Notes From Rev Charles Joy
Historic St. Martin’s Parish Sketches by Rev’d Charles Joy
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch 1: The Rev’d Zachariah Brooke
The Rev’d Zachariah Brooke was Rector of Saint Paul’s Parish, Hanover County, when Saint Martin’s Parish was divided from it in 1726. He it was who did much of the early work of a parson to prepare the way for the new parish structure.
He was born at Yeldham, Essex, England in 1676, son of an Anglican priest and brother of two others. He was a graduate of Sidney Sussex College of the University of Cambridge with A.B. in 1693/4 and A.M. in 1697.
Brooke was ordained Priest in Ely Cathedral on 20th September 1702, and became Vicar of the Parish of Hauxton-cum-Newton in the county of Cambridge, of which living he remained the incumbent even after he came to Virginia, the duty being taken by a curate who lived there. This parish is four miles due south of the university town of Cambridge, on the River Cam, and the Church of Saint Edmund, where Brooke officiated Divine Service, is a Norman structure, still in use as the parish church.
In 1719, Brooke received the King’s Bounty, bound for Virginia, where after a brief time as minister of Saint Peter’s Parish, New Kent County, he became Rector of Saint Paul’s Parish in Hanover from 1721 to 1736, of Dale Parish, Chesterfield County, from 1737 to 1738. He had scarcely been appointed to the living of King William Parish, Powhatan County, in 1738, when he died.
In the years when the population in upper Hanover was growing rapidly, Mr Brooke preached “4 Sermons on the Frontiers” each year at first, besides his regular duties at the parish church. Later, when tobacco was “raisd towards building 2 Chappels,” his duty “on the Frontiers” was increased to 18 sermons yearly, 9 at each chapel. It was the Fork Chapel, built 1722, that was to become the first Parish Church of Saint Martin’s, [near] the site of which the present parish church is built. For this frontier work, he was allowed “eight thousand pounds of Tobacco with Cask & Conveniency, so long as those parts continue in our parish.” This arrangement was with the Vestry of the Parish of Saint Paul.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch 2: Colonel Charles Chiswell
Charles Chiswell, the builder of Scotchtown, was born in 1677 and lived most of his life in Williamsburg and Hanover County. The house at Scotchtown plantation was built about 1719, shortly after Chiswell received a patent for several thousand acres in New Kent, later Hanover County.
As Clerk of the General Court of Virginia, he was a man of some importance in Virginia, and a prominent citizen of the colony.
Chiswell’s sister Mary was the wife of Doctor Charles Barret of Williamsburg, and the mother of the Rev’d Robert Barret who was Rector of Saint Martin’s Parish for much of the 18th century. As the leading resident and one of the largest landholders of the parish, Charles Chiswell was probably responsible through his influence, for presenting his nephew Robert to this living. Although 18th century vestry minutes are missing, it is probable that Charles Chiswell sat upon the vestry of Saint Martin’s Parish, and may even have had a hand in designing the Fork Church.
In the Spring of 1737, Chiswell left Hanover County for a visit to Williamsburg, where he “was taken ill of a Pleurisy and Flux on Friday night,” which was so severe that “it carried him off the Monday night following: and on Wednesday night he was decently interr’d” in Bruton Churchyard.
Charles Chiswell represents the wealthy and influential citizens of Virginia who were loyal to and expended their influence in behalf of the Church of England. As master of Scotchtown, Chiswell was the leading resident landholder and citizen of Saint Martin’s Parish in its earliest years.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #3: The Rev’d William Swift
The Rev’d William Swift was the first rector of Saint Martin’s Parish. He was born in London on 30th September 1697, was a student of Merchant Taylor’s School in London from 1710 to 1714, then went up to Cambridge where, in 1714, he was admitted Sizar in Emmanuel College.
Swift was ordained Deacon on 8th June 1718 by the Bishop of Rochester, and Priest on 20th December 1719 by the Bishop of London. In 1722 he received the King’s Bounty for Virginia, having been married in June. The marriage license in the archives of the Bishop of London is issued to “William Swift of St Sepulchre’s, London, Bachelor, and Dinah Hodgkin of St Dunstan in the West, Spinster.”
After serving as rector of Sandys, Southampton, Warwick, and Paget Parishes in Bermuda, he came to Virginia. Though he had come without the permission of the Bishop of London, he nevertheless appeared to Governor Gooch to be “much esteem’d by Those that are acquainted with him . . . a Gentleman very deserving.” He was sent immediately by the governor to Saint Martin’s Parish where, Gooch was confident, he would be “very easie and faithfully discharge his duty in the care of Souls.” Saint Martin’s Parish at that time included, besides the Fork Church and Allen’s Creek Chapel, a “mountain chapple” at the foothills of the Blue Ridge in upper present-day Louisa County.
