USA > Virginia > Culpeper County > Culpeper County > Genealogical and historical notes on Culpeper County, Virginia > Part 2
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Spotswood, infant, is her grandson and heir, and is now in England. Anne and Diana remained in England and never married."
Governor Spotswood had four children, John, Robert Anne. Catherine, and Dorothea. John married in 1745, Mary, daughter of Capt. Dandridge, of the British army and had two sons, General Alexander and Capt John, both officers of the Revolution; and two daughters, Mary and Ann. John, son of John, and grandson of the Governor, married Mary Rousee of Essex, and had many children. General Alexander Spotswood, grandson of the Governor married Elizabeth, daughter of Augustine and niece of General Washington. Robert, second son of the Governor, was an officer under Washington in 1755, and was killed by the Indians. Anne Catherine (Kate) married Bernard Moore, of Chelsea in King William; and their daughter married Charles Carter of Shirley, and was the grandmother of our Chevalier Bayard (sans peur et sans reproche), General Robert Edward Lee, named after two of his uncles, Robert and Edward Carter.
Kate Spotswood, Mrs. B. Moore, was a great beanty. The late Mrs. Dun- bar of Falmouth, had seen her, and was so impressed by the vision, that, with true womanly instinet, she remembered, after the lapse of many years, the de- tails of her dress, which we reproduce for the benefit of our lady readers. It was a fawn-colored satin, square in the neck, over a blue satin petticoat, with satin shoes and buckles to match, on very small and beautifully shaped feet. A granddaughter of Kate, now living in a green old age, says that when she was a little girl she saw Kate sitting up in her bed at Chelsea, combing her white and silken hair, with a servant holding up a looking-glass before her.
There is a portrait of Governor Spotswood at Chelsea, and there was an- other at Sedley Lodge in Orange (now in the State Library at Richmond), which the author of this historical tract had daguerreotyped. It represents him in full dress, scarlet velvet-graceful and commanding in face and figure -antique model of the cavalier,-the old English and the old Virginia gentle- man, who are as much alike as father and son. What a genealogical tree !- with General Sir Alexander Spotswood its root in Virginia, and Robert Ed- ward Lee its bright, consummate flower.
ORGANIZATION OF ST. MARK'S PARISH.
The Register of St. Mark's Parish, which lies before me, is the oldest manu- script record in the county of Culpeper. The parish is older than the county by eighteen years, the former having been established by Act of Assemby in 1730, and the latter in 1748. It is curious to note the progress of population, and parishes and counties, from their original seats on tidewater towards the mountains. The people went before, the parishes followed after, and the counties completed the organization, according to the uniform policy of the British Government to keep the Church and State in union.
In 1634 the colony of Virginia was divided by the House of Burgesses into eight counties, or shires, as they were then called. In 1692 the old county of Rappahannock was extinguished, and its territory distributed into the coun- ties of Richmond on the north, and Essex on the south, side of the Rappahan- nock River. The movement of the growing population was along the banks of the rivers, on account of the greater prodnetiveness of the soil, and the fa- cilities of transportation, in the absence of roads in the intervening wilder- ness. Thus early in the eighteenth century the settlement had passed the Falls of the Rappahannock and reached the Rapid Ann River, where a colony of Germans had seated themselves, and Lieutenant-Governor Spotswood
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had established a furnace and built a " castle," in which he occasionally resided.
Over the new settlement a new county and a new parish were erected in 1720. The preamble to the Act of Assembly declares that " the frontiers to- wards the high mountains, being exposed to dangers from the Indians and the French settlements towards the west, a new county is established, bordering upon Snow Creek up to the Mill thence by a southwest course to the North Anna, thence up the said river as far as convenient, and thence by a line over the high mountains to the river Shenandoah, so as to include the North Pass through said mountains; thence down said river till it comes against the head of Rappahannock River, and down that river to the mouth of Snow Creek ; which tract of land shall be come a county by the name of Spotsyl- vania, and the whole county shall be one parish, by the name of St.George."
The Act also appropriated five hundred pounds for a church, courthouse, pillory and stocks, where the Governor shall appoint. Another clause appro- priates one thousand pounds for arins and ammunition, to such " Christian tithables " as shall go to seat this county. The county of Brunswick was es- tablished by the same law. The inhabitants were made free of levies for ten years. The same privilege is extended to Germans and other foreign Protes- tants, " who may not understand English readily," if they will entertain a minister of their own.
