at Rhinebeck, he seems for the most part to have been a wandering
preacher, and the records of his pastorates extend from Philadelphia to
Boston, and from Virginia and Maryland to the distant coast of Maine.

If Hartwick would not be long tied down to a settled pastorate, he was
even more fearful of matrimonial bondage, and shunned women as a plague.
It was not an uncommon thing for him, if he saw that he was about to
meet a woman in the road, to cross over, or even to leap a fence, in
order to avoid her. On one occasion when he was disturbed in preaching
by the presence of a dog, he exclaimed with much earnestness that dogs
and children had better be kept at home, and it would not be much
matter, he added, if the women were kept there too![20] Seeking shelter
one night at a log hut not far from the present Hartwick village, he was
cheerfully received by the occupants, a man and his wife, who gave up to
their guest the one bed in the only bedroom, and stretched themselves
for the night upon the floor before the kitchen fire. The night grew
bitter cold, and the wife, awaking, bethought her of the guest, whether
he might not be too lightly covered. She went silently to his room, and
spread upon his bed a part of her simple wardrobe. Hartwick promptly
arose, dressed himself, made his way out of the house to the stable,
saddled his horse, and rode away in the darkness.

His contemporaries agree in representing Hartwick as slovenly in his
habits, often preaching in his blanket coat, and not always with the
cleanest linen; eccentric in his manners, curt, and at times irritable
in his intercourse with others--an exceedingly undesirable addition to
the social and domestic circle, so that his hosts were accustomed to
tell him plainly, at the beginning of a visit, "You may stay here so
many days, and then you must go."[21] In some quarters his visits were
dreaded because of his excessively long prayers at family worship.[22]