USA > Virginia > Isle of Wight County > Isle of Wight County > The Old brick church, near Smithfield, Virginia > Part 1
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THE
OLD BRICK CHURCH
NEAR
Faitwie , Virginia.
EN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02916 1152 Colonial Dames of Am
Gc 975.502 Sm68t Thomas, Richard S., 1837- 1914. The Old brick church, near Smithfield, Virginia
-4219.61. 1935
The 9gr Miss Georgie Hayne Day Stastbury Hotel. 115 toast 69 St.
3 .4
THE OLD BRICK CHURCH,
NEAR
Smithfield, Virginia.
BUILT IN 1632.
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1891, BY R. S. THOMAS, A. M., L. B., Smithfield, Virginia.
REPRINTED FROM VIRGINIA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS, VOL. XI, 1892.
REPRINTED BY GEORGIE WAYNE DAY IN MEMORY OF JAMES DAY THOMAS DAY JOHN DAY VESTRYMEN
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
THE OLD BRICK CHURCH,
NEAR SMITHFIELD, VIRGINIA.
BUILT IN 1632.
It is my object to prove that this Church was built in 1632, and I shall prove it,
I. By the existence at that early day, of such a strong, religious, sentiment, as demanded a house of worship to the living God.
2. By tradition.
3. By lately existing records; and-
4. By the bricks and mortar of the Church itself.
This last proof is absolutely conclusive, and I might rely on it solely and alone, but, in one or two hundred years hence, its gen- uineness might be questioned; and hence, whilst priceless records are still extant, and important witnesses still live, it is a matter of the gravest moment, and of the highest duty, to preserve their concurrent testimony.
Ist. The Existence of the Sentiment.
The existence of a temple to the God to be worshipped proves the belief in that God, for, without a belief in him, there would be no temple for his worship. The stronger, and more enthusiastic, the belief, the surer, and more certain, it is to manifest itself in a house of worship. Did our ancestors, then, bring with them a strong, potent, courageous, belief in the God of Calvary, and a strong evangelical zeal in His behalf?
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
This question cannot be, correctly, answered, without some slight glance at antecedent history - enough only to arouse thought to action, and to enable you to bring, before yourselves, a mirror of the times.
In 1483, Hans Luther, a German miner, a citizen of the county of Mansfield, a slate-cutter by trade, had born unto him a son, who, displaying uncommon activity of mind, was, by man- ifold sacrifices of the father, placed at the Latin school of Eisle- ben in that county. The brightness of the boy, and the ambition of the father that the son should rise above his station in life, induced him to undergo still further privations and hardships, so that he might place the boy in the larger school at Eisnach. Poverty pressed hard on that father and son, and drove the son to go into the streets of Eisnach, and sing songs for alms that he might eke out a miserable existence. God had given him a sweet tenor voice, and that voice fell enchantingly upon the ears of Ursula Cotta, the wife of the Burgomaster of Eisnach, who, learning the history of the talented boy, sent him to Urfurst, where in 1505, he took his master's degree and graduated with distinguished honors.
At Urfurst, the bold and earnest preaching of Weinmann arrested his attention, stung and awakened his conscience, and sent him to a diligent and protracted study of the scriptures.
In 1507, the Elector of Saxony appointed him a professor in the recently (1505) founded university of Wittenburg, which he soon made famous by the severity of studies, the brilliancy of his chair, the perfect mastery of the early fathers of the Church, the profound knowledge of the scriptures, and the burning elo- quence of his pulpit.
In 1517, John Tetzel sought to replenish the Papal exchequer by the sale of indulgences, and Martin Luther, shocked at the sale of the mercies of heaven for the money of man, nailed his ninety-five theses to the doors of Castle church, bade defiance to the Pope of Rome, summoned the world to denounce the errors of the Papal Church, and to correct and reform its creed.
The disputations of Luther at Augsburg with Cajetan, and at Leipsic with John Eck, ended with the Diet-at-Worms, Nurem- berg and Spires, and the attention of the world was arrested and
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THE OLD BRICK CHURCH, SMITHFIELD.
centered upon the grandeur of the preacher, and the sublimity of the truths he boldly announced, and bravely defended.
