USA > Virginia > Old churches, ministers and families of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 27
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"On the 28th November, 1821, the Rev. Robert Prout was elected minister, and served until about the year 1824. Thomas Hoggard, John
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Thorougood, Henry Keeling, and William Shepherd, having been elected to fill vacancies in the vestry.
"On the 7th May, 1838, the Rev. D. M. Fackler was elected, and served as minister until the 8th November, 1841.
"On the 11th May, 1842, the Rev. John G. Hull was elected, but, being in very delicate health, only continued to discharge the duties of minister until the 11th March, 1843, when he resigned. By his influ- ence, however, a neat little brick church was built in Kempsville, called 'Emanuel Church,' which was consecrated by Bishop Meade, on the 27th November, 1843. Since its erection, no services have been performed in the 'Donation Church,' which would now require $1200 or $1400 to put it in order.
"On the 1st November, 1846, the Rev. Henry C. Lay was elected minister, who served but a few months.
"In July, 1848, the Rev. Lewis Walke was elected minister, and con- tinued to discharge the duties about four years.
"Nothing of consequence appears upon the record since that time. It closes with a notice of a meeting held in March, 1856, when William P. Morgan, John S. Woodhouse, Solomon S. Keeling, A. G. Tebault, and William C. Scott, qualified as vestrymen by subscribing their names in due form."
To the foregoing it may be added that the Rev. Robert Gatewood, a Deacon, spent a part of the last year in this parish. I must not omit to take special notice of one of the last of the ministers who officiated in this parish,-the Rev. Mr. Hull,-an alumnus of our Seminary. So entirely devoted was he to his work in public and in private,-so beloved as a man and as a minister,-that when, through failing health being unable to preach, he resigned his charge, the people refused to accept it, and insisted upon his con- tinuing their minister ; only asking such private intercourse as he could carry on while going from house to house. Such was his last year's ministry among them. Our prospects in this parish are now and have been for a long time discouraging. Formerly this was one of the most flourishing parishes in Virginia. Many circum- stances have concurred to promote its declension. In my early youth I remember to have heard my parents speak of it as having what is called the best society in Virginia. The families were in- teresting, hospitable, given to visiting and social pleasures. They whose words I quote had some experience of it. Both of them were by marriage connected with the Rev. Anthony Walke, whose mother was a Randolph. At his glebe they were sometimes inmates. The social glass, the rich feast, the card-table, the dance, and the horse-race, were all freely indulged in through the county. And what has been the result? I passed through the length and breadth of this parish more than twenty years ago, in company with my friend, David Meade Walke, son of the old
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minister of the parish, who was well acquainted with its past his- tory and present condition, and able to inform me whose were once the estates through which we passed, and into whose hands they had gone; who could point me to the ruins of family seats which had been consumed by fire; could tell me what were the causes of the bankruptcy and ruin and untimely death of those who once formed the gay society of this county. Cards, the bottle, the horse-race, the continual feasts,-these were the destroyers. In no part of Virginia has the destruction of all that was old been greater. But let us hope for better things, and strive for them by the substitution of honest industry for spendthrift idleness, of tem- perance for dissipation, of true piety for the mere form of it. Some excellent people, doubtless, there always were. Their num- ber has increased of late years. Some have I known most worthy of esteem. May God strengthen the things that remain, though they seem ready to perish !
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ARTICLE XX.
Hungar's Parish, Northampton County.
NORTHAMPTON was originally called by the old Indian name of Ackowmake or Accowmake. In the year 1642 the name was changed from Accowmake to Northton or Northampton, the name of a county in England from whence the family of Robins came, and on account of which it probably received this name. In that same year-1642-the parish was divided, all below King's Creek to Smith's Island being one parish, afterward called Hungar's parish, and all from King's Creek to Nuswattock Creek being the other, and called Nuswattocks or Nassawattocks Church or parish. Ac- cowmake was one of the original shires established in 1634. Being cut off from the mainland by the Chesapeake Bay, and the passage being difficult and dangerous, it was permitted for a considerable time to be somewhat independent in the execution of the laws, no appeal from the decision of its authorities to the higher court on the other side of the bay being allowed, except for great causes. On account of its detached position, the title of the Colony in early writers is that of Virginia and Accomac. This independent condition probably contributed to something like a rebellion in the time of Governor Yeardley, which required a visit from him and the Council, and suitable attendants, in order to its suppression. In this suppression Colonel Scarborough took an active part.
