University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVIII.

When Rockbridge County, Virginia, was cut off from Augusta,
in 1778, its county-seat was established on the hills along the
North Fork of James River, fourteen miles above the junction
of the two streams, and the same distance north of the Natural
Bridge.

The Scotch-Irish colonists of that part of the Old Dominion
had been permitted by the colonial government to take possession
of the fertile valley immediately west of the Blue Ridge on
condition, implied or expressed, that they should serve as a barrier
against the Indians, and prevent their hostile incursions into
the Piedmont country. Brave, hardy, intelligent, enterprising, and
industrious, strong in the faith of their Presbyterian forefathers
and in the courage of their own right arms, they entered upon
their heritage in the untried wilderness undaunted by the difficulties
and dangers which threatened their security and prosperity.

The resemblances between the new country and their ancestral
Scotland are everywhere apparent, and they planted their settlements
in localities which might best preserve around them the
marked features of that similarity. But this is the only evidence
remaining of any poetic memories or lingering love of native
land among them. In failing to retain the Indian appellations
for the mountains and streams which adorned the goodly territory,
they scarcely ever substituted for them names borrowed
from or suggestive of the country of their birth. Their rude
but substantial stone churches received not their titles in remembrance
of the historic kirks of their Covenanter ancestors, nor
were the burns and crags of the land of Wallace and Bruce
commemorated in the peaks and rivers around them. "Mossy

Creek," "Tinkling Spring," "Timber Ridge" churches tell how
the salient point of each locality impressed itself upon the sturdy,
unimaginative men, who, like Nehemiah, builded the houses of
God with one hand, while holding with the other weapons of defence
for wives and children against the dreaded attacks of the
Indians. "Hog's Back," "House Mountain," "Thunder Peak,"
"Buffalo" and "Otter" creeks, evidence the same matter-of-fact
attention to prominent natural characteristics.

Quickly striking deep roots into the soil of their new home,
these resolute and successful settlers became at once genuinely
patriotic in their attachment to their adopted country. In proof
of their sympathy with their fellow-colonists who had struck the
first blow for American liberty in Massachusetts, they called the
county-seat of the new county Lexington.

When General Washington, in 1796, bestowed the donation
made him by the State of Virginia upon Liberty Hall Academy, a
few miles from Lexington, the school was removed to the town and
renamed Washington Academy, which, in 1812, was elevated into
Washington College. In 1839 the Legislature of Virginia was
induced, by the extreme beauty of the scenery and the absolute
healthfulness and fertility of the surrounding country, to select
the little town as the most desirable place for the State Military
Institute. This was accordingly established there, within a half-mile
of the older college.

Previously to this date the Methodists and Baptists had obtained
a slight footing among the Presbyterians in Rockbridge, and had
built small churches in Lexington and elsewhere. But immigration
from the eastern side of the Blue Ridge, where the traditions
and episcopacy of the English settlers prevailed, had been small,
and no Episcopal church had ever been established. The opening
of an important and popular State school attracted young men
and their friends from all parts of the State. A large number
of these was from the tide-water section, and with them came the
desire and need for the church of their homes and their affections.
A feeble flock it was at first. Only by combining with the Episcopalians
in Buchanan, twenty-five miles off, could a vestry be
organized for the two congregations and Woodville Parish formed.
The old inhabitants looked with hostile, jealous eyes upon this
invasion of what they considered their spiritual territory. The

Episcopal Church and its mode of worship were still associated
in their minds, through the traditions of their ancestors, with the
persecutions of Claverhouse and the cruelties of Dundee. Little
by little, and more speedily than might have been expected amid
such uncongenial surroundings, the pure doctrine, devout worship,
and apostolic rites of the Prayer-Book took hold upon the
community, gaining the love and adherence of some, and winning
the respect of even those most unwilling to see any good in "prelatic
forms" and "printed prayers." In 1843, Grace Episcopal
Church was built in Lexington, and three years later, Latimer
Parish, in the county of Rockbridge, was cut off from the original
Woodville Parish.

In October, 1853, Mr. Pendleton accepted a call to Grace
Church, Lexington, and removed thither with his family. The
village was at that time only to be reached by stage. The nearest
railroad communication was at Staunton, thirty-six miles away,
and the journey from Winchester was a three days' stage-ride.
The Episcopal congregation was small and poor, and could only
offer a salary of six hundred dollars, to which the Diocesan
Missionary Society added one hundred dollars. Notwithstanding
the inadequacy of such an income, the opportunity for approaching
and influencing the large number of young men in
the two colleges, and the advantages for educating his only son,
decided Mr. Pendleton to take charge of the parish. A large,
old-fashioned house, much out of repair, had been purchased for a
parsonage. Possession of it, however, could not be had until
January, 1854, and the new rector and his family spent the intervening
time in narrow and uncomfortable quarters at the village
hotel.

The day after reaching Lexington Mr. Pendleton entered his
son, Sandie, as a student at Washington College, and in the afternoon
sent the little fellow—just thirteen years old—by himself to
be examined by his future professors. The boy stood the formidable
ordeal with so much self-possession, and exhibited such
accuracy and advancement in Greek, Latin, and mathematics, as
to elicit high praise from his examiners.