Melancthon, Bucer and Oecolampadius rallied around the hero, and grandly aided in spreading the revived gospel.
Zwingli from the mountain heights of Switzerland, caught a glimpse of the new religion, and held up the torch to Calvin, of France, whose long, subsequent, residence at Geneva banishes from the general recollection his birth and manhood in France, and his ecclesiastical training in the Church of Rome.
John Knox heard the voice of Zwingli and of Calvin, and aroused all Scotland with his stubborn zeal and burning enthu- siasm.
The new learning, and the new religion, crossed the Scottish border and the English Channel, and the English champions of the cross kept step with those of Germany, Switzerland, France and Scotland, and Rogers and Hooper, and Farrar and Ridley, and Latimer and Cranmer, in fire and in faggot, attested the divine truths, protested against the enormities of Rome, pro- claimed the gospel, that founded in Judea, consecrated on Cal- vary, hidden in the darkness of the medieval times, was resur- rected by Luther, and proclaimed, anew, to the world by his gathering hosts of enthusiastic followers.
But Clement V, of Rome, did not yield the indulgences, the penances, the annates that supplied the coffers of his Church; the masses that appealed to the imaginations of the multitude; the auricular confessions that made the minister of the flock the priest of the household; the prayers for the dead; the actual corporal presence of God in the wine; and the traditions that hedged about and upheld his Church.
Charles V of Spain the Netherlands Naples and of Austria; Francis I, of France, Philip II, of Spain, Torquemada, Ximenes, the Inquisition, Catherine de Medici, the massacre of St. Barthol- omew, the reign of Bloody Mary, the persecutions of the Luther- ans in Germany, the Huguenots in France, and the Protestants in England, all show the terrible rage of the Church of Rome, and the equally resolute energy of the revived faith to escape from the thraldom that had so long enslaved it, and its grand determination to plant the standards of the cross upon the ram- parts of a nobler and higher religion, that appealed from the
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
fallibility of man to the infallibility of God, and from a faith in the Pope to a faith in Jesus Christ.
This energy, awakened in England in the time of Henry VIII, intensified in that of Edward VI and Bloody Mary, was power- fully augmented by the two editions of the book of Common Prayer in 1548 and 1552, and the rapid multiplications of the Bible.
The edition of Wickliffe of 1384 had been enlarged and enriched by the editions of Tyndall in 1530 and of Coverdale in 1535, whose labors and sufferings, in poverty and in alien lands, were crowned with such success, that from foreign and from native presses came the editions of 1538, the version of 1539, the Geneva edition of 1560, the Bishop's Bible of 1568, and the authorized version of 1611.
Whilst some of these editions were issuing from the press, Bloody Mary, in 1588, passed from the scenes of life, and Eliza- beth ascended the throne of England.
Then Protestantism, bruised, mangled, and burnt, rose from the ground, nobler for its sufferings, and more resolute for its afflictions.
"Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to man," was its pæan, and "Go ye unto all the world and preach my gospel to every creature," was accepted as its divine mission.
Under the influence of these feelings, Christopher Newport, John Smith, Edward Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, George Kendall, and their associ- ates, set sail on the 19th of December, 1606, from Blackwall, England, in the ship Susan Constant, of one hundred tons, in charge of Newport with seventy-one men; in the Godspeed, of forty tons, in charge of Gosnold, with fifty-two men, and in the pinnance, the Discovery, of twenty tons, in charge of Ratcliffe with twenty men, and landed at Jamestown on the 13th of May, 1607, bringing with them the sentiments of Englishmen, the laws of England, the Church of England in its minister, the Rev. Robert Hunt, and their charter, written by Sir Edward Coke and Sir John Doddridge. That charter declares, "their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the provi- dence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His divine majesty, in propagating the Christian religion to such
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THE OLD BRICK CHURCH, SMITHFIELD.
people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, and may in time bring infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility, and to a settled and quiet government," and the adventurers are instructed "to provide that the true word and service of God and Christian faith be preached, planted, and used, not only within every of the said colonies and plantations, but also as much as they may amongst the savage people which do or shall adjoine unto them, or border upon them, according to the doc- trine, rights, and religion now professed and established within our realme of England."
