I recently had a chance to interview David Pultz.  Here is our conversation about his work creating The Spring Street Story: A Documentary Film. –Meredith A.B. Ellis

Tell us a little about your involvement with the Spring Street project. How did you get involved?

I was asked by the Presbytery of New York back in January 2007, along with a couple of others from First Presbyterian Church to visit a construction site where some burial vaults with human remains were found that were part of a former Presbyterian Church. The Presbytery had been contacted by the developer of the site, asking if they would take custody of the remains for eventual reburial. I believe First Presbyterian was subsequently contacted with the idea that perhaps the remains could be re-interred in its vaults. I was then asked if I would become part of the Presbytery’s Spring Street Committee, which I did. I’m assuming I was drawn into this project because of my position as Archivist at First Presbyterian and general interest in history.

(Read more about David Pultz’s involvement here: Eulogy by David Pultz)

Where did the idea come from to do a documentary film about the site and its history?

It generally evolved in my mind as I began to learn more about the history of the Spring Street Church, and in particular its abolitionist pastors and the fact that it practiced what it preached by accepting free African Americans into full membership.

Continue reading →

This is the third eulogy that was delivered at the Spring Street Memorial, held on Sunday, October 19th at 4pm at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Spring Street Memorial
Sunday, October 19th, 2014
Meredith A.B. Ellis

In the early spring of 2007, when I was working as a writing and composition instructor and volunteering in the laboratory of Dr. Shannon Novak at Syracuse University, Dr. Thomas Crist at Utica College contacted her and asked if she might be interested in helping with some skeletal analysis. And so the first set of remains from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church arrived at Syracuse University. I had been toying with the idea of returning to school to pursue my PhD in Anthropology, but I had little experience and no project in mind. When we began to work on this population, we had no idea how important it would turn out to be, no idea how much we would learn about life in the 19th century in New York City, and no idea how many people we would have a chance to study. And, I had no idea that it would launch my career in Anthropology. By the fall of 2008, I was back in school full time, working through the collection with Shannon Novak and the other student volunteers who would come to know these people so well.

Continue reading →

This is the second of three eulogies that was delivered at the Spring Street Memorial, held on Sunday, October 19th at 4pm at the First Presbyterian Church of New York City.

Spring Street Presbyterian Church Memorial Service
Shannon A. Novak, Syracuse University
October 19, 2014
New York City

As a young boy, Samuel Hutchings was left homeless after his family’s grocery on North Moore Street was destroyed by a fire that spread from an adjacent bakery. In the winter of 1816, he remembered, “we removed to Greenwich Village, as the upper part of the city was then called. It was quite out of town,” he added (1894:9). Here the bucolic countryside was known for its clean airs, and served as a temporary refuge when epidemics swept through the city. Indeed, during a yellow fever outbreak in the summer of 1822, the Hutchings family was joined in the Village by thousands of other city-dwellers fleeing north. This time, many stayed and built a new community—a bustling neighborhood of working- and middle-class households of both European and African American descent.

Continue reading →

This is the first of three eulogies that were given at the Spring Street Memorial Ceremony, held on Sunday, October 19th at 4pm at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Remarks by David Pultz at the Memorial Service for The Spring Street Presbyterian Church
The First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York
October 19, 2014, 4 P.M.

In early January 2007 I was asked to be part of a small contingent to visit a construction site at the south-east corner of Spring and Varick Streets. It was a bright, crisp sunny day. As digging began the previous month for the foundation of a new building, old burial vaults with human remains from the early half of the 19th century had been discovered. It was the site of the former Spring Street Presbyterian Church. There were shelter tents covering an area in which four vaults contained the remains. They were being studied and catalogued by archaeologists for eventual removal.

Continue reading →