"How could you send that delicate-looking child to face us
alone? Why did you not come with him?" asked one of the
professors of Mr. Pendleton.

"I knew that he was well prepared, and my son must learn to
depend on himself and not on me. I wish him to be a good
scholar, but still more a strong, self-reliant man," was the reply.

The superintendent of the Military Institute, Colonel F. H.
Smith, and Major Thomas Williamson, one of the professors
there, had been West Point acquaintances of their new rector,
though several years behind him. From them and the whole
congregation he received a warm welcome, and threw himself
with his accustomed prompt energy into the work of his new
field. Soon after entering the ministry he had expressed his
determination not to permit his family to suffer while he had
health and ability to provide for them. To this end he now took
charge of a day-school for boys, but, finding the drudgery great
and the compensation small, gave it up, at the end of a year, as
hindering more important work and study. Several boys among
his connections had been sent from a distance to be taught and
trained by him, and when he gave up the school continued with
him, to be taught as he thought best, their parents believing that
his influence and such partial instruction as he would give would
prove more to their sons' advantage than removing them to other
schools.

The chair of mathematics in the University of Virginia became
vacant in 1854 by the death of Professor Courtenay. Mr. Pendleton's
friends, and especially his oldest brother, Hugh, urged
him to offer for the professorship. Yielding to their solicitations,
he allowed his name to be sent in to the Board of Visitors,
accompanied by testimonials and recommendations from a number
of distinguished teachers and scientific men. Before the time
for the meeting of the board to appoint a new professor he learned
that his West Point classmate and beloved friend, Albert Taylor
Bledsoe, was also a candidate for the place. Immediately he
wrote to the board, withdrawing from the contest, as he would
not place himself in competition with one so dear to him and so
eminently fitted for the vacant chair. He further requested that
all that had been written and said in his own favor might be
considered as additional recommendation to Mr. Bledsoe.[1]

Secluded as Lexington was from the stir and bustle of business,

its intellectual life was vigorous and energetic. From colonial
days the influence of Liberty Hall Academy had maintained
and encouraged education, and its successor, Washington College,
had raised the standard and increased the desire for mental cultivation
among the youth in that part of Virginia. The specially
scientific course of study at the Military Institute had widened
the field of knowledge, and added the department of Natural
Science to the humanities of the older college. In addition to
these strictly educational institutions was another peculiar to
Lexington, and not less active in forming and developing the
mental tastes and abilities of the citizens. The "Franklin Society,"
incorporated in 1816 as a debating society, numbered
among its members all the men of the town who took any interest
in meeting and discussing with their fellows the questions
of the day. It had a good hall and excellent library. Regular
debates were held every Saturday night, and public lectures delivered
from time to time on popular subjects. During its fifty
years of existence every conceivable question—social, political,
scientific, secular, and religious—had been discussed by it, and it
wielded a potent influence upon the opinions and character of the
community around it. Ready in debate, fluent in speech, forcible
in argument, and good-tempered in the heat of discussion, Mr.
Pendleton at once became an active member of this society and
a regular attendant at its meetings. Sometimes, however, an unfinished
sermon or other pressing work would detain him in his
study on Saturday evening. Not infrequently, when this was the
case, one messenger after another would be sent to urge him to
come down and let the society hear what he had to say on the
subject under debate.

Lamarck, in 1802, had sounded the key-note for the fierce contest
to be waged by infidelity between natural science and revealed
truth. The anonymous author of "The Vestiges of Creation" had,
some forty years later, published to the world his bold disavowal
of the credibility of the Mosaic genesis, afterwards so strenuously
controverted on the same grounds by Darwin, Huxley, and their
host of followers. To the alleged discrepancies between the
Bible and geology Mr. Pendleton's attention had been given for
a number of years. Unshaken in his faith in the absolute truth
of revelation, he had followed all the discoveries of the growing

science as Buckland, Lyell, Murchison, Chalmers, Mantell, Silliman,
Agassiz, and others had unfolded them. To the various
theories propounded by one and another of these teachers he
gave watchful scrutiny, but committed himself to none, feeling
sure that, sooner or later, as Hugh Miller at last set forth, the
"Footprints of the Creator" would be traced through the successive
"creative periods," and the "Testimony of the Rocks"
found to confirm and not contradict the "evenings and mornings"
of the "days" of Moses.

On this special question concerning the "chronology of creation"
the men of Lexington were greatly interested at the time
when Mr. Pendleton came among them. His thorough and accurate
acquaintance with the facts and arguments brought to bear
upon both sides of it at once gave him influence and position as
an intellectual power introduced into the community. About
this time also appeared Nott and Gliddon's voluminous treatise
on the "Types of Mankind," animated by the same spirit of
hostility to the Scriptures, and written with the avowed purpose
of disproving a unity of origin for the human race. Specious
and attractive in arguments and the mode of presenting them,
Mr. Pendleton considered this a still more dangerous attack upon
revelation than that from the geological side. He therefore applied
himself diligently to study the subject, and search into all
the facts alleged to support the infidel view of it.