University of Virginia Library

ARTICLE LXVII.

Truro Parish, Fairfax County.

Fairfax county was separated from Prince William in the year
1742, and at first embraced Loudon county. The whole of this
was covered with Truro parish.[38] In 1749, Cameron parish was
cut off from it, and was afterward in Loudon, when that county
was separated from Fairfax in 1757. The parish of Truro was
again divided in the year 1764. In the years 1754, 1758, and
1764, I have evidence that the Rev. Chas. Green was the minister
of Truro parish, and probably lived in the neighbourhood of Gunston,
the seat of the Mason family, near which stood the old church
which was superseded by Pohick or Mount Vernon Church. Mr.
George Mason makes mention of him in a letter dated 1764. I
think it probable General Washington also mentions the same person
as visiting Mount Vernon in 1760, when Mrs. Washington was sick.
How long he may have been the minister after 1764, I cannot
ascertain. He was succeeded by the Rev. Lee Massey, either in
or before the year 1767, as that is the date of one of his sermons
preached at the Old Pohick Church. He was also in the parish as
minister in the year 1785, as I find from the date of a sermon
preached at the present Pohick Church, which was built during his
ministry, of which I possess the proof. How long he ministered after
this, I am unable to say. Mr. Massey was a lawyer previous to his
engaging in the ministry, and was ordained by the Bishop of London

for Virginia in 1766. His sermons evince talent and are sound in
doctrine, but, like most of that day, want evangelical life and
spirit, and would never rouse lost sinners to a sense of their condition.
He was a man of great wit and humour, the indulgence
of which was the fault of many of the clergy of that day. The
following account of a dispute between himself and his vestry
has been sent me, and illustrates his character. The clerk whom
Mr. Massey had selected was unacceptable to the vestry, and in order
to get rid of him they give him no salary or a very small one. Mr.
Massey complaining, the vestry met and passed two resolutions:—
1st. That the minister had a right to choose his clerk; 2d. That
the vestry had a right to fix his salary. In a letter to the vestry
Mr. Massey descanted on these resolutions with severity, and thus
concluded:—"And now, gentlemen, as to the knowing ones among
you,—and I admit there are such,—I would say, `humanum est
errare;' and, as to the rest of you, `ne sutor ultra crepidam.' "
Mr. Massey was a native of King George. His mother was an
Alexander. He lived to his eighty-sixth year, and died in 1814.
He had, however, ceased from the ministry for many years before his
death. The old families had left the neighbourhood or the Church.
General Washington, at the close of the war, had fully connected
himself with Christ Church, Alexandria, and Pohick was deserted
or only attended occasionally by some ministers of whom I shall
presently speak. Before taking leave of Mr. Massey, I will adduce
the proof that was mentioned that Mount Vernon or Pohick Church
was built during his ministry, and not at the much earlier date as
supposed by some. A friend has furnished me the following statement:—

The date is also further established by a deed recorded in the
county court, of which I have a copy. It is a deed from the vestry
of a pew in the church to Mr. Massey and his successors.

We have in this document not only a witness to the age of the
present Pohick Church, but a list of the vestrymen of that day. We
have seen a printed list of the vestry of Truro and Fairfax parishes
in the year 1765,—just after the division,—in which are some
other names belonging to the neighbourhood of Pohick,—as George
Wm. Fairfax, Edward Blackburn, William Lynton, William Gardiner,
&c. It comes from a leaf, it is said, of the old Pohick vestrybook,
which has by some means gotten into the Historical Society
of New York. Of the vestry-book itself I can hear no tidings.
In the year 1785, I find the name of George Washington, in his
own handwriting,—not as a vestryman, but as a pew-holder and
subscriber,—in the vestry-book of Christ Church, Alexandria. After
this he seldom, if ever, attended at Pohick.

