University of Virginia Library

ARTICLE XVI.

York-Hampton Parish.—No. 1.

This was originally called Charles River parish, as the county
of York was at first called Charles River county or shire, from
the river whose early name was Charles, afterward York River.
The name of Charles River county was changed to that of York
in 1642. Of the earliest history of this parish but little is known,
as there is no vestry-book to be found. In the first part of the
last century it was considered one of the most desirable in the
State, as Mr. Bartholomew Yates, of Middlesex, would have exchanged
his position for it, if his salary had not been raised to
twenty thousand-weight of tobacco and his glebe-house repaired
and enlarged.[55] In the year 1724, we find, from a letter to the
Bishop of London, that the Rev. Francis Fontaine — one of the
Huguenot family which first settled in King William parish, at
Manakintown on James River—had been the rector of this parish
for two years, on a salary of £150, arising from the sale of twenty
thousand-weight of sweet-scented tobacco, with a glebe and parsonage.
The parish was four miles wide and twenty miles long,
having two churches and two hundred families in it. Mr. Fontaine
seems to have been a faithful minister, attending to the
instruction of children and servants. He was unfortunate in his
second marriage, and not a little injured by it, as may be seen in
the History of the Fontaine Family, by Miss Anne Maury and
Dr. Hawks. How long Mr. Fontaine continued to be the minister
of York-Hampton we are unable to ascertain; but, as he was a
good man and it was a good parish, it is probable that he ended
his days there. The Rev. John Camm was the minister there in
1758, and, we have reason to believe, was there many years
before. Although President of the College, and Commissary from

the year 1771 or 1772, he still continued to be the minister of the
parish until he left the College in 1777: how much longer I know
not. Mr. Camm was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Shield, who was
the minister to some now living.[56] He was, it is believed, an
intelligent and pious man. Some thought him rather too much of
a Methodist. I have it from relatives of one of the party, that a
lady of the old school, at a time when stiff broacades were the
church dress of those who could afford it, would come home, after
some of Mr. Shield's more animated discourses, and call upon her
maid to take off her clothes, for she had heard so much of hell,
damnation, and death, that it would take her all the evening to
get cool. I have one of his sermons, which does credit to his
head and heart, without being at all violent or extravagant. Mr.
Shield had a correspondent in London,—a merchant, of good
sense and apparent piety, to whom he shipped his tobacco,—a
number of whose letters have been furnished me. In one of
them there is allusion to the fact of Mr. Shield's retiring from
the ministry, and engaging in political life by entering the Virginia
Assembly. Mr. Shield replies at length, and solemnly declares
that preaching the gospel was the occupation of all others
in which he delighted, but that loss of his voice had incapacitated
him from either reading the service or preaching, and that he
acted under the advice of Bishop Madison in discontinuing all
efforts. The disease seems to have been what is now well known
as bronchitis, though he is at a loss even to describe it, so rare
was the complaint at that time. His correspondent—Mr. Graham
Frank, a gentleman well known to the merchants of York—mentions
having seen Bishop Madison when he came to London for
consecration, and that he was much pleased with the spirit and
plans with which he was about to engage in his work. Mr. Frank
had seen him some years before, on a visit to Virginia, and was
not pleased with him on account of his political principles. As
Mr. Frank was a man of zeal for the great doctrines of the
Church, there can be no doubt but that the Bishop was in a good
frame of mind, as may be seen in his address on entering upon
the duties of the Episcopate soon after. Mr. Shield, in his letter
to his friend, mentions that he had continued to perform his duties
with great pain, and in part only, until he could get his place
supplied, which was now about to be done by the ordination of a
son of a former rector of the parish and President of the College.
If the son did enter upon this charge, I do not think he continued
it long, but removed to a parish in York county, called Charles
parish, and which had formerly been served by the Rev. Thomas
Warrington, grandfather of Commodore Warrington, and by a
Mr. Joseph Davenport afterward. York had not recovered from
the ruins of the siege, and was now no longer the desirable parish
it had been. The old families were deserting it, and the inhabitants
around connecting themselves with other denominations.
Nevertheless, we hear of three ministers occupying it,—a Rev. Mr.
Scott, Mr. Henderson, and Brockenbrough, neither of whom were
calculated to arrest its downfall. At length, in the year 1815,
the old church was burned down. The material of the church was
remarkable. The walls were made of blocks of marl, taken out
of the bank of the river on which it stood, and which hardened by
exposure. It was cemented yet the more by the fire, which
caused it to melt somewhat and thus form one solid wall, which
continued to stand until the roof and other parts were renewed
a few years since, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter.