It will be observed that the movement of counties, parishes and people, by way of Spotsylvania and Brunswick, was towards the northern and south- ern passes through the " high mountains " to transcend which and see what lay beyond was the great problem of the day.
'The Rev. Hugh Jones, one of the Colonial clergy, in his " Present State of Virginia," published about 1724, says :- " Beyond Governor Spotswood's fur- nace, within view of the vast mountains, he has founded a town called Germanna, from some Germans sent over by Queen Ann, who are now remoced up further. Here he has servants and workmen of most handicraft trades, and he is building a church, courthouse, and dwelling-house for himself, and with his servants and negroes he has cleared plantations about it, proposing great encouragement for people to come and settle in that uninhabited part of the world, lately divided into a county."
Colonel Byrd, of Westover, on James River, an accomplished gentleman, an adventurous traveller, and inimitable humorists, visited Colonel Spots- wood in 1732, and indites the following pleasant gossip on the occasion.
" The famous town of Germanna consists of Colonel Spotswood's enchan- ted castle on one side, and a baker's dozen of ruinous tenements on the other where so many German families had dwelt some years ago, but are now re- moved ten miles higher, in the Fork of the Rappahannock, to land of their own. There had also been a chapel about a bow shot from the Colonel's house, at the end of an avenue of cherry trees, but some pious people had late- ly burnt it down, with intent to get another built nearer their own homes. Here I arrived abour three o'clock, and found only Mrs. Spotswood at home, who received her old acquaintance with many a gracious smile. I was carried into a room elegantly set off with pier glasses, the largest of which came soon after to an odd misfortune. Among other favorite animals which cheered this lady's solitude, a brace of tame deer ran familiarly about the house, and one of them came to stare at me as a stranger, but unluckily spying his own figure in the glass, he made a spring over the tea-table that stood under it, and shattered the glass to pieces, and falling back upon the tea table made, a terrible fracas among the china. This exploit was so sudden, and accompa-
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nied by such noise, that it surprised me and perfectly frightened Mrs. Spots- wood. But it was worth all the damage to show the moderation and good humor with which she bore the disaster. In the evening the noble Colonel came from his mines, who saluted mne very civilly; and Mrs. Spotswood's sis- ter Miss Thecky, who had been to meet him, en cavalier, was so kind, too, as to bid me welcome. We talked over a legend of old stories, supped about nine, and then prattled with the ladies till it was time for a traveller to retire. In the meantime I observed my old friend to be very uxorious and exceedingly fond of his children. This was so opposite to the maxims he used to preach up before he was married, that I could not forbear rubbing up the memory of them. But he gave a very good-natured turn to his change of sentiments, by alleging that whoever brings a poor gentlewoman into so solitary a place, from all her friends and acquaintances, would be ungrateful not to use her and all that belongs to her with all possible tenderness. We all kept snug in our several apartments till nine, except Miss Thecky, who was the housewife of the fam- ily. At that hour we met over a pot of coffee, which was not strong enough to give us the palsy. After breakfast, the Colonel and I left the ladies to their domestic affairs,and took a turn in the garden, which has nothing beautiful in it but three terrace walks, that fall in slopes one below another.I let him under- stand that, besides the pleasure of paying him a visit, I came to be instructed by so great a master in the mystery of making iron, wherein he led the way, and was the Tubal Cain of Virginia. He corrected me a little there, saying that he was not only the first in his country, but the first in North America who had erected a regular furnace ; that they ran altogether on bloomeries in New England and Pennsylvania till his example had made them attempt greater works. He said that the four furnaces now at work in Virginia circu- lated a great suin of money for provisions, &c., in the adjacent counties. He told me that he had iron in several parts of his tract of forty-five thousand acres of land, but that the mine he was at work upon was thirteen miles be- low Germanna. He raised the ore a mile from the furnace, and carted the iron, when made, fifteen iniles to his plantation on Massaponax. He said that during his absence in England he had lost eighty slaves, his furnace was still the greater part of the time, and all his plantations ran to ruin. But he was rightly served for trusting his affairs to a mathematician (Mr. Graeme), whose thoughts were always ' among the stars.' The afternoon was devoted to the ladies who conducted me through a shady lane to the river, and by the way made me drink some very fine water that issued from a marble fountain. Just behind it was a covered bench, where Miss Thecky often sat and bewailed her virginity. The river is about fifty yards wide, and so rapid that the ferry-boat is towed over by a chain, and therefore called the Rapidan." The Miss Thec- ky above mentioned was evidently the sister of Mrs. Spotswood, who married Mr. Benger, a cousin of the Governor, and from whom some of the Minors and Frenchs of Spotsylvania are descended.