Swift died at the close of the year 1734, as a letter from the governor to the Bishop of London in January 1734/5, in numbering recent deaths in the colony among the clergy, says “Mr Swift very lately.” He was survived by his wife Dinah and several children who continued to live on in Saint Martin’s Parish.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #4: Colonel William Dabney
William Dabney, Colonel of the Hanover County Militia and Sheriff of Hanover, was born at his father’s plantation in King William County in 1707. He was the son of George Dabney, who patented land in Hanover earl in the 18th century.
By his marriage to Anne Barret, daughter of Dr Charles Barret of Williamsburg and his wife Mary Chiswell, William Dabney became brother-in-law to the Rev’d Robert Barret, Rector of Saint Martin’s Parish, and nephew-in-law to Colonel Charles Chiswell of Scotchtown. Colonel Dabney was thus closely connected with the “manor family” of the parish in its earliest years.
Among the Dabney papers in the library of the University of North Carolina is a very interesting document in Dabney’s handwriting, entitled “An acct. of necessarys deliver’d the poor of St Martin’s Parish during my wardenship,” and the years included are 1744 to 1748. Items in this account include tobacco “paid to John Morris for borading Mary Coubroudel,” “1220 Tob. pd. Larkin Que for tarring the church at Allen’s Creek,” and kersey, osnaburg and brown thread for making clothes for the parish paupers.
Colonel Dabney died in August of 1769 at his plantation Aldingham in the South Anna River, for the 950 acres of which he was taxed in 1763.
Colonel William Dabney serves as an example of the plantation master of the 18th century who was at once a member and officer of the parish vestry. His financial responsibilities on behalf of that body are clearly evident in the manuscript accounts which survive in North Carolina. Such lay people made up the vestries of colonial Virginia, and much of the responsibility of local government and administration, both in church and in state, was theirs.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #5: The Rev’d Robert Barret
Robert Barret was born at least by 1713, probably in Williamsburg, son of Dr Charles Barret. His father died when Robert was very young, leaving also a daughter Anne who married William Dabney of Hanover. Their mother was Mary Chiswell, a sister to Charles Chiswell of Scotchtown.
Robert Barret travelled to England to be ordained, and received the King’s Bounty for Virginia on 5 December 1737, probably having been ordained shortly before. On 15th June following, Barret was “elected Master of the Indian School” at William and Mary College, but held that position only a short time before his family connections summoned him to Saint Martin’s Parish. He was to serve as rector from 1738 until 1786, throughout the Revolutionary War.
During this time, he lived at the Glebe, in the upper part of the parish near Oakland, and farmed the 350 acres. In 1782 he was listed as head of a household which included 6 whites and 43 [enslaved persons]. Store accounts for the Rev’d Mr Barret in the middle of the 18th century reveal that he bought many items, including rum and brandy, sugar, fabrics, pins and in 1760, “one grizzled bob wig.” Though he resided in the parish glebe, Mr Barret owned a good deal of land outside of Hanover County. Some came by his marriage to Anne Lewis* of Goochland, and some he was granted, including 1500 acres “on both sides of Banister River” in western Virginia.
Like others of the colonial clergy, Mr Barret was strong in his defense of the Established Church. In 1751, he and other clergy asserted that “this Church, of which we are members,” is “worthy by all prudent and honourable means to be defended and supported” against “all Novel notions, and perplexing uncertain Doctrines and Speculations, which tend to the subversion of reasonable creatures.”
Mr. Barret died at an advanced age in Albemarle County, his will being probated in 1805.
*Some genealogical websites online say that the Rev’d Robert Barret was married twice, his first wife named, Elizabeth Lewis and his second wife named, Anne Lee.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #6: Nelson and Elizabeth Berkeley
Nelson Berkeley, founder of Airwell, was born in 1733 at his father’s plantation, Barn Elms, in Middlesex County. Through his mother Mary Nelson, whose name he bore, he was connected with the Nelson family of Yorktown who, together with the Berkeleys, represented the leading source of support for St Martin’s Parish in the latter 18th and most of the 19th centuries. From 1760 when he built Airwell, Nelson Berkeley made his home in Hanover County until his death in 1794, when he was Senior Warden of St Martin’s Parish.