In the second charter of May 23, 1609, written by Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Henry Hobart, it is declared in its 29th article: "And lastly, because the principle effect which we can desire, or expect in this action, is the conversion and seduction of the peo- ple in those parts unto the true worship of God and Christian religion, in which respect we should be loath that any person should be permitted to pass that we suspected to effect the super- stitions of the Church of Rome; we do hereby declare that it is our will and pleasure that none be permitted to pass in any voy- age, from time to time to be made into the said country, but such as shall have taken the oath of supremacy," that the King of England was the head of the Church, and not the Pope of Rome.
Again, in the third charter of March 12, 1611, prepared by the same parties, "the power and authority was given to minister and give the oath and oaths of supremacy and allegiance, or either of them to all and to every person and persons which shall at any time or times hereafter go or pass to the said colony in Virginia."
And they brought with them not only the charter, but a mag- nificent letter of advice written by the Rev. Richard Hakluyt, prebendary of Westminster, historiographer of the East India Company, and the last sentence is in these words: "Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the giver of all goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out." 1
' Brown's "Genesis of the United States."
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Just as soon as these adventurers landed at Jamestown, they offered up prayer, and extemporized a church, which, Captain Smith informs us, was only an "awning or old sail which we hung to three or four trees to shadow us from the sun; our walls were rails of wood; our seats unhewn trees till we cut planks; our pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better, and this came by way of advertising for new."
And there, in
"A wild and lonely region, where, retired From little scenes of art, great Nature dwelt In ample solitude,"
these men worshipped as primeval man worshipped when
"The groves were God's first temples. E'er man learned To hew the shaft and lay the architrave, And spread the roof above them. E'er he framed The lofty vault to gather and roll back The sound of anthems; in a darkling wood Amid the cool and silence he knelt down And offered the Mightiest, solemn thanks And supplication."
"Compared with this, how poor's religious pride, In all the pomp of method and of art,
When mere display to congregations wide, Devotion's every grace but the heart."
Their next church, Captain Smith informs us, was "a homely thing (the log church) like a barn set in crochets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth, and so were the walls." Others followed, from time to time, as circumstances dictated, until the one was built, the remains of which are still at Jamestown in an utterly abandoned condition.
Captain Smith, describing the habits of the adventurers, says: "First they enter into the church and make their prayers unto God, next they return to their houses and receive their propor- tion of food." (Vol. II, p. 5, of Smith's History.)
In 1611 they built a "new towne," which they called Henrico
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THE OLD BRICK CHURCH, SMITHFIELD.
after Prince Henry, "a handsome church, and the foundation of a better laid to be built of bricke," and near it on the other side of the river "a faire framed parsonage" for Master Whitaker.
In building churches they were stimulated not only by the zeal of the individuals and of the nation, but by the injunctions of King James I.
As early as 1617 he addressed a letter to George Abbott, the then Archibishop of Canterbury, in which he said: "You have heard ere this time of the attempt of diverse worthie men an' subjects to plant in Virginia (under the warrant of our Letters- Patent) people of this Kingdom, as well as for enlarging of our Dominion as for the propagating of the Gospel among the Infi- dels, wherein there is good progress made and hope of further increase; so as the undertakers of that plantation are now in hand with the erecting of some churches and schools for the education of the children of those barbarians, which cannot but be to them a very great charge, and above the expense which for the civil plantation doth come to them. In which we doubt not but that you, and all others who wish well to the increase of Christian Religion, will be willing to give all assistance and furtherance you may, and therein to make experience of the zeal and devotion of our well-minded subjects, especially those of the clergy.
"Wherefore, we do require you, and hereby authorize you, to write your letters to the several Bishops of the Dioceses in your Province, that they do give order to the ministers and other zealous men of their Diocese, both by their own example in con- tribution, and by exhortation to others, to move our people within their several charges to contribute to so good a work in as liberal a manner as they may, for the better advancing whereof our pleasure is that these collections be made in the particular parishes for several times within these two years next coming; and that the several accounts of each parish, together with the money's collected be returned from time to time to the Bishop of the Dioceses, and by him be transmitted half-yearly to you, and so to be delivered to the Treasurer of the Plantation to be employed for the Godly purposes intended, and no other."
