The Grand Church of Maassluis was built in 1639, on an island that originally served as a defensive entrenchment against Spanish attacks during the Eighty Years’ War. The emigration of nearly ten thousand Dutch to America was just getting started.
Shortly thereafter, in 1642, those Dutchmen also built a church, at Fort Orange near Beverwyck, later Albany, also a defensive structure.
The church in America did not survive the tooth of time and had to be replaced later. The one in Maassluis survived beautifully and is today the oldest originally Protestant church in the Netherlands. Its centuries-old organ became famous when, in 1970, singer Ruud Eggenhuizen recorded a gramophone record there with organist Feike Asma and trumpeter Jan Martinus:
My Prayer, by DC Lewis.