His wife, Elizabeth Wormeley Carter, whom he married in 1758, was the child of Landon Carter of Sabine Hall in Richmond County. She lived on as Nelson Berkeley’s widow until her death at Airwell in 1813. Elizabeth Berkeley was well known for her “pious attachment to everything belonging to the church, a lady of dignity, firmness and authority.” When the troops of General Banastre Tarlton invaded Hanover during the Revolutionary War, and attempted to force Mrs Berkeley to wear a red cloak which they found in an attic chest at Airwell, she summoned the commander and saw that the offender was flogged at the great chestnut tree growing before the house. In 1802 when an act was passed in the Virginia legislature to confiscate the possessions of the [Episcopal] Church, representatives of the overseers of the Poor came to Airwell to take possession of the [Fork Church] communion silver, then in Mrs Berkeley’s charge. When she was told the nature of their mission, she [defiantly] replied: “Let the gentlemen come and take them.” And as a result of her daring the silver remained in the possession of the church until its destruction ironically at Airwell in the fire of 1936.
By their zeal for the welfare of the Church of England in Virginia, into which they had been born, Nelson and Elizabeth Berkeley laid the foundation for the support of the Episcopal Church in Hanover by their descendants until the present time.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #7: The Rev’d Peter Nelson
Peter Nelson was born in Hanover County in 1757, son of Dr James Nelson, a Scottish Physician. He was trained in the liberal arts in the College of William and Mary, and following his graduation, he returned to Hanover where he opened a school. In a few years, he was “ordained to the work of the ministry,” by the Rt Rev’d William White in Philadelphia on 18th May 1788, and returned to Wingfield, his estate in Hanover. Nelson is first mentioned as rector of St Martin’s Parish at the diocesan council in 1789. He also entered upon possession of the parish glebe of 350 acres, where the former rector, the Rev’d Robert Barret, had lived for so many years.
Nelson served as rector of the parish, and as a teacher in a private school for boys, until about 1807, when “his companion became deeply concerned upon the subject of religion and anxious to unite herself to the Baptists, a denomination held by Mr Nelson in utter contempt.” Bu that contempt was not to last much longer, for about 1808 or 1809, “having been an Episcopal minister for upwards of twenty years, he became convinced of the necessity of immersion, and forthwith obeyed his Lord, by being buried with him in baptism, which ordinance he received at the hands of Elder Andrew Broaddus.”
Thereafter Nelson lived at his estate of Wingfield, and continued, by some strange means, to receive the income from the old parish glebe, conducting his boys’ school. He became “known throughout lower Virginia as one of the most distinguished teachers of the State;” although, “as a public speaker Mr Nelson’s gifts were far from eminent.” In later years, his son, Dr Robert William Nelson, and his family, who inherited the Wingfield estate, became again Episcopalians, and regularly attended the Fork Church.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #8: Dr. Carter Berkeley
Carter Berkeley, born at Airwell on 20th June 1768, was the fifth child and third son of Nelson and Elizabeth Berkeley. Having chosen medicine as a career, he studied at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, from which he was graduated in 1793 after having written his thesis De Corpore Humano, composed in Latin and dedicated to his father. After his return to Virginia he entered upon his practice in upper Hanover County, receiving a part of the Airwell estate, upon which he built his house called Edgewood where he lived for the remainder of his life.
His first wife was Catherine Spotswood Carter of Shirley, whose sister was the mother of General Lee. Dr Berkeley’s second wife was Frances (Page) Nelson, a daughter of Governor John Page of Rosewell, Gloucester County. By each of these wives Dr Berkeley had children. Like his mother and father, Dr Berkeley was “a devoted churchman and was universally esteemed as unostentatiously pious” Many of his patients said of him, “We prefer Dr Berkeley to anyone else because what he failed to accomplish by his medical skill he would secure by his prayers.”
November 3rd of 1839 was a beautiful day. It was Communion Day, and as Dr Berkeley was Senior Warden, it fell to him to set the communion at Trinity Church. When this task was finished, he rode several miles further to visit a patient. And as he sat feeling the patient’s pulse by the side of the bed, Dr Berkeley died “with instantaneous suddenness,” as his obituary notes. By this time, Divine Service had begun at Trinity Church, and a messenger arrived while the sermon was being preached, and the service was ended at once. At the time of his death, he had served for many years as Senior Warden of St Martin’s Parish, and had sat many times as Lay Delegate in the Council of the diocese. Until his death, Dr Berkeley provided for the rector and his family in the Edgewood household. He was buried in the cemetery at Airwell.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #9: Colonel Charles Dabney
Charles Dabney was the second son of Colonel William Dabney of Aldingham, Hanover County, and at his father’s death he inherited that estate, of which he was to remain master until the close of his life. He was born in Hanover County in 1743 and made it his home for the rest of his life.
