Daniel Gerdes and Michaël Bertling in Groningen were asked to find an adequate successor for Theodorus Frelinghuysen as pastor in Albany, New York.
Thousands of miles from Albany, unfamiliar with the local situation, faced with a limited number of candidates, these two Groningen professors selected Westerlo.
When Westerlo's congregation finally joined the Union of Dutch Reformed Churches in 1785, he was immediately chosen to be president of the General Synod.
Perhaps for this reason, but also to be celebrated for his efforts towards education, he was made an honorary doctor of theology by the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University, that same year.
In 1984, Howard Hageman called Eilardus Westerlo "Albany’s Dutch Pope", acknowledging his role as a successful representative of his church community in the quickly changing world of Revolutionary North America.
Westerlo left in manuscript an autobiography containing references to the years between 1761 and 1790, Greek and Hebrew lexicons, complete, and a translation from the Dutch of Robert Alberthoma's “Catechism” (1790; 2d ed., 1805).