USA > Virginia > Colonial churches; a series of sketches of churches in the original colony of Virginia, with pictures of each church > Part 14
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"After my dutiful respects presented unto your Lordship, I make
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bold to acquaint you that being landed in these parts of Virginia in August last, and being ready to go for Maryland, wherein your charity hath vouchsafed to recommend me to his Excellency Nicholson, I heard such great talk among the Gentlemen of this Country that the said Governor was to come here to be Governor, that I did resolve to settle here if I could. And his Excellency Nicholson being here, would say nothing of the contrary. His Grace of Canterbury has recommended me to Mr. Blair, Commissary, but to no purpose, because the said Commissary has cast an odium upon himself by his great worldly concerns, so that I was forced to make use of the commander of the fleet who did recommend me to this parish wherein I live now. * I don't like this Country at all, my Lord, there are so many inconven- iences in it with which I cannot well agree. Your clergy in these parts are of a very ill example, no discipline, nor Canons of the Church are observed : Several Ministers have caused such high scandals of late, and have raised such prejudices among the people, that hardly can they be persuaded to take a minister in their parish. As to me, my Lord, I have got in the very worst parish of Virginia and most troublesome. Nevertheless I must tell you that I find abundance of good people who are very willing to serve God, but they want good Ministers; ministers that be very pious, not wedded to this world, as the best of them are. God has blest my endeavors so far already that, with his assistance, I have brought to Church again two families, who had gone to the Quakers' meeting for three years past, and have bap- tized one of their children three years old. This child being christened took my hand and told me: 'You are a naughty man, Mr. Minister, you hurt the child with cold water.' His father and mother came to church constantly, and were persuaded by me to receive the Holy Com- munion at Easter day; which they did perform accordingly with great piety and respect. I have another old Quaker 70 years of age who left the Church these 29 years ago, and hope to bring him to church again within few weeks. Lucere et non ardere parvum: ardere et non lucere, hoc Imperfectum est: lucere et ardere, hoc perfectum est: saith St. Bernard. If ministers were such as they ought to be, I dare say there would be no Quakers nor Dissenters. A learned sermon signifies next to nothing without good examples. Longum Iter per praecepta, Breve autem per Exempla: I wish God would put in your mind, my Lord, to send here an eminent Bishop, who by his piety, charity, and severity in keeping the canons of the Church, might quicken these base ministers,
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and force them to mind the duty of their charge. Though the whole country of Virginia hath a great respect for my Lord Bishop of London, they do resent an high affront made to their nation, because his Lord- ship has sent here Mr. Blair, a Scotchman, to be Commissary, a coun- cellor, and President of the College. I was once in a great company of Gentlemen, some of them were Counsellors, and they did ask me, 'Don't you think there may be in England amongst the English, a clergyman fit to be Commissary and Counsellor and President of our College?' I have wrote all these things, my Lor. freely, but have said nothing by myself. It was only to acquaint y ur Lordship how the things are here. The Governor is very well beloved by the whole country, but because his time is over they think of another Governor, and do desire earnestly to have his Excellency Nicholson, who indeed is a most excellent Governor; and as fit (as said to me, once, your Lordship) to be a Bishop as to be a Governor. * When I do think with myself of Governor Nicholson, I do call him the Right hand of God, the father of the Church, and more, a father of the poor. An
eminent Bishop of that same character being sent over here with him will make Hell tremble and settle the Church of England in these parts forever. This work, my Lord, is God's work and if it doth happen that I see a Bishop come over here I will say as St. Bernard said in his Epistle to Eugenius Tertius hic dicitur Dei est. I have been very tedious to your Lordship, but God's concerns have brought me to that great boldness. I wish God give you many years to live for the good of his Church, over which that you might preside long will be the con- stant prayers of, my Lord,
Yrs, &c., Nich's Moreau."
[Perry's "Papers Relating to the History of the Church in Virginia, A. D. 1650-1776," pp. 29-33.]
So much for the Rev. Nicholas Moreau and his impressions. It is to be regretted that he was never given the opportunity to air his latinity before a Bishop of Virginia. Mr. Moreau did not continue at his post longer than the average minister at this time. He left at the end of the year 1697 or the beginning of 1698, whether driven away by discouragement or not, history does not say.
