USA > Virginia > Old churches, ministers and families of Virginia, Vol. I > Part 30
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Commodore Dale was in his religious as in his military character no halfway man : he did not attempt to serve God and Mammon,-to carry religion in one hand and the world in the other. He was among the first in Philadelphia to break away from an old system of Churchmanship which allowed such a compromise with the world. May his spirit descend to his latest posterity, and his example be faith- fully copied !
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Mr. Braidfoot married a Miss Mosely, of Princess Anne, and left one son, whose descendants are now living in Portsmouth. Mr. Braidfoot was succeeded by the Rev. Arthur Emmerson, son of one of the same name who was minister on the Eastern Shore. The son was minister in Meherrin parish, Greensville, and in Nansemond, before coming to Portsmouth parish in 1785. He ministered there from that time until 1801, much esteemed as a man and minister, though from feeble health unable to lead an active life. His wife was the widow of the Rev. John Nivison. He was followed by the Rev. George Young, who continued until the year 1808 or 1809. After his death or resignation there was, a vacancy until the year 1821, when the present rector, the Rev. Mr. Wingfield, began his labours in that parish. In the absence of any vestry-book to supply the names of vestrymen before the time of Mr. Wingfield, I mention the following names of old friends of the Church :- Sproull, Chisholm, Agnew, Herbert, Hansford, Joins, Dyson, Porter, Godfrey, Wilson, Wallington, Tankard, Parker, Veal, Roberts, Nivison, Marsh, North, Edwards, Davis, Luke, Cowper, Blow, Braidfoot, Dickson, Thompson, Young, Kearns, Grew, Garrow, Kidd, Mathews, Brown, Etheridge, Mush- row, Shelton, Pearce, Satchwell, Milhado, Cox, Butt, Maupin, Swift.
As to churches, there were three built in Portsmouth parish,- one in the town of Portsmouth, in 1762, on a lot in the centre of the town, given by William Crawford, Esq., the original proprietor of the land on which the town is built; one on the north bank of the Western Branch, and one near a village called Deep Creek. The church in Portsmouth was rebuilt and enlarged in 1829, under the rectorship of Mr. Wingfield. The country churches have long since fallen into ruins. When the present rector took charge of the parish, in 1821, the vestry had long since been dissolved, and the members of the three congregations had united themselves- as in many other places-with the various surrounding denomina- tions.
A few years since, another congregation was formed in Ports- mouth, a church built, and the Rev. James Chisholm called to be its rector. After labouring zealously and preaching faithfully and affectionately for some years, he fell a victim, during the summer of 1855, to the yellow fever, when, with the spirit of a martyr, he was nursing the sick and dying of his congregation and of the town. For the particulars of the life and death and character of this most talented and interesting young minister of the Gospel, I
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refer my readers to the Memoirs of the Rev. James Chisholm, by his particular friend and former parishioner, Mr. Conrad, of Mar- tinsburg,-a biography which for thrilling interest is not easily surpassed. For the biography of his brother and companion in toils and sufferings and death, the Rev. William Jackson, the minister of St. Paul's, Norfolk, I refer in like manner for a faith- ful sketch of him to the work of the Rev. Mr. Cummings.
I now add, what was omitted in the proper place, that it was to the labours of the Rev. Mr. Boyden, during the rectorship of Dr. Ducachet in Christ Church, that the congregation of St. Paul's owed its revival after a long, deathlike slumber. Its life was con- tinued and its energies increased under his successor, the Rev. Mr. Atkinson. The Rev. B. M. Miller, who followed him, increased it still more, especially by his attention to the poor. The Rev. Mr. Caldwell was doing a good work, when failing health required his withdrawal. The Rev. Joseph Wilmer and Leonidas Smith had each rendered temporary services, not to be regarded as those of regular pastors, as had also the Rev. R. K. Meade; but it was reserved for the Rev. William Jackson and his faithful and acceptable services to fill the church to such overflowing that it was evident, if his life had been spared, a new and larger church would have been built for him. His successor is the Rev. Mr. Okeson.
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ARTICLE XXIII.
Parishes in Nansemond .- No. 1.
