University of Virginia Library

ARTICLE XXXIV.

Parishes in New Kent.—St. Peter's and Blissland Parishes.

New Kent was cut off from the upper part of York county in
1654. It commenced on Scimon's Creek, on the north of York
River, some distance above Williamsburg, and extended to the
heads of Pamunkey and Mattapony Rivers, and returned again on
the north of Mattapony to the Prepotanke Creek, north of York
River, including what are now King William and King and Queen
counties, as well as Hanover county to the west. On the north
of the York and Pamunkey Rivers there was a parish called St.
John's; on the south, one called St. Peter's. About the year 1684
or 1685, a parish, east of St. Peter's, on Pamunkey and York Rivers,
toward Williamsburg, was formed, by the name of Blissland, which
continued to have a minister until after the Revolutionary War.
We shall begin with such notices as we have been able to obtain of
St. Peter's parish. We have an old vestry-book, which probably
commenced in 1682, though we can only use it from 1685, the previous
pages having been torn out. A friend, however, has supplied
the deficiency in some measure. Our materials from English
archives enable us to go back yet further, and furnish us also with
some information of a later date, not to be found in the vestry-book.
We begin with these. In the year 1699, Governor Nicholson addressed
the following letter to the High-Sheriff of New Kent
county, ordering a meeting of the clergy in Jamestown. It will
not only show the spirit of the age and of those in authority, but
the peculiarly dogmatic spirit of the man:—

The first notice I find of the religious condition of the parish
and of the neighbouring parishes is from a letter in the year 1696,
from the Rev. Nicholas Moreau, who was the minister of St. Peter's
for two years. He appears to have been a pious man, and was probably
one of the French Huguenots who were driven to America
about this time by the persecution growing out of the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes.

The following extract is from a letter to the Bishop of London:—

The next information is from the report of the condition of this
parish to the Bishop of London in 1724, by the Rev. Henry Collings.
His parish had two hundred and four families in it, forty
or fifty communicants, only one church, (St. Peter's,) about one
hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty attendants. His
salary eighty pounds, more or less. Glebe and parsonage rented
out for six pounds five shillings per annum. Catechizing had been
much neglected: he intended to introduce it.

The next is from the Rev. Mr. Lang, who succeeded Mr. Collings
in 1725 and continued two years.

The Rev. Mr. Lang came highly recommended from England to
Governor Drysdale and Commissary Blair, and by them as highly
to the parish of St. Peter's, in New Kent. On the 7th of February,
1725-26, he writes thus to the Bishop of London:—"I observe
the people here are very zealous for our Holy Church, as it is established
in England, so that (except some few inconsiderable
Quakers) there are scarce any Dissenters from our communion,
and yet at the same time supinely ignorant in the very principles
of religion, and very debauched in morals. This, I apprehend, is
chiefly owing to the general neglect of the clergy in not taking
pains to instruct youth in the fundamentals of religion, or to examine
people come to years of discretion before they are permitted to
come to Church privileges." He speaks of the gross ignorance of
many, who on their death-beds, or on Christmas-day, desire to receive
the sacraments; of the great ignorance of those who offer
themselves as sponsors; of the evil lives of the servants who have
been presented by their owners to baptism. "The great cause of
all which" (he says) "I humbly conceive to be in the clergy, the sober
part being slothful and negligent, and others so debauched that
they are the foremost and most bent on all manner of vices.
Drunkenness is the common vice." He goes on to specify instances
among clergy and laity of great unworthiness, concluding
as to the former by saying:—"How dreadful it is to think that
men authorized by the Church to preach repentance and forgiveness
through Christ should be first in the very sins which they reprove!"
It is not wonderful that this should be among the first parts of our
State in which dissent began, as we are informed was the case under
Samuel Davies, some twenty or thirty years after the date of Mr.
Lang's letter.

I now proceed with a list of the ministers of St. Peter's Church
from the year 1682. The Rev. William Sellake was minister in
1682. Rev. John Carr from 1684 to 1686. Rev. John Hall from
1686 to 1687. The Rev. John Page from 1687 to 1688. The
Rev. Mr. Williams officiated for a short time in 1689. Rev. Jacob
Ward from 1690 to 1696. Rev. Nicholas Moreau from 1696 to
1698. Rev. James Bowker from 1698 to 1703. Rev. Richard
Squire from 1703 to 1707. Rev. Daniel Taylor from 1707 to 1708.
Rev. Daniel Gray from 1708 to 1709. Rev. Benjamin Goodwin
from 1709 to 1710. From the year 1710 to 1720 the Rev. William
Brodie. During the two following years the Revs. Thomas Sharp,