The first reference in the Vestry Book to the present St. Peter's church is found in the record of the minutes of the vestry meeting held August 13, 1700: "Whereas the Lower Church of this parish is very much out of Repair and Standeth very inconvenient for most of
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the inhabitants of the said parish. Therefore ordered that as soon as conveniently may be a new Church of Brick Sixty feet long and twen- ty fower feet wide in the cleer and fourteen feet pitch with a Gallery Sixteen feet long be built and Erected upon the maine Roade by the School House near Thomas Jackson's; and the Clerk is ordered to give a Copy of this order to Capt. Nicho Merewether who is Requested to show the same to Will Hughes and desire him to draw a Draft of the said Church, and to bee at the next vestry and Mr. Gideon Macon and Mr. Thomas Smith are Requested to treate with and buy an acre of Land of Thomas Jackson whereon to build the said Church and for a Church yard."
The fact that the old church is spoken of as being very much out of repair and that brick is mentioned distinctly as being the material out of which the new church is to be constructed, lead one to infer that this new church was the first one in the parish to be built of brick. This inference is confirmed by the way in which the new church is, with one exception, always referred to in the vestry-book. It is called invariably the "Brick Church."
Work on the new church was not begun until about the spring of the year 1701. By July, 1703, the work was so far advanced that ser- vices could be held in the building, for the vestry-book shows that a vestry was held for St. Peter's Parish at the Brick Church on the 13th of that month. While this brick church was in process of erection the vestry, upon petition of the upper inhabitants of the parish, order "that a new Church or Chapell be built upon the upper side of Me- champs Creeke adjoining to the King's Roade forty-feet long and twenty-feet wyde, framed and planked in every respect like to the upper Church." St. Peter's Parish now had three places of worship, besides the old frame Lower church building, which was much out of repair-namely, the new Lower church, called the Brick church; the old frame Upper church, and new frame chapel.
On April 3, 1704, the vestry of the parish agreed upon a division, by which what was afterwards known as St. Paul's parish was cut off This new parish contained the two frame upper churches. St. Peter's parish had now as places of worship the Brick church and the old frame Lower church. Services in this old building were now resumed, as appears from an entry in the vestry-book under date of August 18, 1704: "Mr. Richard Squire is Requested to preach two sermons in every year at the old Church, commonly known by ye name of ye Bro- ken back'd Church."
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The new Brick church of St. Peter's Parish was a plain rectangular structure, sixty feet long by twenty-four wide. For upwards of twenty years this building remained unaltered, and nothing was done to change the appearance of the place except that in the year 1719 it was ordered that a wall of brick be built round the church yard, "s'd wall to be in all Respects as well done as the Capitol wall in Williams- burgh." Toward the end of the year 1722, however, a belfry was erect- ed at the west end of the church, and in the year 1740 an entry in the vestry-book states that "the Minister and Vestry of this Parish have Agreed with Mr. Wm. Worthe, of the Parish of St. Paul, in the County of Stafford, Builder, to Erect and Build a Steeple and Vestry Room according to a Plan Delivered into the Vestry drawn by the S'd Walter (?) for the Consideration of One hundred & thirty Pounds at times to be paid." In the same year "the Summe of Twenty Pounds" is or- dered to be paid out for the erection of a "Porch according to Agreem't, & white washing & other Repairs of the inside of the Church." Such minor alterations and repairs as have been made to the old church since 1740 have not changed its outward appearance to any great extent. There is now an attractive mellowness of age about the building; in other respects St. Peter's looks to-day much as it did toward the middle of the eighteenth century.
Under date of November 20, 1752, there is an entry in the vestry min. utes in which the "Brick Church" is referred to as "St. Peter's Church." So far as known to the writer this is the first time that the name "St. Peter's" was ever given to this church. (The fact is not, however, to be denied that between the years 1684 and 1698 one of the churches in St. Peter's Parish was frequently referred to as "St. Peter's Church" by the then clerk of the vestry. On the other hand it is to be noted that he refers to the same church under the names "Christ's Church in St. Peter's," "ye Church of St. Peter's Parish," and "St. Peter's Parish Church." See Vestry Book in loc.) The church is not again referred to as "St. Peter's" in the book. In these times it was always known and referred to as the "Brick Church," just as the church of Bristol parish, known now as Old Blandford, which was erected be- tween 1734 and 1737, was always spoken of in Colonial times as the "Brick Church." Perhaps some one better informed than the writer can say whether Christ church, Lancaster county, [See Southern Churchman for December 1, 1906,] was not also always referred to in early days as the "Brick Church," and whether its present name
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of "Christ church" was not a creation of comparatively modern times and derived from the name of the parish. In the opinion of the writer the names of Christ and the Saints as officially applied to churches in Virginia was practically unknown before the American Revolution. St. Paul's church, Norfolk, erected in 1739, was long known as the "Borough" or "Parish" church. [See Southern Churchman for No- vember 3, 1906.] St. John's church, Richmond, was not called by that name before 1818. [See Southern Churchman for November 17, 1906], while St. Luke's church, Isle of Wight county, was known as the "Old Brick church" until 1827 or 1828. [See open letter, "Colonial Churches and Clergy," Southern Churchman for February 16, 1907.]
