During the first century of the occupation of Manhattan Island by Europeans we find there two settlements of Lutherans, the one of an earlier, the other of a later date. The earlier settlement was that of Dutch Lutherans, who came over from Holland with the first settlers, whilst some seventy-five years later German Lutherans began to arrive, at first in smaller and then in ever increasing numbers until many thousands had settled mainly along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. It is now two hundred years ago that the first colony of German Lutherans arrived in the harbor of New York. They were the Palatinates who, in 1707, because of continued political and religious disturbances, had with their pastor, the Rev. Josua von Kocherthal, left the fatherland, and found a new home near where the city of Newburgh now stands. It goes without saying, that though most of them settled along the Hudson and Mohawk rivers, yet many of them remained on the Island of Manhattan. Whilst the immigration of Lutherans from Holland, after the middle of the eighteenth century practically ceased, that of the German Lutherans increased, and the Lutheran Church on Manhattan which at first was Dutch afterwards became German. And this first German Lutheran Church in the present city of New York had the good fortune to have among its pastors some of the most distinguished men and theologians of the eighteenth century, such as the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in this country, the Rev. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, D.D., and his son, the Rev. Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg, a man of burning patriotism, who in time became speaker of the First and Third Congresses of the United States.