Appingedam is a city in the Dutch province of Groningen (2005 population 12,451). It is known that there was an Anabaptist center here in the early days of the movement, for in 1537 Obbe Philips ordained his brother Dirk Philips as bishop in Den Dam. Leenaert Bouwens in twenty visits between 1551 and 1557 baptized ninety-three persons; between 1557 and 1563, five persons; and between 1563 and 1568, in five visits, thirty-one persons, totaling 129. About 1596 Jan Gerrits van Emden became the preacher here, after he had been living in Appingedam for twenty years. In 1606 he moved to Haarlem, and soon after to Danzig. The congregation at Appingedam, which belonged to the Groninger Old Flemish group, was relatively strong in the seventeenth century, but declined in the second half of the eighteenth, at least in part in consequence of the Collegiant disputes. Its membership was in 1710, fifty men; in 1733, twenty-six men and thirty-three women; in 1754  only fifteen men and fifteen women; in 1767, only fourteen  members. To be sure, it had in 1754  a considerable number of unbaptized older persons, but their treasury for the poor was deeply in debt. At the beginning of the seventeenth century they held their meetings in a building that was built in 1570 as the town mint. They later met in a building given them by Grietje Hans Blaupot in 1694. When the Blaupot family died out the church became extinct. By 1785 it was no longer mentioned in the reports of the Groninger Old Flemish Sociëteit, and in 1800 there were only ten Mennonites living here. For at least fifty years after 1707 Jan Symons Blaupot served the congregation as preacher. By the 1950s, the Mennonites at Appingedam belonged to the congregation of Leermens-Loppersum.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, p. 144. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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