Church Chorister

The church's Sunday psalmody is led from the gallery, and you lead it. You pitch the psalms, carry the congregation through them, and bring on the young singers behind you.

The work

• Pitch and lead the psalms at Sunday service.
• Carry a full congregation through the psalter without strain.
• Train up the young singers of the gallery.
• Sing the feast days and the funerals as they come.

Context

• Reports to the dominie.
• One service weekly plus feast days and funerals; the gallery is yours.
• Pay is £8–12 New York currency per annum (~$20–30 in silver dollars) — a supplementary post, not a living on its own.
• In-person, Sundays without fail.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.

• A voice that carries over a full congregation without strain.
• Sober deportment on Sundays; weekdays are between you and providence.

Not a fit if you need this to be your whole income — it is a Sunday post.

The whitewashed stone church beside the burying-ground, serving the valley's souls since 1685 — the longest-tenured employer in the hollow.

Who we are

A small permanent staff — sexton, chorister, bell-ringer — under the dominie, funded by a congregation that has never once paid late. Generations-deep job security: our posts turn over by mortality, not by dismissal.

How we work

Quietly, on a fixed calendar of services, feast days, weddings, and funerals, with the bell as the schedule everyone in the valley works to. The churchyard's one restless former cavalryman is, we maintain, a tenant and not staff.

Who thrives here

Steady, sober, reliable people who are untroubled by that particular churchyard after dark, and who understand that the dead do not reschedule.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.