Governor Spotswood, after whom Spotsylvania was called, fixed the seat of justice at Germanna, which was named after the German settlement. The history of these Germans deserves further investigation. In 1717 they consist- ed of one hundred and thirty persons, in twenty nine families, and anticipa- ted a large accession to their number. In a petition to the Bishop of London and the English society for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign lands, they described themselves as very desirous of having the ministers of religion in their own tongue, " not understanding English well." They invoke the aid of the Bishops in England to procure for them and ordain a young Ger- man minister, to assist and to succeed their old pastor ( Haeger), now seventy-
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five years of age, and to send with him the Liturgy of the Church of England translated into High Dutch, which they are desirous to use in public worship. They were exempted by the General Assembly from the payment of parish levies. Dr. Hawks says that the parish of St. George was created for them. This is clearly a mistake. Colonel Byrd, in the passage quoted above, says he saw in 1732 "the ruinous tenements" which they had occupied at Germanna, and adds that they had inoved higher up to the Fork of the Rappahannock, to land of their own, which must mean the juncture of the Rapid Ann (often 'called the Rappahannock in those times) and the Robinson, which is now in the county of Madison. I believe I was the first to suggest that there was tlie nucleus of the German population in Madison county (see my history of St. George's Parish, 1747). Bishop Meade adopts this suggestion, and refers to an old gentleman in Culpeper who had told him that in his boyhood he had of- ten seen the Lutherans from Madison, when they had no minister of their own, come to Buck Run Church, in Culpeper, to receive the Holy Communion. That old gentleman was the venerable vestryman and watchful warden, the late Samuel Slaughter, of Western View, in St. Mark's Parish. I have initiat- ed inquiries which I hope will throw some light on this obscurity.
In May, 1730, the General Assembly, in view of the inconveniences arising to the parishioners of St. George's Parish by reason of the great length there- of, divided it by a line running "from the mouth of the Rapid Ann to the mouth of the Wilderness Run; thence up the said run to the bridge, and thence southward to the Pamunky River. All of the territory above that line to be called and known as St. Mark's Parish." The same Act directs the freehol- ders and housekepers of the new parish to meet at the new church in German- na, on the first day of the following January, and elect twelve of the most able and discreet persons of the parish to be vestrymen of said parish. In pursuance of this Act, the freeholders and housekeepers did meet at Germanna on the 1st day of January, 1731, and elected Goodrich Lightfoot, Henry Field, Francis Kirtly (not Huntley as in Bishop Meade's "Old Churches, &c."), William Pey- ton, James Barbour, Robert Slaughter, Thomas Staunton, Benjamin Cave, Robert Green, Jno. Finlason and Samuel Ball. Robert Slaughter and Fran- cis Slaughter were the first church wardens, and William Peyton first clerk.
These antique vestrymen were the fruitful germs of geneological trees which have scatterd their prolific seeds from New York to Florida, and from Virginia to California. This is not a rhetorical flourish, but is literally true, and could be easily demonstated, were "the play worth the candle." The progress of this narrative will furnish some suggestive illustrations of this truth.
1731. St. Mark's Parish now begins its independent career at Germania, with- out a shepherd to seek after the flock scattered in the wilderness bounded by the Blue Mountains, which look so enchanting in the distance, when their summits are lighted by the setting sun. There were three churches in the new parish-one of them at Germanna, one in the Little Fork, and one in the S. W. Mountain. in the neighborhood of Messrs. James Barbour and Benjamin Cave, vestrymen. For the several years in which they had no pastor the vestry employed occasionally the Rev. Mr. De Butts and the Rev. Mr. Purit, two adventurers who were seeking parishes, and paid them three hundred pounds of tobacco per sermon.