It will be expected that I should say something concerning the
tradition as to the part which Washington took in the location of
Pohick Church. The following account is probably the correct one.
The Old Pohick Church was a frame building, and occupied a site
on the south side of Pohick Run, and about two miles from the
present, which is on the north side of the run. When it was no
longer fit for use, it is said the parishioners were called together
to determine on the locality of the new church, when George
Mason, the compatriot of Washington, and senior vestryman,
advocated the old site, pleading that it was the house in which their
fathers worshipped, and that the graves of many were around it,
while Washington and others advocated a more central and convenient
one. The question was left unsettled and another meeting
for its decision appointed. Meanwhile Washington surveyed the
neighbourhood, and marked the houses and distances on a well-drawn
map, and, when the day of decision arrived, met all the
arguments of his opponent by presenting this paper, and thus
carried his point. In place of any description of this house in its
past or present condition, I offer the following report of a visit made
to it in 1837:—

"It was to this church that Washington for some years regularly
repaired, at a distance of six or seven miles, never permitting any
company to prevent the regular observance of the Lord's day.
And shall it now be permitted to sink into ruin for want of a few
hundred dollars to arrest the decay already begun? The families
which once worshipped there are indeed nearly all gone, and those
who remain are not competent to its complete repair. But there
are immortal beings around it, and not far distant from it, who
might be forever blessed by the word faithfully preached therein.

"The poor shall never fail out of any land, and to them the Gospel
ought to be preached.

"For some years past one of the students in our Theological Seminary
has acted as lay reader in it, and occasionally a professor
has added his services. Within the last year the Rev. Mr. Johnson,
residing in the neighbourhood, has performed more frequent duties
there.

"On the day following the one which has given rise to the above,
I preached to a very considerable congregation in this old church,

one-third of which was made up of coloured persons. The sacrament
was then administered to twenty persons. If I should ever
be permitted to visit this house again, it must be under circumstances
far more cheering, or far more gloomy, than those which
attended my recent visit."

I am happy to say that this report led the Rev. Mr. Johnson to
its use, in a circular, by means of which he raised fifteen hundred
dollars, with which a new roof and ceiling and other repairs were
put on it, by which it has been preserved from decay and fitted for
such occasional services as are performed there. A friend, who
has recently visited it, informs me that many of the doors of the
pews are gone. Those of George Washington and George Mason
are not to be found,—perhaps borne away as relics. Those of
George William Fairfax, Martin Cockburn, Daniel McCarty,
William Payne, and the rector's, are still standing and their
names legible. Of Martin Cockburn and Mrs. Cockburn, intimate
friends of George Mason, we have heard a high character for piety
and benevolence. Mr. Cockburn was from the West Indies, and
Mrs. Cockburn was a Miss Bronaugh, a relative of the Masons, of
Gunston. They left no children to inherit and perpetuate their
virtues and graces. The family of Mason has long adhered to Old
Gunston, near which was the Old Pohick. The following account,
from one of the family, will be interesting to its members and
friends. The first of the family who came to Virginia was Colonel
George Mason, who was a member of the British Parliament in the
reign of Charles the First. In Parliament he opposed with great
eloquence the arbitrary measures of the King, but when the civil
war commenced he drew his sword on the side of the King and was
an officer in Charles the Second's army, and commanded a regiment
of horse. When the King's army was defeated at Worcester
by Oliver Cromwell in 1651, he disguised himself, and was concealed
by some peasants until he got an opportunity to embark for
America. He had considerable possessions in Staffordshire, (though
the family was of old a Warwickshire one,) where he was born and
generally lived; all of which were lost. A younger brother embarked
with him, and they arrived and landed in Norfolk, Virginia.
The younger brother, William, married and died at or near Norfolk.
He left a son, who went to Boston and settled. His female descendants
married among the Thoroughgoods, and that family was
for a long time in Princess Anne,—perhaps may be now. Colonel
George Mason went up the Potomac and settled at Accotink, near
Pasbytanzy, where he died and was buried. He called the county

Stafford, after his native county in England. Such at least is the
probable conjecture. This is the George Mason who, in another
place, we have spoken of as being, with his wife and Colonel Brent,
sponsor in baptism for a young Indian chief whom they took prisoner
in Maryland. Our notice was taken from one of the early
Tracts, republished by Peter Force, and which is ascribed to Mr.
Mason himself. The Mason family intermarried with the Brents,
Fitzhughs, and Thompsons at an early period, and afterward with
the McCartys, Bronaughs, Grahams, and many others.