It was always an interesting part of Virginia. In the year 1622, when the great massacre of the Indians took place in all other parts of the State, it was in serious contemplation to remove the whole colony to the Eastern Shore; and when, in Bacon's Rebellion, Mr. William Berkeley was obliged to fly, he twice found an asylum there. Could an accurate history of its early settle- ment and of the chief families which have ever since been living there, and of the old churches and ministers, have been preserved, perhaps no portion of the State would have furnished a more inte- resting one; and had that justice been done to the culture and improvement of its soil, and the use of its many advantages, which now has begun to be done, few parts of Virginia would have been more valuable. In one remarkable particular it has retained a
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more accurate record of its early history than any other part of the State. While the oldest vestry-books and county-records have been burned by fire or lost through negligence, the proceedings of the court of Accomac, from 1632, ten years before it changed its name, and yet more, before it was divided into two counties, have been preserved, and now furnish documents from which to estimate the discipline of the court and the manners of the people. A friend,* at great pains, has furnished me with copious extracts from the records of the court from the year 1632 to 1690, and some of a later date, out of which I shall select as many, and of such kind, as shall best suit the size and character of this work.
Those who examine these records are struck with nothing so much as the penitentiary discipline which they exhibit, more like that of the early ages than is to be found in Protestant times and countries. As we have, in connection with certain parishes, taken up some special topic for consideration, as those of induction of ministers and the Option or Two-penny Act, we will, before entering on the statistics of this parish, very briefly consider the subject of discipline as exhibited in the early history of the Church and State of Virginia. We have already alluded more than once to the "laws moral, martial, and divine," which were introduced under Governors De La War, Dale, and others from the Low Countries of Europe, where they were in use among the armies of that time, and which were better suited for a rude soldiery, in a barbarous age, than for the Christian Church in any age. We have said that the most severe of those enacted against heresy and blasphemy and non-attendance at church were never executed. Mr. Burke, whose skeptical principles and ill opinion of Christians cannot be concealed, is forced to acknowledge this.
I have met with but one instance of the infliction of that most painful punishment, "the running of an awl or bodkin through the tongue;" and that was not for any violation of the laws con- cerning religion, but for a sin of the tongue, in uttering a base and detracting speech against Mr. Hamar, a worthy gentleman of the Council at an early period of the Colony. The guilty person was a Mr. Barnes, of Bermuda Hundred, who was sent to James- town for trial, and condemned "to have his tongue run through with an awl, to pass through a guard of forty men, and to be butted by every one of them, and at the head of the troop
* Mr. Anderson, of Franktown.
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knocked down, and footed out of the fort." I find that, for the violation of the seventh and ninth commandments, which God himself delivered amidst lightnings and thunders from Sinai, the most frequent and disgraceful punishments were inflicted. As to slander, the bearing false witness against fellow-beings,-at the early period of the Colony, if a woman was convicted of it, her husband was made to pay five hundredweight of tobacco; but, this law proving insufficient, the penalty was changed into ducking, and inflicted on the woman herself. Places for ducking were prepared at the doors of court-houses. An instance is men- tioned of a woman who was ordered to be ducked three times from a vessel lying in James River, near Bermuda Hundred, for scold- ing. No doubt she was notorious for it. If a man was guilty of slandering a minister, he was required to pay a fine of five hundred pounds of tobacco and ask the pardon of the minister before the congregation. Now, however we. may lament and condemn the modes which were sometimes adopted by our ancestors for declaring their abhorrence of these crimes and seeking to banish them from society, we must do them the justice to acknowledge that it was evidence in them of a hatred of sin and irreligion, and of a desire and determination to punish what was offensive to God. We must also ever make due allowance for the times and circumstances in which laws are made and enforced. In examining the early history of Hungar's parish, we find that in the year 1633, the offence of slandering the first minister, the Rev. Mr. Cotton, was punished in the following manner :- " Ordered by the court that Mr. Henry Charlton make a pair of stocks and set in them several Sabbath-days, during divine service, and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness, for using offensive and slanderous words concerning him." In the year 1643 the court inflicted punishment on one Richard Buckland for writing a slanderous song on one Ann Smith, ordering that "at the next sermon preached at Nassawattocks, he shall stand, during the Lessons, at the church- door, with a paper on his hat, on which shall be written 'Inimicus libellus,' and that he shall ask forgiveness of God, and also in particular of the said defamed Ann Smith." In the year 1647, Mr. Palmer being minister at Nassawattocks, the churchwardens presented two persons to the court, which ordered them to stand in the church during the service, with white sheets over their shoulders and white wands in their hands. In the year 1652 the Rev. Mr. Higby is brought before the court for scandalous speeches against Major Robins,-the issue of it not being mentioned. In