We sometimes turn aside from the succession and character
of ministers and churches, to cast a glance over the scenery, or to
call up recollections of departed friends. We have recently done
this in the case of Jamestown and some of its inhabitants, the
Jaquelines and Amblers. Surely, if there be any spot in Virginia
where we may be allowed to pause and look around us, remembering
the past and dwelling with tender emotions on the
present, that spot is old York. To use the language of one who
has furnished materials for much of what follows:—

BACK VIEW OF GEN. NELSON'S HOUSE, YORK.

A few venerable relics of the past are all that may now be
seen. The old York House is the most memorable. The cornerstone
of it was laid by old President Nelson, when an infant, as it
was designed for him. He was held by his nurse, and the brick
laid in his apron and passed through his little hands. The bricks
were all from England,—the corners of hewn stone. It was long
the abode of love, friendship, and hospitality.

As one said of modern Italy, "Our memory sees more than our
eyes in this place." What Paulding says of Virginia may emphatically
be said of York,—

Let us, by the aid of well-attested tradition and history, speak
a few words concerning it and some of its old inhabitants. It was
established as a town and laid out in the year 1705. The founder
of it was a Mr. Thomas Nelson, the first of the name in Virginia.
He came from Penriff, near the border of Scotland, and was called
Scotch Tom on that account. He set up a mercantile establishment
in this place, as the first of the Amblers did soon after. He
married a Miss Reid of the neighbouring country, and had two
sons and one daughter. At her death he married a widow Tucker,
whose husband was from Barbadoes, where, and in Bermuda, that
name abounded. His two sons settled in York. His daughter
married Colonel Berkeley, of Middlesex. His eldest son, Thomas,
is the same who was called Secretary Nelson, because a long time
Secretary of the Council. He had three sons in the American
Revolution, whose descendants are all over Virginia. The other
son of old Thomas Nelson was named William, and has always
been called President Nelson, because so often President of the
Council, and at one time President of the Colony. He married a
Miss Burwell, grand-daughter of Mr. Robin Carter, called King
Carter. He had many daughters, but none lived beyond the
twelfth year. He had many sons also, the eldest of whom was
General Thomas Nelson of the Revolution. One of his sons was
burned to death, and another became an idiot by a fall from an