With such sentiments animating king, bishops and people in the mother country and in the Colony, the first legislative assem-
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
bly held on this continent was convened at Jamestown, in "the Quire of the Church," on Friday, June 30, 1619, and the second sentence in the record is this: "But forasmuche as men's affaires do little prosper where God's service is neglected, all the Bur- gesses took their places in the Quire till prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the Minister, that it would please God to guide and sanc- tifie all our proceedings to his own glory and the good of this plantation." 2
That assembly enacted "that for laying a surer foundation of the conversion of the Indians to Christian Religion eache town, citty, Burrough and plantation do obtaine unto themselves by just means a certaine number of natives' children, to be educated by them in true religion and civil course of life."
That "all ministers shall duly read devine service, and exer- cise their ministerial functions, according to the Ecclesiastical laws and orders of the Churche of Englande, and every Sunday, in the afternoon, shall catechise suche as are not yet ripe to come to the communion. And whosoever of them shall be found negligent and faulty in this kinde shall be subject to the censure of the Governor and Counsul of Estate."
That "the Ministers and Church Wardens shall seek to pre- sente all ungodly and disorders, the committees whereof, if upon goode admonitions and mild reprooff they will not forbeare the said skandalous offences, as suspicions of whoredomes, dishonest company, keeping with women, and suche like, they are to be presented and punished accordingly."
That "if any person, after two warnings, does not amende his or her life in point of evident suspicion of Incontincy, or of the commission of any other enormous sinnes, that then he or she be presented by the Church wardens and suspended for a time from the church by the minister. In which Interim, if the same person do not amende and humbly submit him or herself to the churche, he is then fully to be excommunicate, and soon after a writ or warrant to be sent from the Governor for the apprehending of his person ande seizing on all his goods, &c."
That "for reformation of swearing every freeman and Mr. of a family, after thrife admonition, shall give 5s. or the value
" Senate Document, Colonial Records of Virginia, 1874.
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THE OLD BRICK CHURCH, SMITHFIELD.
upon present demande to the use of the church where he dwelleth; and every servant, after the like admonition, excepte his Mr. dischardge the fine, shall be subject to whipping."
That "all persons, whatsoever, upon the Sabbath daye shall frequente devine service and sermons both forenoon and after- noon, and suche as beare armes, shall bring their pieces, swordes, poueder and shotte."
That "against excesse in apparell that every man be cessed in the churche for all publique contributions, if he be unmarried according to his owne apparell, if he be married, according to his owne and his wives, or either of their apparel." 3
And the very first act in the published statutes of Virginia is:
Ist. "That there shall be in every plantation, where the people use to meet for the worship of God, a house or room seques- tered for that purpose, and not to be of any temporal use what- soever, and a place empaled in, sequestered only to the burial of the dead." "
Such were a part of the laws relating to religion that were enacted by the very first legislative assembly that ever convened in this country-an assembly that convened seventeen months before the eternally lauded pilgrims ever landed upon Plymouth Rock, and ten years before the Colony of Salem and of Boston increased their meagre numbers beyond one hundred. And yet, the historians of that Colony are forever parading before the world for its worship the names of a Cotton, a Hooker, and an Eliott, who never set foot upon this continent until the Colony at Jamestown had for twenty-seven years blazed the way and taught them wisdom by their sad experience; who never from Puritanical lips proclaimed the glories of their Maker, until Hunt and Whitaker and Thorpe had laid down their lives as a sacrifice to their duty. The State and the Church that can boast of the evangelical services of a Robert Hunt, Richard Bucke, Glover, Greville Poole, William Wickham, Alexander Whitaker, William Mease or Mays, - Macock, Thomas Bargrave, Robert Paulet, David Sandis, William Bennett, Robert Bolton, Jonas Stockton, Thomas White, Haut Wyatt, - Hopkins,