In the absence of regular ministers, the churches and chapels were served by Lay readers, or clerks, as they were then called, whom the vestries seem to have preferred to inefficient clergymen. The vestry went vigorously to work, by ordering the churches to be repaired and vestry-houses built ; buying two hundred acres of land for a glebe, of Wm. Ashley; contracting for a glebe-
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house, with all the appurtenances of barns, stables, meat houses, dairies &c. William Peyton was made Lay Reader at the Little Fork; John McMurth had the double office of clerk and sexton at Germanna ; and William Phillips and Dave Cave, alternating clerks at the Southwest Mountain Chapel. The churchwardens settled with the old vestry of St. George's and bought parish books. The parish lines were surveyed. Zachery Lewis was chosen as their attorney. Robert Turner was made collector of tithes. A. Chambers was en- gaged to keep the church clean at Germanna; John Carder to do the same of- fice at the Fork, and William Stevenson at the Mountain Chapel. Col. Waller . was employed to bring up a copy of the oaths of allegiance to the British Crown, and of conformity to the Church of England, and the test oath against Popery-all of which the vestry had to take. Some idea may be formed of the state of the country, from the fact that Augustine Smith, Jr., was paid 200 pounds of tobacco for PILOTING the minister to the Mountain Chapel, which Was not far from Cave's Ford in Orange.
The vestry seem too, to have been animated by a laudable spirit of church - extension. Within two years (1732-1733) two churches and two chapels were projected. The first church was seated on what is now the road from Ger- manna to Stevensburg, "convenient to the springs above Major Finlason's path." This church, or one on the same site, was standing within the mem- ory of men now living, and was used by the venerable Mr. Woodville. It is called, in the vestrybook, the Lower or Great Fork Church. Mr. Spotswood, of Orange Grove, now in his 77th year, says he remembers when the Spots. woods, Gordons, Grymes, and Thorntons, near Germanna, used to attend this church. The other churches were built " convenient to the Southwest Moun- tain road, on the first run below the chapel;" and John Lightfoot and .John Rucker were ordered " to pitch on the place near to some good spring." This was the old church near Ruckersville, in the county of Greene. Its age is left uncertain in Rev. Mr. Ernest's interesting article on St. Thomas's Parish in Bishop Meade's " Old Churches, &c." The old minis- ter who first preached in this church, and whom Mr. Ernest could not identity, was either De Butts or Becket; both of whom were discharged by the vestry of St. Mark's. The first place of worship on the Southwest Mountain was a chapel, which James Barbour and Benjamin Cave undertook " to have kept clean." At the chapel, De Butts preached until 1732, at which date I find this entry in the vestry book-"Ordered, that the Rev. Mr. De Butts be paid 9000 pounds of tobacco for thirty sermons." In December, 1733, a new chapel was ordered, only twenty feet square, at Batley's, or Brad- ley's Quarter, "convenient to the best spring that Benjamin Cave can find," Rev. Mr. De Butts, who had been employed BY THE SERMON, was now dis- charged, and St. Mark's had its first elected minister in the Rev. John Becket. FIRST MINISTER OF ST. MARK'S.
May 11, 1733, "ordered, the Rev. J. Becket, being recommended by the Gov- ernor and Commissary, be entertained as Minister of the Parish; and that he receive the glebe and what ison it, and the house when finished, and be paid as the law directs; and that he preach at the Southwest Chapel every other Sunday until further orders." At the next vestry (1733) it was ordered that the churchwardens offer the Hon. Col Alexander Spotswood the choice of a seat for himself and family in the church on the G rinanna road. In 1730, Major G. Lightfoot was ordered to wait on Major John Taliaferro, to bring up the sur- plice for Germanna Church. It was also ordered that the church be painted and tarred, and that S. Wright put four barrells of tar on the roof of the glebe- house. 1735 it was ordered that "a chapel of ease" be erected and built be-
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tween Shaw's Mountain and the Devil's Run and the river; and that Francis Slaughter, Robert Green, and Henry Field, gentlemen, "pitch on the place most convenient to the best spring that they can find, on one of the branches of the run or river." Our fathers kept as close to the rivers as if they had been amphibious, and kept as sharp a look-out for a good cool spring as Arabs do in the desert. They had ladles chained to the church-springs, and were careful to have good framed horse-blocks and bridle-hooks for those who went to church EN CAVALIER.