upper story. These afflictions contributed to make Mrs. Nelson a
"woman of a sorrowful spirit." She had been also educated
religiously by her aunt, Mrs. Page, of Rosewell. She was a truly
pious and conscientious woman. Her private and public exercises
of religion, her well-known frequent prayers for her children and
pious instruction of them, and exemplary conduct in all things,
established this beyond all contradiction.[57] Mrs. Nelson was not
alone in her personal piety, nor in her wishes and endeavours for
the religious welfare of her children. President Nelson performed
his part most faithfully. His eldest son, afterward General
Nelson, was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr. Yates, of
Gloucester, afterward President of William and Mary College, in
order to prepare him for an English University. At the age of
fourteen—sooner than was intended—he was sent thither. The
circumstance which hastened his going was the following. On one
Sunday afternoon, as his father was walking on the outskirts of
the village of York, (for it was then but a village, and never much
more,) he found him at play with some of the little negroes of the
place. Feeling the evil of such associations, and the difficulty of
preventing them, he determined to send him at once to England,
and, a vessel being ready to sail, he was despatched the next day
to the care of his friends,—Mr. Hunt, of London, and Beilby
Porteus, then Fellow of Cambridge University. He went for some
time to a preparatory school of Dr. Newcome, at Hackney, and
then to the especial care and tutorship of Dr. Porteus. The letters
of Mr. Nelson to Mr. Hunt and Dr. Porteus, copies of which I have,
and the answers to which are acknowledged, evince deep anxiety
for the improvement of his son in all things, but especially in
morals and religion. He is evidently uneasy about the spirited
character of his son, fearing lest it might lead him astray, and
begs his friends to inform him if his son shows a disposition to
idleness and pleasure. In order to avoid the temptations incident
to young men during the vacation, especially such as are far away
from friends, he requests Dr. Porteus to place him, during those
seasons, with some eminent scientific agriculturist, and thus prepare
him for dealing with the soils of America. After seven years,
he returns home, being delayed several months beyond the time he
intended, by a circumstance which showed the religious character
of his father. In a letter to his friend Mr. Hunt, he alludes to the
fact that two young Virginians, whose habits he feared were not good,
were coming over in the ship in which he expected his son, and he
must request that he be not sent with them; that he would rather
his coming be postponed six months than have them as his companions,
though they were sons of some of the first families of
Virginia, and of those who were on terms of intimacy with his.
His return was accordingly delayed for some months. On his arrival,
Mr. Nelson writes to his friends in England that he is much
pleased with the general improvement of his son, but regrets to find
that he has fallen into that bad practice, which most of the young
Virginians going to England adopt, of smoking tobacco,—adding,
emphatically, "filthy tobacco;" also that "of eating and drinking,
though not to inebriety, more than was conducive to health and
long life." Still, he was rejoiced to see him, such as he was, with
good principles. In proof of the respect in which President Nelson
was held, and the hopes entertained of his son, we state that,
though having been absent seven years, and being just twenty-one
years of age, he was elected to the House of Burgesses while on
his voyage home. If it be said that even immoral and irreligious
parents sometimes wish to see their sons moral and religious, we
further add, that President Nelson gave most varied proof of great
uprightness of character. One such is furnished in a letter to
some relatives in the North of England. He had redeemed an
estate in that region by paying off its debts, by which it became
his own. It proved to be much more valuable than was expected,
and, discovering that some other relative had a better right to redeem
it, voluntarily offered to surrender the estate or all the profits.
His commercial character was of the highest order. He imported
goods for merchants of Philadelphia and Baltimore, which places
were then in an incipient stage. By this means he acquired a
large fortune, leaving landed estates and servants to each of his
five sons,—Thomas, Hugh, William, Nat, and Robert,—and all of
his other property, amounting, according to the statement of the
elder St. George Tucker, to forty thousand pounds, to his oldest
son, General Nelson, who had been engaged in business with him.[58]
His interest in the affairs of religion and the Church was manifested
by his taking the lead in the parish. The parish, though
narrow, was long, and many, especially of the poor, must come
some distance to church. On Church-Sundays he always had a
large dinner prepared, to which rich and poor were indiscriminately
invited. After having been President of the Council for a long
term of years, on the decease of Lord Botetourt there was an
interregnum, during which he, as President of the Council, was
Acting Governor of the State, the civil and ecclesiastical representative
of the King. By two letters to Lord Hillsborough now
before me, in the years 1770 and 1771, he displays his determination
to do his duty in relation to unworthy clergymen, of whom
there were some needing discipline, and asks full and undoubted
authority for so doing, as such authority required to be renewed
from the throne. I conclude what yet remains to be said of President
William Nelson by a few extracts from a printed sermon
on his death, by Mr. Camm, the minister of York and President
of William and Mary College. He ascribes to him "a rational
and firm piety, an active and constant affection for the well-being
and best interests of mankind;" speaks of him as "constant in
his attendance at the ordinary service of God and the celebration
of the Lord's Supper, and exhibiting unaffected and fervent devotion."
He was—