But enough of this digression. Let us return to the subject of St. Peter's, in New Kent county, and in the next place learn something about Mr. Mossom, its most famous minister.
The Rev. David Mossom, or Parson Mossom, as he was generally called, is well known in the annals of the Colonial Church in Virginia -though by no means on account of the eloquence of his discourses. Many things have conspired together to keep Parson Mossom's memory green. In the first place, he ministered to St. Peter's church for nearly forty years-a circumstance extraordinary enough in itself to cause some surprise, when it is recalled that the length of the average tenure of office in the parish before his time was less than two and a half years. Then, too, his irascible temper was against his being forgotten.
In his "Autobiography," Parson Jarratt, of Bath Parish, another of Virginia's famous divines of the period, tells a good story on Mr. Mos- som. It seems that one day the minister of St. Peter's had a quarrel with his clerk, and assailed him from the pulpit in his sermon. The sermon over, the clerk, nothing daunted, gave out from his desk the 2d Psalm, containing the lines,
"With restless and ungovern'd rage, Why do the heathen storm? Why in such rash attempts engage, As they can ne'er perform?"
a method of revenge as humorous as it was pointed.
Bishop Meade evidently thought that the Rev. Mr. Mossom's anger was to be classed rather with the venial than among the mortal sins, for after relating the incident just given, he writes: "He (i. e., Mr.
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Mossom) was married four times, and much harrassed by his last wife, as Col. Bassett has often told me, which may account for and somewhat excuse a little peevishness."
Rev. David Mossom officiated at the marriage of George Washington and the Widow Custis. Some persons have thought that the ceremony was performed at St. Peter's church. Bishop Meade, however, is au- thority for the statement that the marriage took place at the "White House," the home of Mrs. Custis, on the Pamunkey river, several miles from the church. Mr. Mossom died on the 4th of January, 1767. His monument, still to be seen in St. Peter's church, within the chancel, bears the following inscription:
"Reverendus David Mossom prope Jacet,
Collegii St. Joannis Cantabrigiae obiti, Alumnus, Hujus Parochiae Rector Annes Quadraginta, Omnibus Ecclesiae Anglicanae Presbyteriis Inter Americanos Ordine Presbyteratus Primus; Literatura Paucis secundus,
Qui tandem senis et Moerore Confectus Ex variis Rebus arduis quas in hac vita perpessus est Mortisq: in dies memor ideo virens et valens Sibi hunc seulpturae locum posuit et elegit Uxoribus Elizabetha et Maria quidem juxta sepultis Ubi requirescat dones resuscitatus ad vitam Eternam Per Jesum Christum salvatorem nostrum
Qualis erat, indicant illi quibus benenotus Superstiles Non hoc sepulchrale saxum Londini Natus 25 Martii 1690 Obiit 4 Janii 1767.
Bishop Meade followed by the writer of an article in the "William and Mary College Quarterly," Vol. V., p. 81, interprets the epitaph as saying that Mr. Mossom was an American by birth. But to the writer of this article "Londini Natus" seems to point unmistakably to England as Mr. Mossom's native land.
