served the congregations at Hackensack, Raritan, Clavernack, Newton, West Camp, Tar Bush, Camp, Rheinbeck (where a new church was dedicated on the First Sunday in Advent, 1728), Schenectady, Coxsackie, and in the Schoharie Valley. In Schoharie he baptized the infant daughter of Conrad Weiser, who eighteen years later became the wife of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg. In the absence of churches, Berkenmeyer preached in private dwellings or, more frequently, in barns. At one of these services fourteen children were baptized in the "Lutheran barn" of Pieter Lassing. (176.) This immense parish was divided in 1731, Berkenmeyer removing to Loonenburg. Pastor Christian Knoll of Holstein was called to take charge of the southern congregations in and about New York. Berkenmeyer delivered his farewell sermon November 26, 1732, and sixteen days later Knoll preached his first sermon. In 1734 the Lutheran clergy received an addition in the person of Magister Wolff, who succeeded the aged and infirm Daniel Falckner at Raritan and five other congregations in New Jersey. In the same year the three Lutheran pastors and a number of congregations organized the first Lutheran Synod in America, with Berkenmeyer as chairman. Its first and only convention of which we have record was held at Raritan, August 20, 1735; nine congregations were represented by delegates. The chief business of Synod was to settle a quarrel between Wolff and his congregations, one of the charges preferred against the pastor being that he read his sermons instead of delivering them from memory ("statt aus dem Haupte zu predigen"). Peace was restored, but temporarily only. Berkenmeyer continued his ministry in Loonenburg for twenty years. Like other Lutheran divines of his day, the Swedes and Salzburgers not excepted, he kept two slaves, whom he himself united in marriage in 1744. Also during his declining years Berkenmeyer experienced much sorrow. His end came on August 26, 1751. The closing words of his epitaph are: "He has elected us in Christ before the foundation of the world; there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." In the same year Knoll, who, owing to disputes arising from the language question, had been compelled to resign at New York, took charge of the Loonenburg congregation and continued there until 1765.