University of Virginia Library

"The county of Augusta was organized in 1738. Its boundaries extended
from the line of old Frederick on the north, along the summit of

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"On the 6th of April, 1747, they assembled, for the first time after their
organization, to elect a minister to break to them the bread of life. Having
received letters from Governor Gooch commending the Rev. John Hindman
as an able and worthy minister of the Gospel, they unanimously chose
him as their spiritual instructor. He entered immediately into the duties
of his pastoral office,—the first minister of the Church of England who ever
set foot on Augusta soil and preached the glad tidings of Christ among
the mountains of this wild home of the Indian. Owing to the sparseness
of the population and inability of the people to build a church, Mr. Hindman
was obliged to preach and administer the sacraments in the courthouse
and in private houses in different parts of the parish during the
whole of his ministry here."

"On the 6th of August, 1750, the vestry met and empowered its wardens
—James Lochart and John Madison—to employ any minister they might
think fit to serve them in the Lord. And on the 16th of October, 1752,
the following letter was presented to the vestry from Governor Dinwiddie:—

" `Gentlemen:—The Rev. John Jones has been recommended to me
by many of good repute and undoubted credit as a worthy and learned
divine. As such I recommend him to you, gentlemen, to be your pastor,—
not doubting but his conduct will be such as will entitle him to your favour
by promoting peace and cultivating morality in the parish. Your receiving
him to be your pastor will be very agreeable to

" `Your very humble servant,

" `Robert Dinwiddie.'

"Just one month after the reading of this letter, Mr. Jones was unanimously
received into the parish and assigned a salary of fifty pounds per
annum for his services and twenty pounds per annum for board, until the
glebe-buildings were improved and put in order for his occupancy.

"Between 1756 and 1759, John Matthews, Samson Archer, Robert
Breckenridge, and Israel Christian, were added to the vestry.

"On the 20th of May, 1760, it was unanimously resolved to erect a

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"Either the infirmities of age, or enfeebled health, had so worn upon
the constitution of Mr. Jones as to render him unequal to the duties of
his office. He therefore called a meeting of the vestry and advised the
employment of a curate, and offered to relinquish one-half of his salary
(which by this time had been increased to two hundred pounds) toward
his support. In obedience to his wishes, the vestry procured the services
of the Rev. Adam Smith, who entered upon his duties as curate in the
spring of 1772. Of Mr. Smith's character and usefulness as a preacher,
or in what way his connection with the parish was severed, we have no
information. He did not, however, remain longer than one year. On the
9th of November, 1773, the Rev. Alexander Balmaine was unanimously
chosen to fill his place. From this time onward, we hear no more of Mr.
Jones. Though the history which remains of his labours as a preacher
and pastor is exceedingly meagre and unsatisfactory,—confined almost
entirely to his meetings with the vestry and to the records which he kept
as its clerk,—we cannot but revere his memory as a devout and faithful
minister of God. The only substantial and valuable relic of him which
remains to us is the old worn and defaced Bible which is constantly used
in our pulpit.

"How long, precisely, Mr. Balmaine remained in the parish, we are not
informed. The time was drawing near which tried men's souls. The
spirit of '76 began to swell and agitate the American breast. Of this
spirit Mr. Balmaine seems to have partaken in no small degree. The
following proceedings of a meeting of the freeholders of Augusta county,
held at Staunton on the 22d of February, 1775, will throw no little light
on his character as a patriot:—

" `After due notice given to the freeholders of Augusta county to meet
in Staunton, for the purpose of electing delegates to represent them in
Colony Convention, at the town of Richmond, on the 20th day of March,
the freeholders of said county thought proper to refer the choice of their
delegates to the judgment of the committee, who, thus authorized by
the general voice of the people, met at the court-house, on the 22d of
February, and unanimously chose Mr. Thomas Lewis and Captain Samuel
McDowell to represent them in the ensuing Convention.