Of one branch of this family, in connection with another old
family of Virginia, I have something to say. There was at Hampton,
in Elizabeth City county, an old Episcopal family by the name
of Westwood. A daughter of one member of it, Elizabeth Westwood,
married a Mr. Wallace. At his death she married John
Thompson Mason, who settled at Chappawamsic, in Stafford county.
She was the mother of Mr. Temple Mason, of Loudoun, and other
children, among whom was a daughter named Euphan, who married
Mr. Bailey Washington, of Stafford. At the death of her
husband, Mr. Washington, she married Mr. Brent, and lived and
died at Park Gate, in Prince William county. She had many children.
Among them was a daughter, who married first Mr. McCrae,
then Mr. Storke, of Fredericksburg. Her daughter Euphan married
Mr. Roy, of Matthews. This is mentioned as introductory to
some extracts from a few letters of old Mrs. Mason to her son,
Temple Mason, of Leesburg, showing the earnest desire she had
for the religious welfare of her children. From a letter of her
grand-daughter, Mrs. Storke, I learn that she was living at the time
of her death at Dumfries, in Prince William county. She was one
of those old-fashioned Virginia ladies who, like Mrs. General
Washington and Solomon's model of a lady, not only superintended
the labours of her servants, but worked with her own hands. This
she did until within a few days of her death. But her soul was
much more actively engaged with God. While it was possible, she
bent her knees daily before God, even when it was thought improper
to attempt it. Among her last words were the following:—
"Certainly, certainly, I can see no other way than that of Christ
crucified." "Christ is my all in all."

Let the following sentences, from a letter to her son Temple in
1816, sink deep into the hearts of all her descendants. After
exhorting him earnestly to attend at once to personal religion, by
reading the Scriptures, and prayer, and attendance on public worship,
she thus concludes:—

In two other letters, one of them dated in 1818, she writes in
the same earnest strain. One of them to her son Temple, whom
she addresses, "My dear child," thus concludes:—"O my blessed
God, of thy great mercy, grant, while you are reading these lines,
that you may consider and turn and seek him and find him. Oh,
what a joy it would give your aged mother to hear or see that you
were converted!"

That the prayers of this aged woman were heard in behalf of
one of her grandchildren, all who knew Mrs. Henry Magill, of
Leesburg, will be ready to believe.

Among the families which belonged to Pohick Church was that
of Mr. Lawrence Lewis, the nephew of General Washington, the
son of his sister Betty, who married Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lawrence
Lewis married Miss Custis, the grand-daughter of Mrs. Washington.
In many of the pictures of the Washington family she may be
seen, as a girl, in a groupe with the General, Mrs. Washington,
and her brother Washington Parke Custis. There were two other
full-sisters, who married Mr. Law and Mr. Peter. Mrs. Custis, the
widow of Mr. Washington's son, married again. Her second husband
was Dr. David Steuart, first of Hope Park, and then of Ossian
Hall, Fairfax county. He was the son and grandson of the two
Mr. Steuarts who were ministers in King George for so long a
period. They had a numerous offspring. The residence of Mr.
Lawrence Lewis was a few miles only from Mount Vernon, and was
called Woodlawn. After the desertion of Pohick they also attended
in Alexandria, and some time after the establishment of St. Paul's
congregation, and the settlement of Dr. Wilmer in it, they united
themselves to it, and were much esteemed by Dr. Wilmer, as he was
by them. After some years they removed to an estate near Berryville,
in what was then Frederick, now Clarke county. Mr. Lewis

was one of the most amiable of men by nature, and became a sincere
Christian, and a communicant of our Church. His person
was tall and commanding, and his face full of benignity, as was
his whole character. I wish some of our friends at a distance
could have seen him in the position I once beheld him in the church
at Berryville, when I was administering the Holy Communion.
Some of his servants were members of the church in that place,
and on that day one of them came up after the white members had
communed. It so happened that Mr. Lewis himself had not communed,
but came up and knelt by the side of his servant, feeling no
doubt that one God made them and one Saviour redeemed them.
Mrs. Lewis was also a zealous member of the Church, a lady of
fine mind and education, and very popular in her manners. Like
her grandmother, she knew the use of her hands, and few ladies in
the land did more with them for all Church and charitable purposes,
even to the last days of a long life. They had three children.
Their son, Lorenzo, married a Miss Coxe, of Philadelphia, and
settled on the estate in Clarke, but died some years since. The
two daughters married, the one Mr. Conrad, of New Orleans, and
the other Mr. Butler, of Mississippi or Louisiana. A numerous
posterity is descending from them.[39]

There were other families who belonged to this parish and church,
but I am not possessed of information to enable me to speak of
them as I could wish. The Chichesters, the Footes and Tripletts,
were, I am told, the last to leave it. The following letter from my
friend, General Henderson, of Washington, gives some notice of
his father, Alexander Henderson, who was one of the vestry of
Pohick Church who signed the deed of a pew to Rev. Mr. Massey:—

Of Mr. Richard Henderson, of Leesburg, Dr. Thomas Henderson,
and the sisters, I need not speak to the inhabitants of Leesburg
and Warrenton, where they were so well known as the props
of our Church. The author of the letter from which I have extracted
has long been a communicant and active vestryman of the
Church in Washington.

