By Joseph Hellmann
January 20, 2002
A plaque in the Community Church of Douglaston on the rear interior wall of the sanctuary (epistle side or right side as you face the rear) is dedicated to Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, 1844-1921, with the inscription “a pioneer in the organization of this Church 1915”.
On April 18, 1915 eleven men met in a private home for the purpose to organizing a church to serve the spiritual needs of the community’s Protestants. Rev. Scoffield was not listed among the eleven. The first service was held on May 2nd of that year at the Douglaston Club with Rev. Ulysses Grant Warren of Brooklyn preaching. By the end of that month the congregation leased a store on Main Ave. north of the train station (now 235th Street). The store was to be the church’s home for the next four and a half years, until the temporary church building was completed on the site of the present church building in Sept. 1919.
Rev. Scofield of Douglaston Park (sic) and Rev. John Baumeister of Flushing officiated at the first Lord’s Supper on October 31, 1915. In November of that year, Rev. Scofield volunteered to preach until a regular preacher could be retained. Trevor P. Mordecai, A Princeton Theological Seminary student, became the part-time student supply preacher in November, 1916.
The congregation’s first social event was a reception in honor of Rev. and Mrs. Scofield on February 9, 1916.
This information was abstracted from the Church’s history compiled in 1965. There are no other references to Rev. Scofield in the history. It was noted that he compiled the “Scofield Reference Bible”.