Broomscale, Brooke, Forbess, and Francis Fontaine, officiated there.
From 1722 to 1725 the Rev. Henry Collings. From 1725 to 1727
the Rev. Mr. Lang. He was succeeded by the Rev. David Mossom,
who continued the minister for forty years. He was the person
who officiated at the nuptials of General Washington, at the White
House, a few miles from St. Peter's Church. It was in that parish,
and under the ministry of Mr. Mossom, that the Rev. Devereux
Jarratt was born and trained. In his Autobiography he gives a
poor account of the state of morals and religion in New Kent. He
considers himself as a brand plucked from the burning by the grace
of God. Illustrative of the condition of things, he mentions a
quarrel between Mr. Mossom and his clerk, in which the former
assailed the latter from the pulpit in his sermon, and the latter, to
avenge himself, gave out from the desk the psalm in which were
these lines:—

Nevertheless, from the long continuance of Mossom in this parish,
we doubt not that he was a more respectable man than many of his
day. He was married four times, and much harassed by his last
wife, as Colonel Bassett has often told me, which may account for
and somewhat excuse a little peevishness. He came from Newburyport,
Massachusetts, and was, according to his epitaph in St. Peter's
Church, the first native American admitted to the office of Presbyter
in the Church of England.

Mr. Mossom was followed by the Rev. James Semple, who continued
the minister of the parish for twenty-two years. The Rev.
Benjamin Blagrove was the minister in the year 1789. The Rev.
Benjamin Brown was the minister in the year 1797.

After a long and dreary interval of nearly fifty years, we find
the Rev. E. A. Dalrymple the minister from 1843 to 1845.[107] Then
the Rev. E. B. Maguire from 1845 to 1851. Then the Rev. William
Norwood from 1852 to 1854. Then the Rev. David Caldwell
from 1854 to 1856.

Having disposed of the ministers, we now give a list of the vestry
so far as furnished by the vestry-book from the year 1685 to the
year 1758. They are as follows—George Jones, William Bassett,

Stephen Carlton, Henry Wyatt, Thomas Mitchell, John Park,
William Paisley, J. Renor, Cornelius Dabnee, (Dabney,) Gideon
Macon, Matthew Page, George Smith, George Joands, John
Rojor, (Roger,) David Craford, James Moss, John Lydall, Mr.
Forster, W. Clopton, John Lewis, Nicholas Merriwether, John Park,
Jr., Richard Littlepage, Thomas Butts, Thomas Massie, William
Waddell, Henry Childs, Robert Anderson, Richard Allen, Samuel
Gray, Ebenezer Adams, Charles Lewis, Charles Massie, Walton
Clopton, William Macon, W. Brown, W. Marston, John Netherland,
William Chamberlayne, David Patterson, Michael Sherman,
John Dandridge, Daniel Parke Custis, Matthew Anderson, George
Webb, W. Hopkins, Jesse Scott, Edmund Bacon, William Vaughan,
William Clayton, John Roper.

It deserves to be mentioned to the credit of the vestry, that it
does not appear to have been unmindful of its duty as guardian
of the public morals. On more than one occasion, at an early
period, it enjoins on the churchwardens to see that the laws are
enforced against such as violated the seventh commandment; and in
the year 1736, when some unworthy persons disturbed the congregation
during service, an order was passed that a pair of stocks
should be put up in the yard, in order to confine any who should
thus offend.

It appears also from the vestry-book that the parish was divided
in 1704, and St. Paul's, in Hanover, taken off.

St. Peter's Church was built in 1703, at a cost of one hundred
and forty-six thousand-weight of tobacco. The steeple was not
built until twelve years after. If the early history of this parish
be not creditable to its piety, let not those unto whom in the wonderful
providence of God it has been transmitted, and who are permitted
to worship in the venerable church of St. Peter's, be discouraged.
The first sometimes become last and the last first. So
may it be with this parish! May its latter end greatly increase in
all that is good! That it yet survives is proof that God has a
favour toward it, and will strengthen the things which seemed ready
to perish.[108]

OF BLISSLAND PARISH.

A few words will suffice for the little we have to say of this. No
vestry-book remains to tell its history.

Though a small parish, yet being near to Williamsburg it was
doubtless continually supplied, from its establishment in 1684 or
1685, until the year 1785, when we lose sight of it from the list of
clergy and parishes and the journals of Conventions.

In the year 1724 the Rev. Daniel Clayton was the minister, and
had been for twenty years, as he writes to the Bishop of London.
There were two churches in it. The parish had one hundred
and thirty-six families. His salary was eighty pounds per annum.
The glebe was worth nothing. No school or library was in the
parish.

In the year 1758 the Rev. Chichely Thacker was the minister.
In the years 1773, 1774, 1776, and 1785, the Rev. Price Davies
was the rector. In the latter year he appears in the Convention
at Richmond, attended by Mr. Burwell Bassett as lay delegate,
while the Rev. James Semple and Mr. William Hartwell Macon
represented St. Peter's parish. What has become of the churches
of Blissland parish I am unable to say. Perhaps I may yet learn.
I think one of them was an old brick church, on the roadside from
New Kent to Williamsburg, about twelve miles from the latter, and
which I have seen in former days,—the walls still good, and nothing
else remaining.