After giving so much space to St. Peter's famous minister it seems unfair to dismiss with a word the people who "sat under" him. But nothing more can be done here, for in this case, as always, history, dealing leniently with all save those in public life, has preserved but a memory of them-the name-and of many of them not even a
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memory. However, the following list, containing the names of vestry- men of the parish in the period between 1685 and 1758 will not be without interest:
George Jones, William Bassett, Stephen Carlton, Henry Wyatt, Thomas Mitchell, John Parke, William Paisley, John Rever (?), Cor- nelius Dabney, Gideon Macon, Matthew Page, George Smith, John Roger, David Crawford, James Moss, John Lydall, Joseph Forster, John Lewis, Nicholas Merriwether, John Parke, Jr., Richard Little. page, Thomas Butts, Thomas Massie, William Waddell, Henry Childs, Robert Anderson, Richard Allen, Samuel Gray, Ebenezer Adams, Charles Lewis, Charles Massie, Walton Clopton, William Macon, John Netherland, William Brown, William Marston, David Patterson, Wil- liam Chamberlayne, Michael Sherman, John Dandridge, Daniel Parke Custis, Matthew Anderson, George Webb, William Hopkins, Jesse Scott, Edmund Bacon, William Vaughan, William Clayton and John Roper.
On the inner wall of the chancel of St. Peter's, opposite the memorial tablet to Parson Mossom, is another to William Chamberlayne, vestry- man, and for many years one of the church wardens of the parish. The inscription reads as follows:
M S
Near this place lyes interred ye Body of Mr. William Chamberlayne Late of this Parish Mercht.
Descended of an ancient & Worthy Family in the County of Hereford. He married Elizabeth ye eldest Daughter of Richard Littlepage of this County,
by whom he has left issue three Sons, Edward Pye, Thomas & Richard. & two Daughters, Mary & Elizabeth. Ob: 2 Augt. 1736 Aetat 36
Hoc Marmor exiguum summi amoris Monumentum posuit Conjux moestissima. 1737 Also Ann Kidly Born Sense Her Father's Decease.
M. Sidnell Bristol fecit.
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From Bishop Meade one learns that Rev. Mr. Mossom was succeeded in office "by the Rev. James Semple, who continued the minister of the parish for twenty-two years. The Rev. Benjamin Blagrove was the minister in the year 1789. The Rev. Benjamin Brown was the min- ister in the year 1797.
"After a long and dreary interval of nearly fifty years, we find the Rev. E. A. Dalrymple the minister from 1843 to 1845. (The Rev. Farley Berkeley officiated some time before this as missionary at St. Peter's church.) Then the Rev. E. B. Maguire, from 1845 to 1851. Then the Rev. William Norwood, from 1852 to 1854. Then the Rev. David Caldwell, from 1854 to 1856." [Bishop Meade's "Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. Philadelphia," 1872, Vol. I., p. 386.]
Bishop Meade finished writing his book in May, 1857. Four years later the Civil War broke out. A correspondent, writing in the South- ern Churchman for February 9, 1907, gives the following account of affairs at St. Peter's immediately before, during, and after the war:
"Just before the Civil War, St. Peter's had a large and prosperous congregation. During the war the church was abominably defaced by the Federal soldiers, who stabled their horses in the church, and seemed to take great pleasure in ruining it. A company of soldiers from Hartford, Conn., wrote their names on the inner walls of the porte cochere, and left many other marks of their occupancy. Those of the congregation who were not killed either never returned with their families, moved away, or had all they could do to live in any instance. Among all these things the people devotedly set to work to renew and repair the church. The rector, the Rev. Mr. Kepler, was largely instrumental in this, and received large contributions from wealthy gentlemen living at the North. After some years, he and his people succeeded in having the church thoroughly repaired, and it has been kept so ever since, chiefly by the faithful few Epis- copalians to whom the church is very dear and very sacred."
The interior of St. Peter's church as it appears to-day demands at least a passing notice. The high, plastered walls, marked off in blocks and colored a soft grey, the but partially carpeted floor, the simply designed benches painted a sober brown, finally the large, deep-set windows, filled with plain glass, make together a not unpleasing pic- ture-a picture somewhat severe in its simplicity, but not without the advantage of offering little to distract the worshipper's attention from
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service or sermon. The two mural tablets, whose inscriptions have been given, are the only objects approaching to the ornamental to be seen in the church, and they are completely hidden by thin wing- like partition walls, cutting off a part of the sanctuary space on either side the communion table. These walls are modern. The object had in view in building them was rather that of adding attractiveness to the chancel than to provide robing space for the clergyman, a pur- pose which the somewhat closet-like rooms so made but imperfectly fulfill.
St. Peter's church is within easy driving distance of Tunstall's Station, on the York River branch of the Southern Railway. This station is distant just about twenty miles each from Richmond and West Point, the two terminals of the line.