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the year 1664 Major Robins brought suit against Mary Powell for scandalous speeches against the Rev. Mr. Teackle, and she was ordered to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders, and to be banished the county. In the year 1664, Captain John Custis being High-Sheriff, there were eight presentments for violating the seventh commandment, one for swearing, one for not attending church, two for playing cards on Sunday. We have already men- tioned that a few Quakers had before this time been brought before the court for blasphemy and ordered out of the county. It is due to the people of the county to say that they did tolerate respectable persons of that sect at a later period. Between the years 1680 and 1690 there were such living quietly and unmolested in that region. It is on record that "Thomas Brown and his wife, though Quakers, were yet of such known integrity that their affir- mation was received instead of an oath." That the citizens of the Eastern Shore were not cruel and bloodthirsty may be inferred from the fact that the first capital punishment was inflicted in the year 1693. The above-mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Brown were the ancestors of that large and respectable family of Upshurs which have since been spread over the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The old family seat, called Brownsville, on the sea-shore of Northampton, still in possession of an Upshur, was the ancient residence of the Browns, who were there visited by some of the more eminent Friends from Philadelphia, who came to have fellowship with them in their peculiar mode of worship.
Before attempting a list of the names of the ministers and a notice of the churches, I will mention a few things reflecting credit on a few individuals. The first notice is due to Mr. Stephen Charlton, who, in the year 1653, bequeathed the glebe which has so long been the subject of dispute between the Episcopalians of Northampton and the overseers of the poor. I find honourable mention of Mr. Charlton in the account given by Colonel Norwood in his visit to the Eastern Shore in the year 1649. Being on a voyage from England to Virginia, he and his company were cast away on one of the islands in the ocean. After remaining there more than a week, they were conducted by some friendly Indians to the main land, and found their way to Captain Charlton's hospitable abode. "When I came to the house of one Stephen Charlton, he not only did outdo all that I had visited before him, in variety of dishes at his table, which was very well ordered in the kitchen, but would also oblige me to put on a good farmer-like suit of his wear- ing-clothes for exchange of my dirty habit; and this gave me
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opportunity to deliver my camlet coat to Jake, for the use of my brother of Kickotanke, [the Indian chief who had been kind to them,] with other things to make it worth his acceptance." Mr. Charlton was not only a hospitable but a pious man, if we may judge from the language and bequests of his will. After some expressions showing that he had just views of a Saviour, he divides his property equally between his wife and two daughters, Elizabeth and Bridget, whom he directs to be educated in a godly manner, and to be under guardians until the age of fourteen. Should Bridget, the eldest, die without children, her share was to be given to the church in Northampton, for the support of the minister. She married a Mr. Foxcroft, a worthy man, and until his death a vestryman of the church. They both lived to a good old age, and,
dying childless, the father's will was readily complied with. The glebe, consisting of fifteen or sixteen hundred acres of the best land in the county, has been in possession of the vestry ever since her death, though the overseers of the poor have for some time been endeavouring to take it from them. The other daughter, Elizabeth, while at school, and only twelve years of age, was per- suaded to elope with a Mr. Getterrings, and, being unable to get a license on that side of the bay, they came over to the western, and contriving, by some artifice, to evade the laws, were married. She soon died, and the husband sought to recover the estate to himself. It was carried into court. A Colonel Scarborough, ancestor of those bearing that name, prepared an address to the court in writing, setting forth the iniquity of the conduct of Mr. Getter- rings, especially and emphatically dwelling on the right of every man to dispose of his property according to his own will,-an argu- ment which may, with mighty power, be used in the case of the other child's property also, since nothing can be clearer than that Mr. Charlton's desire and intention was to leave her property, if dying without issue, to the Episcopal Church of Northampton, or in a certain event to one of his relatives.