" `Instructions were then ordered to be drawn up by the Rev. Alexander
Balmaine, Mr. Samson Matthews, Captain Alexander McClanahan,
Mr. Michael Bowyer, Mr. William Lewis, and Captain George Matthews,
or any three of them, and delivered to the delegates thus chosen, which
are as follows:—

" `To Mr. Thomas Lewis and Captain Samuel McDowell. The committee
of Augusta county, pursuant to the trust reposed in them by the
freeholders of the same, have chosen you to represent them in Colony
Convention, proposed to be held in Richmond on the 2d of March instant.
They desire that you may consider the people of Augusta county as impressed
with just sentiments of loyalty and allegiance to his Majesty King
George, whose title to the imperial crown of Great Britain rests on no other
foundation than the liberty, and whose glory is inseparable from the happiness,
of all his subjects. We have also respect for the parent State,
which respect is founded on religion, on law, and on the genuine principles

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" `Many of us and our forefathers left our native land and explored this
once-savage wilderness to enjoy the free exercise of the rights of conscience
and of human nature. These rights we are fully resolved, with our lives
and fortunes, inviolably to preserve; nor will we surrender such inestimable
blessings, the purchase of toil and danger, to any Ministry, to any Parliament,
or any body of men upon earth, by whom we are not represented,
and in whose decisions, therefore, we have no voice.

" `We desire you to tender, in the most respectful terms, our grateful
acknowledgments to the late worthy delegates of this Colony for their wise,
spirited, and patriotic exertions in the General Congress, and to assure
them that we will uniformly and religiously adhere to their resolutions
providently and graciously formed for their country's good.

" `Fully convinced that the safety and happiness of America depend,
next to the blessing of Almighty God, on the unanimity and wisdom of
her country, we doubt not you will on your parts comply with the recommendations
of the late Continental Congress, by appointing delegates from this
Colony to meet in Philadelphia on the 10th of May next, unless American
grievances be redressed before that time. And so we are determined to
maintain unimpaired that liberty which is the gift of Heaven to the subjects
of Britain's empire, and will most cordially join our countrymen in
such measures as may be deemed wise and necessary to secure and perpetuate
the ancient, just, and legal rights of this Colony and all British
America.

" `Placing our ultimate trust in the Supreme Disposer of every event,
without whose gracious interposition the wisest schemes may fail of success,
we desire you to move the Convention that some day, which may appear to
them most convenient, be set apart for imploring the blessing of Almighty
God on such plans as human wisdom and integrity may think necessary to
adopt for preserving America happy, virtuous, and free.'

"In obedience to these instructions, the following letter was addressed:—

" `To the Hon. Peyton Randolph, Esq., President, Richard Henry Lee,
George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison,
and Edmund Randolph, Esqrs., Delegates from this Colony to the General
Congress.

" `Gentlemen:—We have it in command from the freeholders of Augusta
county, by their committee, held on the 22d February, to present
you with the grateful acknowledgments of thanks for the prudent, virtuous,
and noble exertions of the faculties with which Heaven has endowed you
in the cause of liberty and of every thing that man ought to hold sacred, at
the late General Congress,—a conduct so nobly interesting that it must
command the applause not only from this but succeeding ages. May that
sacred flame that has illuminated your minds and influenced your conduct
in projecting and concurring in so many salutary determinations for the
preservation of American liberty ever continue to direct your conduct to
the latest period of your lives! May the bright example be fairly transcribed
on the hearts and reduced into practice by every Virginian, by
every American! May our hearts be open to receive, and our arms strong
to defend, that liberty and freedom, the gift of Heaven, now being banished
from its latest retreat in Europe! Here let it be hospitably entertained in

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" `Be pleased, gentlemen, to accept of their grateful sense of your important
services and of their ardent prayers for the best interests of this
once happy country. And vouchsafe, gentlemen, to accept of the same
from your most humble servants,

Thomas Lewis,

Samuel McDowell,

Delegates.'

" `To Thomas Lewis and Samuel McDowell, Esqrs.:—

" `Gentlemen:—Be pleased to transmit to the respectable freeholders of
Augusta county our sincere thanks for their affectionate address approving
our conduct in the late Continental Congress. It gives us the greatest
pleasure to find that our honest endeavours to serve our country on this
arduous and important occasion have met their approbation,—a reward fully
adequate to our warmest wishes; and the assurances from the brave and
spirited people of Augusta that their hearts and hands shall be devoted to
the support of the measures adopted, or hereafter to be taken, by the Congress
for the preservation of American liberty, give us the highest satisfaction,
and must afford pleasure to every friend of the just rights of mankind.
We cannot conclude without acknowledgments to you, gentlemen,
for the polite manner in which you have communicated to us the sentiments
of your worthy constituents, and are their and your obedient, humble
servants,

Peyton Randolph,

Patrick Henry,

Richard Henry Lee,

Richard Bland,

George Washington

Benjamin Harrison,

Edmund Pendleton.'