In the autumn of 1898 Bishop Whittle issued to the son and nephew of the then Bishop Coadjutor of Virginia licenses to read the service in St. Peter's. Since that time the doors of the old church have been open for divine service with more or less regularity. The last rector, the Rev. Charles J. Holt, died during the year 1906. He had been connected with the parish which he held along with West Point, only since 1904. At present a lay reader, with headquarters at West Point, holds service in St. Peter's on one Sunday in the month.
To-day, after more than two hundred years of authenticated history, St. Peter's church stands, to all intents and purposes, as good as new, a monument to those who built and worshipped in it.
ST. JOHN'S CHURCHI, HAMPTON, VA.
ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, ELIZABETH CITY PARISH, HAMPTON, VIRGINIA.
BY THE REV. REVERDY ESTILL, D. D., RECTOR.
T HE forefathers of our English Christianity came to this country April, 1607, and landed first upon that point of land at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, which is now so familiarly known as Cape Henry, to which also they gave the name. After their long voyage they revelled in the beauty of the verdure and in the vastness of the wooded glory about them, feeling that they had come upon a goodly land, while they dreamed of the wealth which should come to them from so rich a soil. There they would have continued and planted the first colony upon so favorable a spot had not their leader been enjoined to seek further inland for a more permanent settlement, as the danger from their near neighbor and rival in the scheme of American Colonization was imminent anywhere upon the coast; a danger which might be escaped by sailing further up the great body of water which came from the interior. They therefore set sail in their three tiny ships and landed at a small village or settlement of the Indians, called in their language Kecoughtan. "The town," says one of the authorities, "containeth eighteen houses, pleas- antly seated upon three acres of ground, upon a plain half environed by a great bay of the great River, the other part with a Baye of the other river falling into the great baye, with a little isle fit for a castle in the mouth thereof: The town adjoining the maine by a necke of land sixty yards."
Captain John Smith gives a quaint yet interesting description of the place: "The houses," says he, "are built like our arbors-of small young springs (sprigs) bowed and tiede and so close covered with moss or barks of trees, very handsomely, that notwithstanding either wind, rain or weather, they are warm as stoves, but very smokey, yet at the top of the houses there is a hole made for the smoke to go into right over the fire." After this time the town was again visited by the whites. He writes for instance of the year 1608: "Six or seven days the extreme wind, frosts and snows caused us to keep Christmas among the salvages where we were never merrier or fedde
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on more plente of good oysters, fish, flesh, wilde fowl and good bread, nor never had better fires in England than in the warm smokie houses of Kecoughtan." It has "a convenient harbour for fisheries, boats or small boats, that so conveniently turneth itself into Bayes and Creeks that make that place very pleasant to inhabit. Their corn- fields being girded thereon as peninsulars. The first, and next the mouth, are the Kecoughtans, who beside their women and children, have not pass twenty fighting men." Such a goodly place could hardly escape the cupidity of the early settlers, and so we find them 1610 in possession of the mouth of the river, where upon either point they built a fort and entered into permanent occupation.
With regard to the fruitfulness of the place, we find Sir Thomas Dale writing from Jamestown in 1612: "To Kecoughtan we ac- counted it fortie miles, where they live well with half that allowance the rest have from the stores, because of the extraordinary quantities of fish, fowls and deer." Under this view of the place, it is much to be regretted that the Colonists did not settle here when they first touched the land in 1607, instead of going on to the malarial, marshy, sickly spot which they did select. Their early history might have been spared the ghastly record of famine, fire, starvation and death, which well-nigh brought the settlement at Jamestown to extinction. At any rate, a permanent location was made at Kecoughtan in 1610, and from that moment dates the history of the Church in Hampton.
It seems that the Indians, who dwelt upon the east side of the South Hampton river or creek, which runs through the present town (it is now called Hampton creek) were guilty of some serious depre- dations that year, and had killed a prominent member of the Colony, Humphrey Blunt by name. This so incensed the Governor that he drove the tribe away, built the two forts mentioned at the mouth of the river and named them, respectively, Henry and Charles, after the sons of his Most Worshipful Majesty, King James I.
The Colonists evidently occupied the site of the ancient Indian village and became heirs of all their possessions, where without doubt the first church was built. There is left not a trace of this first building in which the forefathers of the hamlet worshipped, except a small clump of trees on what was once the glebe land of the parish, now part of the estate of the Tabb family, just north of the road which leads from Hampton to Old Point Comfort. The building was supposedly of wood, as most of the Colonial houses were at first,
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