The beginnings of the church go back to October, 1925, when the Rev. Boles³aw Stepczynski, then pastor of the Polish National Church in Schenectady, was invited to Amsterdam to discuss forming a parish here.
Records show that Father Stepczynski met with Ignacy Mazur, Jan Wojcik, Vincent Bogarests and Joseph Karkos. A consultation was then held with the late Bishop Valenty Gawrychowski, in Chicopee, Mass., and it was decided that the new parish would be established if there was sufficient interest among the Polish residents of Amsterdam and placed in the Central Diocese of the Church.
From the beginning, interest grew and the name, Church of the Good Shepherd, was decided upon by January 1926. An initial mass had already been celebrated in the hall of St. Ann's Episcopal Church through the courtesy of the Rev. E. T. Carroll, rector.
A short time later, a meeting was held in the clubrooms of the Society of Polish Brothers and definite plans were made to form a parish and start a church building fund.
A site for the building was purchased on Teller Street, at the corner of Vrooman Ave., from the Kreisel family. The corner stone was laid in October 1927 and the building completed several months later. The parishioners did much of the work at the time of the construction and have continued to improve the building through the years. Adjacent to the church, the rectory was built in 1929 for the first resident priest.
Cemetery
The DeGraff family of Cranesville sold a parcel of land on Truax Road for the parish cemetery and the first parishioner was laid to rest it November, 1926. Additional land was purchased as the parish grew and a beautiful grotto, patterned after a larger one in Scranton, Pa. was built by the men of the parish. A marble statue of Jesus Christ, imported from Italy by a Vermont monument dealer, was purchased by the Mazur family in memory of Alfred Mazur, killed in action in 1943 during World War II, was placed on the grotto.