This last remark has certainly been in a good degree fulfilled in
the descendants of President Nelson. Though they have not been
rich in this world's goods, yet they have not suffered through want.
Many of them have held respectable offices in the State and General
Government. Almost all of them have been enabled to obtain a
good education,—the best fortune in a country like ours,—so as to
associate with the most respectable portion of the community.
Many of them have obtained the highest of all honours,—the
honour which cometh from God only. It is true that the first son,
to whom the birthright of those days—the amplest fortune—was
given, spent it in his country's service, leaving his widow and
children in comparative poverty. But he spent it nobly, as his
father would have done had he lived to see the mighty struggle for
our liberties. Although that father was the first in the Government
only a few years before, and was the right hand of George
III. in this Colony, addressed in his commission as "My well-beloved
and worshipful, greeting," yet at that very time the letters
to his merchants and friends in London show that he had the soul
of a patriot as well as a Christian within him,—that he was indignant
at the imposition of the British Parliament,—and leave none
to doubt where he would have been found when the trumpet
sounded to arms. The thousands which General Nelson cast upon
the waters were not lost, but soon sprung up in a plentiful harvest

of rich blessings to his country, on which let his latest posterity
reflect with delight, and enjoy as a richer inheritance than thousands
of silver and gold.[59]

This leads me to add a few words concerning that patriot himself,
confining my remarks as nearly as possible to the special
character of the work I have in hand. I mean the moral and
religious character of the persons treated of. Whether General
Nelson was ever in full communion with the Church, I am not able
to say.[60] That he was a believer in the Gospel in that age of blasphemy
with so many, and that he was the friend of religion, cannot
be doubted. In writing to his own and his father's friend in London,
Mr. Samuel Martin, the 27th of January, 1773, he says:—

His friendship to God's ministers may be seen, about that time,
by the introduction of Mr. Samuel Shield to his friend in London,
with a request that he would pay him £50 on his account. Hitherto
there was a king's bounty of £50 to all who came over for Orders.
But this was in the year 1774, and probably Mr. Nelson apprehended
some difficulty, for, only two years after, Orders were
refused, such was the state of things between the Colony and
Great Britain.[61] We have seen that in the year 1775 the College

voted £50 to Mr. Madison when he went over for Orders. In the
following year I see an instance of liberality in General Nelson's
provision for a number of families in York, who had been driven
from their homes by Lord Dunmore's troops. Again I see his high
and honourable character, in imitation of that integrity which his
father displayed in all his dealings, when it was proposed in the
House of Burgesses to adopt some method of discharging British
debts which he considered improper. He indignantly opposed it, declaring,
some say, with an oath; others, far more probably, "So help
me God, others may do as they please, but I will pay all my debts
like an honest man." I might add numerous testimonies to his
unbounded liberality toward his comrades in the war when far from
home. It becomes not me to speak of the hundreds of thousands
procured on his own credit for the use of the State, when not a
dollar could be gotten on its own, nor how the account stood between
them at the close of that war. He certainly entered upon
it very rich, and came out of it so poor that when a few years had
passed away, and he was laid in the old graveyard at York, without
a headstone or slab to mark the spot, his property, save the old
house in deserted York and some poor broom-straw fields in Hanover,
was put up at public sale to pay the debts contracted in his
country's cause.[62] Even the old family Bible, with the births and
baptisms of the family, with the little table on which it stood, was
(though, I doubt not, by mistake) sold on that occasion. Within
the last year, in one of my visitations among the mountains, I
heard of this Bible. So was it valued by the family now having
it, whose baptisms and births had also there been registered, that
they could not be induced to relinquish it to one of the descendants
of its original owner.

The following account of General Nelson's family at Offley, a
small wooden house in Hanover county, Virginia, by the French
traveller, Chattellux, soon after the war, will not be uninteresting
to the reader:—

But still, as some one said of the people of Iceland, that "poverty was the bulwark
of their happiness," so it is, and has been, with many of the descendants of
General Nelson, in one respect: they have not been tempted by riches to "be full
and deny God."