THERE were settlements in Nansemond at a very early period. The Acts of Assembly in dividing counties and parishes are nearly all of its early history that can be gotten. A vestry-book of the upper parish, commencing in 1743 and continuing to 1787, contains all the statistics I can get. These are painfully interest- ing. But as I propose to follow the course of the North Carolina and Virginia line in some of the following articles,-if materials can be obtained in time,-I think it best to begin with some notice of the borders on that line. The running of it, in the year 1728, by Colonel Byrd, Fitz William, and Dandridge, commissioners on the part of Virginia, and others on the part of Carolina, led to some information which must be interesting to all who take pleasure in such things, and especially to the citizens and Church- men of the two States. This has recently been given to the public in a small volume entitled "Westover Manuscripts,"- taken from a large folio volume of Colonel Byrd's manuscripts on various subjects, which is in the hands of one of his descendants, or deposited for safe-keeping in the rooms of the Historical So- ciety of Virginia, in Richmond. Colonel Byrd was a man of great enterprise, a classical scholar and very sprightly writer. The fault of his works is an exuberance of humour and of jesting with serious things, which sometimes degenerates into that kind of wit which so disfigures and injures the writings of Shakspeare. Although he never loses an opportunity of a playful remark about Christians, and especially the clergy, it is proof of an admission on his part that Christianity is divine and excellent, that he took with him, on this difficult and somewhat hazardous expedition, the Rev. Peter Fontaine, his parish minister, to be chaplain to the joint company, with a salary of twenty pounds for the expedition. Of Mr. Fontaine, the Huguenot minister, we have something to say in the proper place. His conduct in this journey, and all the witticisms of Colonel Byrd, testify to his piety. What I have to say will be chiefly in the language of Mr. Byrd's journal, which is to be taken with the qualifications above stated. After the com-
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missioners had wandered for some time about the Dismal Swamp, they reach "Colonel Andrew Meade's, who lives upon Nansemond River. They were no sooner under the shelter of that hospitable roof but it began to rain hard, and continued so to do during the night." On leaving that, with a cart-load of provisions to eat and drink, which Colonel Meade insisted on sending with them, he says,-
" We passed by no less than two Quaker meeting-houses. That per- suasion prevails much in the lower end of Nansemond county, for want of ministers to pilot the people a decenter way to heaven. The ill repu- tation of the tobacco in these lower parishes makes the clergy unwilling to accept of them, except such whose abilities are as mean as their pay. People uninstructed in any religion are apt to embrace the first that offers. It is natural for helpless man to adore his Maker in some form or other; and, were there any exception to this rule, I should expect it to be among the Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope and of North Carolina. . . For want of men in Holy Orders, both the members of the Council and magistrates are empowered to marry all those who will not take each other's word. But for the ceremony of christening their children they leave that to chance. If a parson comes in their way, they will crave a cast of their office, as they call it; else they are content that their children should remain as arrant pagans as themselves. They do not know Sunday from any other day any more than Robinson Crusoe, which would give them a great advantage were they given to be industrious."
During a few days' delay at a certain point, the chaplain was al- lowed "to take a turn to Edenton, to preach the Gospel to the infi- dels and to christen the children there." Of Edenton at that time he says, " I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian or Mohammedan world where there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of public worship of any sect or re- ligion whatever. Justice herself is but indifferently lodged, the court-house having much the air of a common tobacco-house." " Our chaplain," the journal proceeds, "returned to us, having preached in the court-house and made no less than nineteen Chris- tians,-that is, baptized so many."
On their route the company stop and tarry for a time at Nottoway Town, which must be near the dividing line and either in Nanse- mond or Southampton, and which we suppose to be Christina, where the Indian school was, and of which we shall soon speak. Of the people of Nottoway Town, Colonel Byrd thus writes :-
" The whole number of people belonging to the Nottoway Town, if you include women and children, amounts to about two hundred. These are the only Indians of any consequence now remaining within the limits of Virginia. The rest are either removed or dwindled to a very incon-
.
