190 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

1784, when he was elected to the pastorate of the six collegiate churches of Kings County, at a salary of £150 per annum. He fixed his residence at Flatbush, where he spent the remainder of his life in the faithful discharge of his labors as a minister of God. “His labors in the ministry,” says his successor, “for sixty-one years, were arduous, yet was he never known to faint in his Master's cause; and few men have gone to the grave with a character more unblemished, or one more universally respected and beloved.”

Mr. Schoonmaker left six sons and five daughters, nine of whom arrived to mature age, and seven of them survived their father. He had, at the time of his death, fifty-nine grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren. His wife died in 1819, aged eighty years.

For the following very interesting sketch of Domine Schoonmaker, and some of the customs and manners of the people during his pastorate, we are indebted to an article in the Christian Intelligencer of October 23, 1858, by the Rev. Peter Van Pelt :

“Domino Schoonmaker resided at Flatbush, central and convenient for his other churches. He was a man of reserved and retiring habits ; more so, perhaps, from the circumstance that it was exceedingly difficult for him to hold even a common conversation without mangling most horribly the English language. Fluent and ready in the language in which he was educated, he displayed, by his manner and gestures, all the dignity and sincerity applicable to his position and functions. Courteous and polite, he was a relic of the old school, and universally respected. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the venerable old minister had a solitary enemy. An anecdote has been related, and many years ago was in common circulation, which some may consider a slander upon his abilities and acquirements. I would rather regard it as an innocent and harmless witticism of some wag, and probably one of his best friends. Having celebrated a marriage, at the close of the ceremony, for the benefit of the spectators, he attempted to terminate it in English with the sentence, 'I pronounce you man and wife, and one flesh; whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.