It is claimed that when Columbus discovered St. Martin, the sandbank on
which the town is built did not exist. The great explorer, it is said,
sailed with his ships all the way in against the hills. Later on, perhaps in
a hurricane, the sandbank was formed, closing off a part of the bay thereby
creating the Great Salt Pond.
Although Commander John Philips, for whom the town is named, is generally
credited with founding the town, this is actually not the case (Dr. J.
Hartog). He is responsible for having built the first house, however. The
name appears for the first time in a letter of Philips himself directed to
the board of the Dutch West India Company dated June 3rd 1738. It is now
generally accepted that Philip's predecessor, Martin Meyers, together with
the council, decided to build a new town on the sandbank in the Great Bay on
May 15th 1733. The new village was cut up in parcels of 125 x 125 (38 x 38
meters). The town has a length of several kilometers, but the original
sandbank on which it was built had a width of only 60 or 70 meters. The town
was divided into Frontstreet and Backstreet.
A town in those days consisted of private homes and one or more churches.
When Philipsburg was founded the great majority of the population were
Protestants and adhered to the Dutch Reformed Church. The church building
was located in what is now known as the Little Bay Cemetery. Since this
involved quite a walk from the new town, it was decided in 1738 to tear down
the church and rebuild it in Philipsburg. It was built on the grounds of
what is now part of the Oranjeschool. In 1851, after the Dutch Reformed
community had disappeared from St. Maarten, it was turned into a government
school. In 1919, the cemetery was removed to Little Bay a.c. Waymouth) and
the building temporarily converted to a Passangrahan (government guest
house).
A petition from the Methodist Community on St. Maarten to H. M. King William
III of Holland, asking for a vacant piece of land known as "The Old English
Church Lot", was approved and forwarded by Lt. Governor J.D. Crol on March
20th 1850 to His Majesty. This had been the site of an old English church
which was blown down in the hurricane of 1819. Slow as the means of
communication were in those days, the news that His Majesty had reacted
favourably to the petition was received and the foundation stones of the new
church laid on the same date in the following year, March 20th 1851. The
work also proceeded at great speed, and the church was completed and opened
on October 19th of the same year (R. Colley Hutchinson-A Hundred Years of
Methodism in Dutch St. Maarten). In 1978 it was torn down and replaced with
a new one built more or less in the same style. The old Methodist Manse,
which was situated in back of the church facing the Backstreet, was torn
down in 1931 and replaced by the much larger one facing a central courtyard.
The old Roman Catholic Church was built in 1844, and in 1921 it was referred
to as one of the few Catholic churches in the colony of Curacao built before
1870 which had remained basically unchanged (Gouden Jubileum Der Dominikaner
Missie op Curacao W. I, 1870-1920-N.V. Centrale Drukkerij.-Nijmegen). It was
torn down in 1950 and replaced with the present Roman Catholic Church which
was consecrated on May 30th 1952. The Roman Catholic Rectory opposite the
church was built in 1820 as a private dwelling house and in 1844 was
coverted to a rectory. To this day it is used for that purpose.
The government school which was started in 1851 was accommodated in the
former Dutch Reformed Church next to the present Oranjeschool. A wooden
school, forerunner to the present boncrete structure, was started on July
21st 1919 and inaugurated by Lt. Governor J. van der Zee on October 31st
1921.
On May 3rd 1890 four Roman Catholic nuns of the Dominican order arrived in
St. Maarten. On June 2nd that same year they started a school and soon had
133 pupils. Their first year found them fully occupied with the
establishment and running of the school. A school building was erected in
1893.