We shall probably find an explanation of this absence of all
games, not only by the presence of such pious ladies as General
Nelson's mother and wife, but in the fact that old President Nelson
had trained up his family otherwise, and at a time when card-playing
and other games were but too common. We infer this from a letter
of his to a friend in England, concerning some young man in
whom they were both interested, and of whom Mr. Nelson entertains
painful apprehension because he had gone to a part of the State
where cards, racing, and suchlike things were freely practised.
We cannot forbear mentioning one circumstance that comes to us on
undoubted authority, concerning the second son of President Nelson,
—Colonel Hugh Nelson, of York. He followed the example of his
father's piety, and was a kind of lay preacher to the families in York,
especially to those of his own name. Besides reading the service
and sermon in the church every other Sunday in the absence of the
minister, and every Sunday when there was no minister, as was
often the case after the war, he acted as minister in preparing the
candidates for the first confirmation ever held in York, soon after
Bishop Madison's return from England with Episcopal consecration.
On the morning of the confirmation he assembled them all
in the large parlour or hall at the old house in York, and addressed
them on the nature of that rite. That, and the scene in church
which soon followed, has been often described as most deeply
affecting by one of his own children, the youngest recipient of the

rite, the late Mrs. Edmund Pendleton, mother of the Rev. William
N. Pendleton. We close with the expression of deep regret that
many documents, from which we might have drawn other passages
of interest touching President and General Nelson, are not to be
found. Of the numerous letters to correspondents in England,
written during a long series of years, only those of the last six of
President Nelson's life—from 1766 to 1772—are to be had. The
same loss is felt as to the letters of General Nelson. Not long
before his death he caused them all to be collected and filed by
his son, Mr. Philip Nelson, who had been trained to the mercantile
life; and among them that son always remembered and often
spoke of some most interesting ones from Washington, Lafayette,
and others during and after the war. These also have disappeared.
His papers and those of his father descended, together with the
old York house, to one of his sons and the descendants of the
same. They were doubtless objects of curiosity and desire to its
numerous visitors from all parts of the State and land, especially
after it became, as it was for many years, one of public entertainment.
Too freely may the desire and curiosity of travellers and
visitors have been yielded to, and too little, as in many other cases
in Virginia, have such relics of our ancestors been prized.

Although no apology is needed for the more full and particular
notice of the family of Nelsons which has been given, it may be
well to state that my more intimate connection with it for nearly
fifty years has furnished me with the means of such fulness and
particularity. As to others less known to me, and worthy of special
notice for their religious character and attachment to the Episcopal
Church, I invite communications. Some have been sent and
gladly used.

TOMBSTONES AND INSCRIPTIONS IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD AT
YORK.

But few of these remain, and some of them are broken and illegible.
That of the first Nelson and the founder of the town is as
follows:—

Which is thus rendered into English:—

Adjoining this is the tomb of his son, President Nelson, whose
character has been portrayed in the first article on this parish
The inscription is as follows:—

The latter part of this epitaph savours much of the language of
the pulpit in that day. The epitaph was probably written by
President Camm.

Very near to these tombstones General Thomas Nelson was
buried; but to this day not even a rough headstone marks the
spot, and no hillock is to be seen; and when one or two aged members
of the family are gone, there will be none left to point out the
place, when the gratitude of his country, or the filial piety of his
descendants, which has been too long waiting the action of the
former, desires to raise some humble monument to the most generous
and self-sacrificing of American patriots.[63]

The only other inscriptions which could be deciphered were
those of Abraham Archer, who died in 1752, aged sixty-two; of

Susannah Reignolds, daughter of William Rojers, who died in
1768, aged sixty; and of Jane Frank, the daughter of Mr. William
Routh, of Kisklington, in Yorkshire. She died on her passage
at sea, April 26, and was interred May 28, 1753, aged twenty-eight
years. She was doubtless the wife of that pious man, Mr.
Frank, of whom we have written as the friend and correspondent
of the Rev. Mr. Shield and others in York and Williamsburg.