In the year 1689, I read of the death of Colonel John Stringer. His will indicates just views and feelings on the great subject of man's redemption. In the preamble he says, "I bequeath my soul to God, who first gave it me, Father, Son, and Spirit, Unity in Trinity, Trinity in Unity, who hath redeemed and preserved me, in and through Jesus Christ, who died for my sins and the sins of all people that truly and unfeignedly believe in him, for whose sake and loving-kindness I hope to obtain everlasting life ; where- fore, dear Father, have mercy on my soul." Among other legacies,
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he leaves one thousand pounds of tobacco to have the Lord's Prayer and Commandments put up in the new church about to be built in the lower part of Northampton. He also forbids all drinking and shooting at his funeral, as things altogether unbecoming the ,occasion.
I may also mention the fact of Major Custis, who lived some time in Williamsburg and married a daughter of Colonel Daniel Parke, presenting sets of heavy silver Communion-service to both the churches, upper and lower, of Northampton; and when the lower church was built, in 1680, near which was his residence, he promised to give the builder one hogshead of tobacco, or its equi- valent, and thirty gallons of cider, to put up for him the first pew (the best, I suppose) in the church. Several other donations might be mentioned. Let these suffice.
We now proceed to speak of the ministers and churches of Northampton. It is somewhat difficult to determine their order with accuracy, from the fact that there were from the year 1642 two parishes,-the upper and lower,-divided as we have already said, and the ministers and people responsible to the one civil court, from whose records we get our information. We shall not be very anxious to decide this point, it being of little consequence.
Mr. Cotton is the first minister of whom we find notices on the records of the court. He is often named therein from 1633 on- ward, as bringing suits for his tithes. . We read of a Mr. Cams, or Carns, who received one hundred pounds of tobacco for preach- ing a funeral sermon in the parish of Mr. Cotton. We read also of John Rodgers, Thomas Higby, Francis Loughty, Thomas Palmer, John Almoner, Thomas Teackle. Thomas Teackle was the first minister of the upper church. Mr. Higby was then minister of the lower. All of them, with the exception of Mr. Teackle, served but a short time, and the records show many suits for their salaries. Mr. Teackle had his difficulties also, and to the end of his life sought his dues in a legal way. He seems to have acquired much property in land. Though fiercely assailed as to his moral character, in one instance by Colonel Scarborough, he seems to have retained the confidence of the people.
About the year 1660, settlements had spread themselves up the neck, toward Pungoteage, so as to call for a church and other public buildings. In the year 1662, the county of Accomac was formed. Of these things we shall treat in our next article.
In the year 1676, we find a Rev. Mr. Key the minister of the lower parish. The Rev. Mr. Teackle, we presume, was still the
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minister of the upper ; for we find, in 1689, he recovered twenty thousand-weight of tobacco from the vestry. A Rev. Mr. Rich- ardson preceded Mr. Key, but it seems he was not an orthodox minister ; that is, one regularly ordained by an English Bishop; for such was the use of the word orthodox at that time. From necessity,-the great difficulty of getting such,-the vestries some- times employed those who were not Episcopally ordained. An opportunity offering to get an Episcopal minister of good charac- ter, they dismissed Mr. Richardson, and wrote to the Governor, Sir William Berkeley, to induct Mr. Key. The Governor readily complied, and, being well acquainted with Mr. Key, recommended him highly.
In the year 1691, a petition was made to the Assembly to unite the two parishes of Northampton, on the ground that they were unable, each of them, to give such a support as would secure an able minister and build a good church. The petition was granted, and the two merged in one, and called Hungar's parish. It was after this, I presume, that the large church at Hungar's was built .* In the following year, Mr. John Monroe was the minister of the united parishes. Of him we read in some of the convocations of the ministers in Williamsburg.