I have said that after the Revolution, when General Washington
changed his attendance from Pohick to Alexandria, and others left
the parish, regular services ceased in that part of the county. Mr.
Massey either relinquished services because none attended, or from
some other cause, although he lived many years after. The Rev.

Mr. Weems, in his books, announces himself as the rector of this
parish after this period. If some may, by comparison, be called
"nature's noblemen," he might surely have been pronounced one
of "nature's oddities." Whether in private or public, in prayers
or preaching, it was impossible that either the young or old, the
grave or the gay, could keep their risible faculties from violent
agitation. To suppose him to have been a kind of private chaplain
to such a man as Washington, as has been the impression of some,
is the greatest of incongruities. But I wish to do him ample justice.
Although his name never appears on the journals of any of our
Conventions, and cannot be found on the lists of those ordained for
Virginia or Maryland by the Bishop of London, so that a doubt
has been entertained whether he ever was ordained a minister of
our Church, yet I have ascertained that to be a fact. We presume
that he was from Maryland, as there are or were persons of
that name there, who were said to be his relatives. We will give
him credit for much benevolence, much of what Sterne called the
milk of human kindness, and of which Mr. Weems delighted
to speak in his sermons and writings. In proof of our disposition
to do him ample justice, we present the following account of his
boyhood in Maryland, which has been given us by one who knew
him:—

I acknowledge that he was in the habit of having the servant, assembled
in private houses, where he would spend the night, and would
recite a portion of Scripture, for he never read it out of the book,
and perhaps say something to them, or in the prayer about them,
but then it was in such a way as only to produce merriment. This
I have experienced in my own family and at my mother's, and have

heard others testify to the same. I do not think he could have long
even pretended to be the rector of any parish. From my earliest
knowledge of him he was a travelling bookseller for Mr. Matthew
Carey, of Philadelphia, visiting all the States south of Pennsylvania,
and perhaps some north of it, in a little wagon, with his fiddle as a
constant companion to amuse himself and others. If he would pray
with the servants at night in their owners' houses, he would play
the fiddle for them on the roadside by day. One instance of his
good-nature is well attested. At the old tavern in Caroline county,
Virginia, called the White Chimneys, Mr. Weems and some strolling
players or puppet-showmen met together one night. A notice
of some exhibition had been given, and the neighbours had assembled
to witness it. A fiddle was necessary to the full performance,
and that was wanting. Mr. Weems supplied the deficiency.

He was of a very enlarged charity in all respects. Though calling
himself an Episcopal minister, he knew no distinction of Churches.
He preached in every pulpit to which he could gain access, and
where he could recommend his books. His books were of all kinds.
Mr. Carey, his employer, was a Roman Catholic, but dealt in all
manner of books. On an election or court-day at Fairfax Court-House,
I once, in passing to or from the upper country, found Mr.
Weems, with a bookcaseful for sale, in the portico of the tavern.
On looking at them I saw Paine's "Age of Reason," and, taking it
into my hand, turned to him, and asked if it was possible that he
could sell such a book. He immediately took out the Bishop of
Llandaff's answer, and said, "Behold the antidote. The bane and
antidote are both before you." He carried this spurious charity
into his sermons. In my own pulpit at the old chapel, in my absence,
it being my Sunday in Winchester, he extolled Tom Paine
and one or more noted infidels in America, and said if their ghosts
could return to the earth they would be shocked to hear the falsehoods
which were told of them. I was present the following day,
when my mother charged him with what she had heard of his sermon,
and well remember that even he was confused and speechless.
Some of Mr. Weems's pamphlets on drunkenness and gambling would
be most admirable in their effects, but for the fact that you know
not what to believe of the narrative. There are passages of deep
pathos and great eloquence in them. His histories of Washington
and Marion are very popular, but the same must be said of them.
You know not how much of fiction there is in them. That of Washington
has probably gone through more editions than all others, and
has been read by more persons than those of Marshall, Ramsey,

Bancroft, and Irving, put together. To conclude,—all the while
that Mr. Weems was thus travelling over the land, an object of
amusement to so many, and of profit to Mr. Carey, he was transmitting
support to his interesting and pious family, at or near
Dumfries, who, if I am rightly informed, were attached to the Methodist
Church. If in this, or any thing else which I have written,
any mistake has been made, I should be glad to receive its correction.