Up to 1784-5, St. Mark's Parish was in Spotsylvania. At that date Spotsyl- vania was divided by the line between St. George's and St. Mark's Parishes. Spotsylvania was limited to St. George's Parish. All above that line, bound- ed southerly by old Hanover county, and to the north by the Lord Fairfax grant (the Rappahannock river), and westerly by the utmost limits of Virgin- ia, was made the county of Orange. In 1738 John Catlett was added to the vestry in the place of Goodrich Lightfoot deceased. The Rev. J. Becket now came to grief for some scandalous conduct, and was discharged. In 1739 the churchwardens were instructed to agree with Mr. McDaniel to serve the pa- rish, or with some other minister, EXCEPT MR. BECKET. In 1738, Augusta and Frederick counties and parishes were separated from Orange and St. Mark's, by a line from the head-spring of Hedgeman's river to the head-spring of the Potomac, to take effect when there were people enough in the Valley for erecting courts of justice; and in the meantime, the people there were exempt- ed from levies by Orange and St. Mark's. In 1740, St. Mark's was divided by a line from the Wilderness bridge up the mountain road, to the head of Russel Ruu; thence down the said run to the river Rapidan; thence up the Rapidan to the Robinson river; thence along the ridge, between the Robinson and Rapi- dan, to the top of the Blue R dge. All north of said line to retain the name of St. Mark's, and all south of said bounds to be the new Parish of St. Thomas. This division threw the Southwest Mountain Church and Chapel into St. Thomas; and with them Messrs. James Barbour and Benjamin Cave vestry- men. William Triplett and William Russell were elected to fill the vacancies. We now reach the incumbence of the first respectable minister in St. Mark's Parish.
REV. JOHN THOMPSON.
June 10th, 1740. Under this date is the following entry in the Register :- "At a vestry in the vestry house at the Fork : it is ordered, that the Rev. John Thompson, being recommended by the Governor and Commissary, we do entertain him as Minister of our parish; and that he be paid as the law directs." Mr. Thompson was a Master of Arts of the University of Edinburgh. He had been ordained Deacon by the Bishop of St. David's in the year of 1734. at Westminster; and Priest in November of the same year, in the Chapel Roy- al of St. James. It must have been very pleasant to the gentlemen of the vestry and of the parish, to have exchanged the former disreputable incumbent for the accomplished gentleman. It seems also to have been agreeable to one the ladies of the parish(if one may venture to say so, after all parties have been so long dead); for the new minister was not only a scholar and a literary gentleman, but he was a very handsome man. The vestry testified their pleasure by ordering a study to be added to the glebe-house and the widow of Governor Spotswood presented a velvet cloth and cushion to the church in 1741; and on the 9th of November, 1742, she vowed to obey and to serve him in the holy estate of matrimony. Governor Spotswood's castle at Germanna, with its fair commander, did not surrender to the consummate address of the clerical beseiger without a severe struggle, as the following letter will testify.
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I procured the original of this letter from Mrs. Murray Forbes of Falmouth,'a lineal descendant of Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, and published it for the first time in my history of St. George's Parish, from whence it was copied by Bish- op Meade in his "Old Churches and Families." Mrs. Spotswood's children and connections were so opposed to the match that she begged to be released from her engagement, and was answered thus :
MADAM .-
Bv diligently perusing your letter. I see that there is a material argument. which I ought to have answered, upon which vour strongest objection to com- pleting my happiness seems to depend, viz .: That you would incur ve cen- sures of ye world for marrying a person of iny station: hv which I understand that you think it a diminution of your honour and ve dignity of your family to marry a person in the station of a clergyman. Now, if I can make it ap- pear that the ministerial office is an einployment in its nature ye most honor- able, and in its effects ve most beneficial to mankind, I hope your objections will immediately vanish, yf you will keep me no longer in suspense and miserv. hnt consummate my happiness. I make no doubt. Madam, but yt you will readily grant yt no man can he emploved in any work more honorable than what immediately relates to the King of kings and Lord of lords, and to ve salva- tion of souls immortal in their nature and redeemed by ye blood of the Son of God. The powers committed to their care cannot be exercised by ve greatest. princes of earth, and it is ye same work in kind and ve same in ye design of it. with vt of the blessed angels, who are ministering spirits for those who shall he heirs of salvation. It is ye same business yt ye Son of God dischared when he condescended to dwell among men, which engages men in ye greatest acts of doing good in turning sinners from the errors of their wav. and by all wise and prudent means in gaining souls unto God. And the faithful and diligent discharge of this holy function gives a title to ye highest degree of glory in the next world: for they yt be wise shall shine as ye brightness of ye firmament, and thev yt turn many to righteousness as the stars forever.
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