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siderable number, either by destroying one another, or else by smallpox or other diseases; though nothing has been so fatal to them as their ungovernable passion for rum, with which, I am sorry to say it, they have been but too liberally supplied by the English that live near them. And here I must lament the bad success Mr. Boyle's charity has hitherto had toward converting any of these poor heathen to Christianity. Many children of our neighbouring Indians have been brought up in the College of William and Mary. They have been taught to read and write, and have been carefully instructed in the Christian religion till they came to be men; yet after they returned home, instead of civilizing and con- verting the rest, they have immediately relapsed into infidelity and bar- barism themselves.
" And some of them, too, have made the worst use of the knowledge they acquired among the English, by employing it against their bene- factors. Besides, as they unhappily forget all the good they learn and remember the ill, they are apt to be more vicious and disorderly than the rest of their countrymen. I ought not to quit this subject without doing justice to the great prudence of Colonel Spottswood in this affair. This gentleman was Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia when Carolina was en- gaged in a bloody war with the Indians. At that critical time it was thought expedient to keep a watchful eye upon our tributary savages, whom we knew had nothing to keep them to their duty but their fears. Then it was that he demanded of each nation a competent number of their .great men's children to be sent to the College, where they served as so many hostages for the good behaviour of the rest, and, at the same time, were themselves principled in the Christian religion. He also placed a schoolmaster among the Saponi Indians, at a salary of fifty pounds per annum, to instruct their children. The person that undertook that cha- ritable work was Mr. Charles Griffin, a man of good family, who, by the innocence of his life and the sweetness of his temper, was perfectly well qualified for that pious undertaking. Besides, he had so much the secret of mixing pleasure with instruction, that he had not a scholar who did not love him affectionately. Such talents must needs have been blessed with a proportionate success, had he not been unluckily removed to the College, by which he left the good work he had begun unfinished. In short, all the pains he had taken among the infidels had no other effect than to make them cleanlier than other Indians are. The care Colonel Spottswood took to tincture the Indian children with Christianity produced the following epigram, which was not published during his administration, for fear it might then have looked like flattery :---
" 'Long has the furious priest assay'd in vain With sword and fagot infidels to gain; But now the milder soldier wisely tries, By gentler methods, to unveil their eyes. Wonders apart, he knew 'twere vain t'engage The fixed perversions of misguided age : With fairer hopes, he forms the Indian youth To early manners, probity, and truth. The lion's whelp, thus, on the Libyan shore, Is tamed and gentled by the artful Moor, Not the grim sire inured to blood before.'
"I am sorry I cannot give a better account of the state of the poor Indians with respect to Christianity, although a great deal of pains has
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been taken and still continues to be taken with them. For my part, I must be of opinion, as I hinted before, that there is but one way of con- verting these poor infidels and reclaiming them from barbarity, and that is, charitably to intermarry with them, according to the modern policy of the most Christian King in Canada and Louisiana. Had the English done this at the first settlement of the Colony, the infidelity of the Indians had been worn out at this day, with their dark complexions, and the country had swarmed with people more than it does with insects. It was certainly an unreasonable nicety that prevented their entering into so good-natured an alliance. All nations of men have the same natural dignity, and we all know that very bright talents may be lodged under a very dark skin. The principal difference between one people and another proceeds only from the different opportunities of improvement. The Indians by no means want understanding, and are in figure tall and well proportioned. Even their copper-coloured complexions would admit of blanching, if not in the first, at the furthest in the second generation. I may safely ven- ture to say, the Indian women would have made altogether as honest wives for the first planters as the damsels they used to purchase from aboard the ships. It is strange, therefore, that any good Christian should have refused a wholesome straight bedfellow when he might have had so fair a portion with her as the merit of saving her soul."
