answered the call and arrived in Schoharie in May of 1743. A parsonage was constructed and completed in September 1743. The building would serve as a Church, as well as a parsonage, until a church could be built. That building was not completed until 1751. By then Pastor Sommer had married Maria Keyser. The couple had four children by the time the church was built and by the time the American Revolution began they were a family of ten. The building was spared when the British forces burned the valley in 1780. A new parsonage was built in 1797 and the old building went through a variety of uses including rental property, and housing for the church sexton. By 1970 it was abandoned. After a similar house of the same age was destroyed to build a power plant the Schoharie Colonial Heritage Association was formed to save any buildings from destruction. The Palatine house became available in 1972, and the building was restored and opened as a museum several years later. SCHA continues to operate the museum today.This program is presented by Historian Ted Shuart. It is both a live (in-person event (at the Sharon Free Public Library Community Room) or available on Zoom.