In the year 1703, the Rev. Mr. Collier was minister. He mar- ried a widow Kendal, who had previously made an assault on some one in church, and was afterward presented in court for cursing and swearing.
Mr. Foxcroft died in 1702, leaving all his property to his wife, Bridget, who died two years after, and fifty years after her father's death. Being childless, the glebe-land, by his will, was the pro- perty of the church.
In the year 1712, the Rev. Patrick Falconer is minister, and con- tinues so until 1718, when, after having given much to the poor, he left his property to his brother James, in London, and desired that his body be buried before the pulpit in Old Hungar's Church. The Rev. Thomas Dell was then minister until the year 1729. Then John Holbroke to 1747. The Rev. Edward Barlow probably succeeded him, and died in 1761. Then the Rev. Richard Hewett, who died in 1774; and in that year the Rev. Mr. McCoskry was chosen, who died its minister in the year 1803. He married a
* I am informed by one now living that there were, as late as 1809, the remains of a fine organ in Hungar's Church. "It was entirely broken up by ruthless hands, and the lead and other parts used for sacrilegious purposes."
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daughter of John Bowdoin, of Virginia. They died childless .* Mr. McCoskry was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Gardiner. The Rev. Thomas Davis followed him, and was followed by the Rev. Mr. Symes. In the year 1820, the Rev. Simon Wilmer appears on the vestry-book as minister, and so continued until 1823. Stephen S. Gunter was elected in 1824, and continued until his death, in 1835. W. G. Jackson was elected in 1836, and resigned in 1841. J. P. Wilmer was elected in 1841, and resigned in 1843. John Ufford was elected in 1843, and resigned in 1850. James Rawson was elected in 1850, and died in 1854. John M. Chevers was chosen in 1855, and is the present rector.
The following is the list of vestrymen since 1712 :- Peter Bow- doin, John Eyre, Nathaniel Holland, John Addison, John Goffigan, John Upshur, John Winder, Littleton Upshur, George Parker, William Satchell, Thomas Satchell, S. Pitts, Jacob Nottingham, Isaac Smith, John T. Elliott, J. H. Harmonson, James Upshur, Abel P. Upshur, W. Danton, Charles West, W. G. Smith, John Leather- bury, Severn E. Parker, John Ker, T. N. Robins, N. J. Winder, Major Pitts, G. F. Wilkins, Simkins, Fisher, Evans, Bell, Adams, Nicholson.t One generous act of him who stands second on the
* A Rev. Mr. Seward, who went afterward to the Northern Neck, was his as- sistant.
By going back a century and a half, and then coming down the records, we meet with, as acting in the vestries and courts, the names of Scarborough, Robins, Littleton, Charlton, Severn, Custis, Yeardley, (son of Governor Yeardley, ) Kendal, Purnell, Waltham, Claybourn, Andrews, Wise, Foxcroft, Parker, Eyre, Upshur, Hack, West, Vaughan, Preston, Marshall, Burton, Stith, John Bowdoin. Concerning the ancestors of the latter, something more particular will be interesting to the reader. I take it from an address of the Hon. Robert Winthrop, of Boston, de- livered before the Maine Historical Society at Bowdoin College, at the annual com- mencement of 1849. The first of the family who came to America was Pierre Boudouin, a French Huguenot, who, driven from France, first settled in Ireland, then, with a wife and four children, came to Casco, in Maine. Of him Mr. Win- throp says, "He was one of that noble sect of Huguenots of whom John Calvin may be regarded as the great founder and exemplar ; of which Gaspard De Coligny, the generous and gallant admiral who filled the kingdom of France with the glory and terror of his name for the space of twelve years, was one of the most devoted disciples and one of the most lamented martyrs, and which has furnished to our land blood everyway worthy of being mingled with the best that has ever flowed in the veins of either Southern Cavaliers or Northern Puritans. He was of that noble stock which gave three presidents out of five to the old Congress of the Con- federation, which gave her her Lawrences and Marions, her Hugers and Manigalts, her Prioleaus, and Galliards, and Legares to South Carolina; which gave her Jays to New York, her Boudinots to New Jersey, her Brimmers, her Dexters, and her Peter Faneuil, with the cradle of liberty, to Massachusetts." Pierre Boudouin escaped
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