Colonel Byrd often speaks of Mr. Fontaine as preaching to the heathen of North Carolina, and baptizing their children to the . number of one hundred during the route, and in his way taunts the Carolinians for not caring for the souls of their children enough to take the trouble of bringing them over into Virginia to have them made Christians, and thinks that if the clergy of Virginia were as zealous as they ought to be, they would make more fre- quent excursions into Carolina for the same purpose. He was under the impression that there was not a single minister in North Carolina. In this he was, we think, mistaken, although correct in the statement that the moral and religious condition of the people was most deplorable, and that the clergy, when any were there, were not allowed to marry, the perquisite for this being claimed by the magistrates. The following statement, in the third volume of the Rev. Mr. Anderson's History of the Colonial Churches, is doubtless the true one. Speaking of the missionaries sent out by the Propagation Society in the beginning of the last century, he says :-
"Foremost among these were the services of John Blair, who first came out in 1704 as an itinerant missionary through the courtesy of Lord Wey- mouth, and, after suffering many hardships, returned to encounter them a second time as one of the permanent missionaries of the Society and Com- missary of the Bishop of London. At the time of Blair's first visit, he found three small churches already built in the Colony, with glebes belong- ing to them. His fellow-labourers sent out by the Society in 1707 and the few next years were Adams, Gordon, Urmston, Rainsford, Newman,
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Garzia, and Moir, some of whom, worn out by the difficulties and dis- tresses which poverty and fatigue and the indifference or hostility of the people brought upon them, returned not long afterward to England. Compelled to lodge, when at home, in some old tobacco-house, and, when they travelled, to lie oftentimes whole nights in the woods, and to live for days together upon no other food but bread moistened in brackish water, journeying amid deep swamps and along broken roads through a wild and desert country, and finding themselves at the distance of every twenty miles upon the banks of some broad river, which they could only cross by good boats and experienced watermen, neither of which aids were at their command ; encountering upon some of the plantations the violent opposi- tion of various non-conformists, already settled there in preponderating numbers ; receiving in others the promise of some small stipend from the vestry, which was called a ' living,' and, if paid at all, was paid in bills which could only be disposed of at an excessive discount; forced, there- fore, to work hard with axe and hoe and spade to keep themselves and their families from starving, and discerning not in any quarter a single ray of earthly hope or comfort,-it cannot be a matter of surprise that some of them should have sought once more the shelter and rest of their native land. Governor Eden, and, after him, Sir Richard Everett, both appear to have done what they could to bring about a better state of things ; and, at a later period, (1762,) Arthur Dobbs, who filled the same high office, made earnest but vain appeals to the authorities at home, that a Bishop might be sent out to the Province. The Assembly, also, had passed an act as early as the year 1715, by which the whole Province was divided into nine parishes, and a stipend, not exceeding fifty pounds, was fixed for their respective ministers by the vestries. But, regard being had to the peculiar condition of the Colony at that time, the letter of such an enactment served only to provoke and aggravate dissensions. There was no spirit of hearty co-operation in the great body of the people; and the unwillingness of the magistrates of the several districts to set an example of earnest and true devotion may be learned from a strange fact recorded by Blair upon his first visit to the Province,-that, while he administered every other ordinance required of him by the Church, he abstained from celebrating any marriage, because the fee given upon such occasions was a perquisite belonging to the magistrates, which he was not desirous to deprive them of.
"Of the zeal and diligence of the clergy of North Carolina, whose names I have given above, the reports which reached the Society in Eng- land were uniformly satisfactory; and a deeper feeling, therefore, of regret arises, that one of them should afterward have forfeited his good name at Philadelphia.
"Two more of the North Carolina clergy at this time deserve to be named with especial honour, because they had both resided as laymen for some years in the Province, and therefore been eye-witnesses of the hard- ships to which the Church there was exposed. Nevertheless, they came forward with resolute and hopeful spirit to encounter them, and were ad- mitted into the ranks of her ordained missionaries. The first of these- John Boyd-received from the Bishop of London authority to enter upon his arduous work in 1732; and the manner in which he discharged his duties in Albemarle county, North Carolina, until his death, six years afterward, proved how fitly it had been conferred upon him.