3 Senate Document, 1874.
4 Hening, Vol. I, p. 122.
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
Pemberton, William Cotton, and others, who came be- tween 1607 and 1622, animated by as pure a zeal as ever fired the breast of a Peter or a Paul, permits them to rest not only in oblivion, but covered with all the opprobrium that Puritanism can, by direction or indirection, heap upon them-ministers of the Cross of Christ, who by their lives and their speech said as did the brave and undaunted Whitaker, "Why is it that so few of our English ministers that were so hot against the surplice and subscription come hither where neither is spoken of. Doe they not wilfully hide their talents, or keep themselves at home for fear of losing a few pleasures; be there not among them of Moses his minde, and of the Apostles, that forsook all to follow Christ. But I refer them to the Judge of all hearts and to the King that shall reward everyone according to his talent." "Awake you true- hearted Englishmen, you Servant of Jesus Christ, remember that the plantation is God's and the reward your countries. . . . And you, my brethren, my fellow labourers, send up earnest prayers to God for his Church in Virginia, that since his harvest heere is great, but the labourers few he would thrust forth his labourers into his harvest: and pray also for me, that the ministration of his Gospel may be powerfull and effectuall by me to the salvation of many, and to the advancement of the Kingdome of Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father, and the holy spirit, bee all honour and glorie forever more, Amen."
Such were the sentiments that animated the missionaries of the early church, whom it is now fashionable to deride, and whose true Christian zeal is aspersed by the Puritans of the North, who, as early as 1629 shipped John Morton and John and Samuel Brown® back to England for no crime save that of eating Christmas pies and using the book of Common Prayer; who, in 1630, took away the citizenship of the Rev. William Bloxton, and compelled him to sell his property at an enormous sacrifice and move away because he was a minister of the Church of England; who, by 1680, had exiled every Episcopal minister in all New England but one-old Father Jordon, who was too poor
5 McConnell's Hist. of American Episcopal Church, p. 36.
" Bancroft's History of the United States, p. 349.
' McConnell, p. 39.
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THE OLD BRICK CHURCH, SMITHFIELD.
and too "broken in fortune and in spirit to move;" & who in 1644, in the very depths of winter, drove Roger Williams from his church in Salem, through the ice and snows of Massachusetts, to the Indian wilderness of Rhode Island, so that he did not "for fourteen weeks know what bed or bread did mean," and "had no . house but a hollow tree;" who, in 1657, exiled Ann Breden, and whipped, imprisoned and mutilated her companions by slitting first one ear, then the other, and then "bored their tongues with red hot irons;" who, in 1659, imprisoned Wenlock Christison and twenty-seven of his companions, and rounded the catatogue of crimes by hanging Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson,
William Seddra and Mary Dyer.
10
Hang the Culpeper brick on the gallows of Mary Dyer, and let, at least, the Puritan press close his mouth on the subject of intolerance, and the irreligious character of the early colonial ministers of Virginia!
And when it is remembered that the State of Virginia never, even in the slightest manner, punished one of her citizens, save and except for a premeditated and defiant violation of the law --- a law that since 1689 only required the place of worship to be designated, and then only by a fine of a few shillings-let that brick be encircled, not with animosities, but with all the chari- ties that ought to be extended to those who flagrantly violate, as well as to those who enforce her ancient and time-honored statutes.
The spirit that animated the early colonial ministers was the zeal of Hunt, Bucke and of Whitaker, which demanded churches for the worship of the God whom they adored, and these they built at Jamestown and everywhere else as rapidly as possible.
In 1621, if not before, they built a church on the Pembroke farm, in Elizabeth City county, the brick foundation of which was found by the Rev. John Collins McCabe, D.D., about the year 1850.
I come now to the date of the erection of the Old Brick Church, and I expect to prove that it was built in 1632.
8 McConnell, p. 39.
º Bancroft, p. 367-77.
10 Bancroft, pp. 452 to 458.
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VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
2d. The Tradition.
The universal tradition everywhere, and at all times, univer- sally, prevalent, in my county, is, that the Old Brick Church alluded to was built under the care and superintendence of one Joseph Bridger, the father of General Joseph Bridger, who lies buried on the farm now owned by James Davis, about a mile and a half distant from the old church-a farm that was called by General Joseph Bridger in his will in 1683, "The White Marsh Farm," and is so known, and so called, to this day.
This General Joseph Bridger was in his day the most promi- nent man in his county.
He was born in 1628, and in 1657,11 at the age of (29) twenty- nine, he, with John Brewer, represented this county in the Gen- eral Assembly of Virginia. In 1663,12 he is again a member, and this year appears as Captain Joseph Bridger, and is a member of every important committee, but one.
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