There were three other ministers who occasionally preached at
Pohick, and visited Mount Vernon after the death of General and
Mrs. Washington, of whom a few words must be said. But, before
these few are said, it is proper to speak of the change which took
place at Mount Vernon by the death of its illustrious owners. It
is well known that Judge Bushrod Washington, the son of General
Washington's brother John, inherited Mount Vernon. He was in
full communion with the Church when I first became acquainted
with him in 1812, having no doubt united himself with it in Philadelphia
under Bishop White, while attending the Supreme Court
in that place. I know that he was intimate with Bishop White
and highly esteemed him. Judge Washington attended one or more
of our earliest Conventions in Richmond and was a punctual member
of the Standing Committee from that time until his death. He
married into the family of Blackburns, of Ripon Lodge, not many
miles from Dumfries, and perhaps twelve from Mount Vernon. The
first Richard Blackburn of whom our vestry-books speak married a
daughter of the Rev. James Scott, of Dumfries. His son was, I
believe, the father of Mrs. Bushrod Washington, Mrs. Henry
Turner, of Jefferson, Mr. Richard and Thomas Blackburn. The
family at Ripon Lodge had long been the main support of the
church at Dumfries and Centreville, and their house the resort of
the clergy. I have before me a paper drawn up in 1812 for the
support of the Rev. Charles O'Neill. The first and highest subscriber
is Mr. Thomas Blackburn, who was, I believe, the husband
of our excellent friend Mrs. Blackburn, who lived near Berryville
for many of the last years of her life. His subscription is fifty
dollars. The next highest is that of a Mr. Edmund Denny, twenty-five
dollars. The next Dr. Humphrey Peake, for twenty dollars.
All the rest much less. Old Mrs. Blackburn, with her four granddaughters,—Jane,
Polly, Christian, and Judy Blackburn,—daughters
of Mr. Richard Blackburn, were much at Mount Vernon. I became
acquainted with them during the years 1812 and 1813, while
I was ministering in Alexandria. They were the first-fruits of my

ministry in that place, and very dear to me. Two of them—Jane
and Polly—married nephews of Judge Washington, and settled in
Jefferson. One of them—Judy—married Mr. Gustavus Alexander,
of King George, and the fourth—Christian—died unmarried. By
my intimacy with these four most estimable ladies and with Mrs.
Blackburn and her sister, Mrs. Taylor, I have from time to time
become acquainted with the state of things at Ripon Lodge and
Mount Vernon as to the clergy. The Rev. Mr. Kemp and the Rev.
Mr. Moscrope occasionally officiated at Dumfries and Pohick, and
perhaps at Centreville, for the want of those who were better. But
in order to conceal the shame of the clergy from the younger ones,
and to prevent their loss of attachment to religion and the Church,
the elder ones had sometimes to hurry them away to bed or take
them away from the presence of these ministers when indulging too
freely in the intoxicating cup. The doctrine of total abstinence in
families, of banishing wine and spirits from the cellar and the table,
was not thought of then in the best of families. If the minister
chose it, he must drink. The third and last minister, and who died,
I think, in 1813, was the Rev. Charles O'Neill, who was an improvement
on the two last. The families at Mount Vernon and
Ripon Lodge were fond of him. He always spent his Christmas at
Mount Vernon, and on those occasions was dressed in a full suit
of velvet, which General Washington had left behind, and which
had been given to Mr. O'Neill. But as General Washington was
tall and well proportioned in all his parts, and Mr. O'Neill was
peculiarly formed, being of uncommon length of body and brevity
of legs, it was difficult to make the clothes of the one, even though
altered, sit well upon the other.[40]

I am happy to be able to add to this article the following extracts
from two letters of my old college friend, Colonel Stoddert, of
Wycomico House, Maryland, concerning his grandfather, the Rev.
Lee Massey:—

The following extract is from a second letter in answer to further
inquiries:—

It should be stated that the old church, called Payne's Church,
near the railroad, and a few miles from Fairfax Court-House, as
well as the new one at the court-house, are both in Truro parish.