"The other-Clement Hall-pursued a yet more distinguished course,
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and for a longer period. He had formerly been in the commission of the peace for the Colony, and had officiated for several years as lay-reader in congregations which could not obtain the services of an ordained minister. The testimony borne to him in the letters which he took with him to England, in 1743, from the Attorney-General, sheriffs, and clergy of the Province, was amply verified by the zeal and piety with which he after- ward fulfilled the labours of his mission. Although chiefly confined to Chowan county, it was extended at stated periods to three others; and the number and variety of his services may be learned in some degree from one of his earliest reports, from which it appears that he had preached sixteen times and baptized above four hundred children and twenty adults in three weeks. But the mere recital of numbers would describe very imperfectly the amount of labour involved in such visitations. The dis- tance and difficulties of the journeys they required must also be taken into account; and, in the case of Hall, the difficulties became greater through his own weakness of health. But no sooner did he end one visi- tation than he made preparation for another ; and, except when sickness laid him prostrate, his work ceased not for a single day. In the face of much opposition and discouragement, he still pressed onward, and in many places was cheered by the eager sympathy of the people. The chapels and court-houses of the different settlements which he visited were seldom large enough to contain half the numbers who flocked toge- ther to hear him. Sometimes the place of their solemn meeting was beneath the shades of the forest; at other times, by the river-side or upon the sea-shore, the same work of truth and holiness was permitted to 'have free course and be glorified.' A summary of the labours of Clement Hall, made about eight years after he had entered upon them, shows that at that time (1752) he had journeyed about fourteen thousand miles, preached nearly seven hundred sermons, baptized more than six thousand children and grown-up persons, (among whom were several hundred negroes and Indians,) administered the Lord's Supper frequently to as . many as two or three hundred in a single journey, besides performing the countless other offices of visiting the sick, of churching of women, and of catechizing the young, which he was everywhere careful to do."
The reader will more than excuse us for the foregoing notices of the early condition of our sister State and diocese of North Carolina.
According to promise, I now present a view of the Indian school at Christina, in a report to the Bishop of London by its teacher, the Rev. Mr. Griffin :--
"CHRISTINA, January 12, 1716.
" MY LORD :- Being employed by Colonel Spottswood, our Governor, to instruct the Indian children at this settlement, I thought it my duty to address your lordship with this, in which I humbly beg leave to inform you what progress I have made in carrying on this charitable design of our excellent Governor. Should I presume to give an account of the kind reception I met with at my arrival here from the Indian Queen, the great men, and, indeed, from all the Indians, with a constant continuance of their kindness and respect, and of the great sense they have of the good that is designed them by the Governor in sending me to live with them
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to teach their children, as also at the great expense he has been at, and the many fatigues he has undergone by travelling hither in the heat of summer, as well as in the midst of winter, to the great hazard of his health, to encourage and promote this most pious undertaking, I should far exceed the bounds of a letter, and intrude too much on your lordship's time. I shall, therefore, decline this, and humbly represent to your lord- ship what improvements the pagan children have made in the knowledge of the Christian religion, which I promise myself can't but be very ac- ceptable to you, a pious Christian Bishop. We have here a very hand- some school-house, built at the charge of the Indian Company, in which are at present taught seventy Indian children; and many others from the Western Indians, who live more than four hundred miles from hence, will be brought hither in the spring to be put under my care, in order to be instructed in the religion of the Holy Jesus. The greatest number of my scholars can say the Belief, the Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments, perfectly well; they know that there is but one God, and they are able to tell me how many persons there are in the Godhead, and what each of those blessed Persons have done for them. They know how many sacra- ments Christ hath ordained in his Church, and for what end he instituted them ; they behave themselves reverently at our daily prayers, and can make their responses, which was no little pleasure to their great and good benefactor, the Governor, as also to the Rev. Mr. John Cargill, Mr. Attor- ney-General, and many other gentlemen who attended him in his progress hither. Thus, my lord, hath the Governor (notwithstanding the many difficulties he laboured under) happily laid the foundation of this great and good work of civilizing and converting these poor Indians, who, although they have lived many years among the professors of the best and most holy religion in the world, yet so little care has been taken to instruct them therein, that they still remain strangers to the covenant of grace, and have not improved in any thing by their conversing with Chris- tians, excepting in vices to which before they were strangers, which is a very sad and melancholy reflection. But that God may crown with suc- cess this present undertaking, that thereby his Kingdom may be enlarged by the sincere conversion of these poor heathen, I humbly recommend both it and myself to your lordship's prayers, and beg leave to subscribe myself, with great duty, my lord, your lordship's
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