The Lutheran Church

    Frederik Evangelical Lutheran Church was established in 1666, the same year that Erik Nelson Smith took formal possession of the island of St. Thomas in the name of the Danish West India Company. The original colonizing group included a Luther a Lutheran Pastor, Kjeld Jensen Skagelse. A few months after the settlement landed Smith died, and the Luther Pastor had to assume temporal, as well as spiritual, leadership. The Lutheran Church during the early decades of the Danish colony was closely allied with the development of the colony. The settlement was a venture of private enterprise by the stockholders of the Danish West India Company under a charter by the royal government. This charter included a provision that the Lutheran Church (the state religion of Denmark) was to be maintained in the colony and the company was to select appropriate ministers to serve it. When St. Thomas became a crown colony through purchase of the company by the State in 1754, the church was able to expand its role in community affairs very rapidly. Already it was operating schools for Lutheran children and later for slave children as well. It was a Lutheran Pastor, the Rev. Hans Stoud, who first proposed that a hospital and school should be built on each island and saw his proposal realized on St. Thomas. Thanks to the laborious efforts of Pastor Erik Wold and Mr. J. M. Magens (a Dane born on St. Thomas and of the same family after whom Magens Bay is named), Luther's Small Catechism, a hymnal and a a grammar were all printed in the Creole language by 1770. Worship services were originally held in the homes of planter and soldiers. Later space was made available at Christensfort. A small chapel was built right in the Fort courtyard, and grave markers that were set in its floor as memorials may still be seen there. Danish, Creole and later English languages were used in the worship of the Congregation. Creole was used as late as the 1840's and the last Danish services, held at Christmas only, were discontinued in the 1930's. The present building was started in 1789 and completed in 1793. Its cost was met by private donations, contributions from the government, and a considerable loan from the Danish West Indies Poor Fund. The building was gutted by the fire in 1826, but the walls remained sound and it was rebuilt. Hurricane damage was sustained in 1870, and the appearance of the present building dates from the repair and remodeling of that period. The tower was added at that time. It houses the church bell installed in 1871. A vestry was added to the rear of the building in 1951 and a sacristy in 1954. The alter was moved back behind the arch in the 1951 remodeling and the pulpit located to the west. The wood in the chancel and pulpit is local mahogany. In 1993 the 200th anniversary was celebrated by the congregation.

Tombstones and memorials and been cemented into the interior walls of the church. The numbering of the markers begins on the right side of the entrance on the ground floor and continues in a clockwise motion around the room. The numbering of the second floor likewise begins on the right side above the entrance and continues in a clockwise motion.