"The letter of instruction which called forth this correspondence between
the delegates from Augusta and these distinguished statesmen and
patriots is drawn up in a style so free and easy that we cannot doubt it was
written by one accustomed to the pen of composition. It breathes so much
of the spirit of true piety, and of humble dependence on the God of nations,
that we cannot doubt it was the production of a pious man and a
minister of God. This man must have been Mr. Balmaine. In this we
are still further sustained by the fact that Mr. Balmaine was the chairman
of the committee appointed to draw it up, and that, while the other members
were prominent and influential men in the county, they were yet plain
farmers and by no means accustomed to that diplomatic style which characterizes
the letter.

"March 20, 1775, just one month after these letters were drawn up, the
Convention met in the Old Church in Richmond. There it will be seen,
by reference to Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, pp. 132-136, that all the
objects desired to be attained by them were adopted, and there the great
speech of Patrick Henry, which seemed to set in motion the great ball of
the Revolution, was made.

"From this time Mr. Balmaine laid aside his peaceful vestments as a
minister of God, and went into the army as chaplain in defence of his
country."

"From the commencement of the Revolution onward, until the year
1781, the doors of the venerable old church in Staunton remained closed.
We have no information that its solemn silence was ever broken by the
voice of any public speaker. In that year, however, a portion of the
British army, under the command of Tarleton, drove the Legislature from
its place of meeting in Richmond, first to Charlottesville, and thence to
this place. And here they held their counsels in the old church, and here
the proposition was made to create a "dictator." Here they remained in
session undisturbed for about sixteen days, and adjourned to meet in Richmond
in October following.

"About the year 1788 the rectorship of the old church was in the hands
of a Mr. Chambers. Who he was, or how long he remained in the parish,
we are nowhere informed. Tradition says that, after a short residence in
this place, he removed to Kentucky.

"Years rolled on, in which a long interval occurred in the rectorship
of the parish. At length the few friends who had been left from the desolations
of the Revolution, and from the withering odium which had fallen
on the Church because of its connection with the British Crown, began to
lift up their heads and to look round with a cautious and timid eye for
some one to minister to them in holy things. At length a good old man,
moving in the humbler spheres of life, remarkable for nothing but his consistent
and inoffensive piety, presented himself as willing to serve them in
the capacity of God's minister. He had long been a member of the
Methodist Church, and had there imbibed that spirit of feeling and ardent
religion which seemed so peculiarly to characterize that body of Christians
in those dreary days of our Church. Notwithstanding Mr. King's (for that
was his name) roughness of manners, his meagre education, his simplicity
of intellect, and his humble profession as a steam-doctor, he was taken in
hand by a few friends of the Church, and pushed forward in his laudable
efforts. He was sent off, with letters of commendation from Judge Archibald
Stuart and the Hon. John H. Peyton, to Bishop Madison, who ordained
him Deacon and sent him back to read the services and sermons to
the little desolate flock in Staunton. His ministry began in the year 1811
and closed with his death in 1819. That was a long and cheerless day for
the Church here. No evidence can be found that she then had a single
communicant besides the simple-hearted old Deacon to kneel at her altar.
So unpopular was her cause that none but those whose principles were as
true and unbending as steel would venture openly to avow themselves her
friends. An eye-witness of the scene told me that on the occasion of the
first service after Mr. King's return from Williamsburg, the small congregation,
the feeble and disjointed response, the dampening dreariness of the
church, with its old high-back pews, and the long, singsong, drawling
tones in which the new deacon attempted to read the service and one of
Blair's Sermons, presented a solemn ludicrousness he never before or since
witnessed. The congregation, numbering not a dozen, left the church disspirited
and ashamed, almost resolved never to repeat the experiment. Mr.

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"On the 1st of January, 1820, the Rev. Daniel Stephens, D.D., visited
the parish, and remained until the following Easter. On Easter Monday,
the congregation assembled, and elected Vincent Tapp, Chapman Johnson,
John H. Peyton, Briscoe G. Baldwin, Dabney Cosby, William Young,
Erasmus Stribling, Levi L. Stevenson, Jacob Fackler, Alexander McCausland,
Armstead M. Mosby, and Nicholas C. Kinney. This vestry immediately
assembled, and passed resolutions highly commendatory of the
preaching and living of Dr. Stephens, unanimously electing him as
their rector. These were the props and the pillars of the Church in its
darkest and most trying day. Dr. Stephens laboured and preached with
a zeal and devotion which secured for him the confidence and love of the
great mass of his congregation. Under his ministry, the Church was
somewhat revived, and the hearts of its friends cheered. At a Convention
held in Staunton in May, 1824, the number of communicants reported was
fifteen.

"In 1827, Dr. Stephens removed to the Far West, where he died but
a few years since. His ministry was followed in 1831 by the Rev.
Ebenezer Boyden. In the early part of Mr. Boyden's ministry, the venerable
old church was torn down, and a new one erected near its site. The
latter was ready for use on the 23d of July, 1831. Mr. Boyden continued
in the parish, with high credit and universal acceptability to his congregation,
until January, 1833, when he resigned for another field in the
West.

"Next came the Rev. Wm. G. Jackson, who preached with success and
acceptability in the parish for several years. He was succeeded by the
Rev. Frederick D. Goodwin, who continued until 1843, and removed to
Nelson county, leaving sixty-two communicants."

"At length, about three years ago, an interesting little boy, on whose
head scarce five summer suns had shone, stood at the window of his
mother's chamber, just as the sun was going down, holding something
thoughtfully in his hand. Observing his seriousness, his mother said to
him, `What are you thinking about, my son? What are you looking at
so earnestly?' It was a new gold dollar, which his father had given him.
His answer was, `Mother, I am thinking of giving my gold dollar to Mr.
Castleman, to build a new church I have heard him say he would like to
have.' The mother encouraged the thought, and said, `Well, my son, do
give it. God will bless you for it.' Accordingly, that dollar was wrapped
in a small paper, with the written request that I would receive it for that
object. This little event cheered my heart, and caused me to resolve at
once to move forward with the enterprise. The result is a beautiful church,
seventy-three feet six inches by forty-six feet six inches in the clear, thirty
feet high, with a tower of eighty feet, and capable of accommodating comfortably
six hundred and fifty persons."

"Rockingham parish, Rockingham county, was formed from a part of
Augusta in the year 1776. In that portion of Augusta now constituting
the county and parish of Rockingham, there were two chapels of the Established
Church. One was situated about four miles west of Harrisonburg,
near the present village of Dayton. The families of Smith and Harrison,
with others of the early settlers in that neighbourhood, were of the Church
of England. The other chapel was situated about five miles north of Port
Republic, on the road from that place to Harrisonburg. The early settlers
on the Shenandoah River near Port Republic were generally of English
descent, and belonged to the Established Church. John Madison, (Clerk
of Augusta county, the father of Bishop Madison,) Gabriel Jones, (the
most distinguished lawyer of his day in the valley,) and Thomas Lewis,
(who for many years represented Augusta county in the House of Burgesses,
and was one of the earliest advocates of American independence,)
had married sisters, (Misses Strother, of Stafford county,) and were among
the earliest settlers in that neighbourhood. Peachy R. Gilmer, John
Mackall, of Maryland, and others, soon after settled among them. These
families were all of the Church of England. The Rev. Alexander Balmaine
for several years officiated at these two chapels, and spent much of
his time with his parishioners on the Shenandoah.

"The old chapel near Dayton (a framed wooden building) remained
standing until within the last twenty or thirty years. During and after
the war of the Revolution, the services of the Church were discontinued;
and, after the rise of Methodism in this county, most of the families who
had formerly worshipped there became Methodists, and this chapel was
used for many years as a Methodist meeting-house. The property on which
it stood, after a lapse of years, fell into the hands of a Tunker[52] family:
its use as a place of worship had been abandoned by the Methodists,
and it was finally used as a barn by its Tunker proprietor. But few of
the descendants of the original worshippers at this chapel now reside
in its neighbourhood, and but one of them, within the knowledge of the
writer of this sketch, retains any attachment to the Church of their
ancestors.

"The descendants of the Church-of-England settlers in the neighbourhood
of Port Republic are many of them now members of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, but very few of them remain in the neighbourhood.
One of the sons of Thomas Lewis—the late Charles Lewis, Esq.—inherited,
and lived, and died upon, the paternal estate. He ever retained his attachment
to the Church, and several of his descendants are now communicants
in the church at Port Republic."