During the Revolutionary War, Charles Dabney was the commander of Dabney’s Legion and saw service at Monmouth, Valley Forge, and Yorktown, as well as at other battle sites. During the advance of General Cornwallis through Virginia, British troops vandalized the house at Aldingham, inflicting great damage upon the furnishings. Although he never married, Colonel Dabney entertained at Aldingham on a lavish scale. He was widely known for his hospitality, and his generosity to those in difficulties was common knowledge. Like many Virginians of a somewhat later time, Colonel Dabney was interested in the development of lands in Kentucky, where he was granted a large acreage as a result of his military service. And at the close of the war, he became one of the founders of the Order of the Cincinnati.
In 1824, Colonel Charles Dabney was one of seven male communicants of Saint Martin’s Parish scattered among three churches. He regularly attended Divine Service at the Allen’s Creek Chapel, built in 1722, which was not far from his home. “No man was ever more unaffectedly and sincerely pious than Col. Dabney . . . . Though an Episcopalian from education and early predilections, his catholic spirit embraced in the circle of brotherly love every denomination of sincere Christians.” Long a warden of Saint Martin’s Parish, Colonel Dabney died in 1830 in his 88th year and was buried in the garden of Aldingham in an unmarked grave. Richard Channing Moore, Bishop of Virginia (1814-1841), officiated at his funeral.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #10: The Rev’d John Phillips
Little is known of the background of John Phillips, rector of Saint Martin’s Parish 1815 to 1824, save that “he was an Englishman of the Wesleyan school, and was ordained for our Church by Bishop Moore.” The latter event occurring on 4th August 1814. He was instrumental in beginning the revival of interest in the Episcopal Church in Hanover County in the difficulet opening years of the 19th century.
A man of very short height, he had to stand on a platform in the pulpit in order to be seen and heard, and when he prayed he knelt in a chair and not simply beside it. His sermons were extemporaneous and very lively, in which “he urged repentance and faith and the new spiritual birth in the most earnest and effectual manner.” Religion was all he knew or cared to talk about, and a visit in a home, if even of a few moments’ duration, always was finished by what he called “a word of prayer” prayed by Mr Phillips kneeling in a chair on behalf of all the residents of that house. Yet odd as he was acknowledged to be, and violently as he preached against Calvinist doctrines, to the offense of some, John Phillips nevertheless related powerfully to the people of upper Hanover County who, though “they saw his defects . . . felt and imitated his virtues.” [It is said,] “They who embraced religion as presented by him embraced it as the power of God to the salvation of the soul.” Bishop Meade summarizes his influence in Saint Martin’s Parish by saying, “during the few years that he spent there an entire change took place, the effects of which are felt to this day.”
After his removal to Lunenburg County in 1824, Mr Phillips continued to serve as minister and missionary. While riding in the carriage with his wife, who was driving him, “he expired without her knowledge . . . sitting by her side a lifeless corpse.” [In remembrance of him, it is written,] “It would be well for us all to be ever seeking after his entire devotedness of spirit to the work of our calling.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #11: Lucy Grymes, Mrs. Thomas Nelson
Lucy Grymes was born at her father’s plantation of Brandon in Middlesex County in 1743, daughter of Philip Ludwell Grymes and his wife Mary Randolph. She spent much of her childhood and young womanhood in Williamsburg where her father, active in the affairs of the Colony of Virginia, has a house. She was an excellent dancer, learned to play the harpsichord from Peter Pelham, the famous organist at Bruton Parish Church, and was an unusually good arithmetician.
In 1726 she married Thomas Nelson of Yorktown who was eminent in the foundation of the government of the United States, to whom she bore thirteen children, and whom she survived as his widow forty-one years. She built the house called Springfield on her estates in Hanover County, which she inherited from her husband the General, and in this house she lived for the remainder of her life. When Lafayette wished to visit Mrs Nelson in Hanover in 1824, she declined because of her embarrassment at being so poor, her husband having surrendered most of his wealth during the Revolution.
Although she was blind of cataracts during the last seventeen years of her life, Mrs Nelson instructed her grandchildren in the catechism and the elementary doctrines of the Christian faith. Each morning they gathered in her chamber and recited the psalm for the day responsively, they reading a verse and she responding from memory. Only once in her 88 years did she ever hear any other than an Episcopal minister preach a sermon, and that occasion was in Philadelphia during the session of the Congress in 1796 when she heard the Rev’d Dr Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister.
She died at Springfield in the early autumn of 1830 and was buried in the churchyard at Fork Church. Her funeral sermon was preached from II Timothy 4.7.
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #12: General Thomas Nelson
Thomas Nelson was born in 1738 in Yorktown. [He] was the eldest son of William Nelson, President of His Majesty’s Council for Virginia, and his wife Elizabeth Burwell. In his childhood, he was sent to England to be educated, under the care of his tutor, the Rev’d Dr Beilby Porteus, himself a child of Virginia parents, later Lord Bishop of London, and ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II. On his return to Virginia he married, in 1762, Lucy Grymes, of Middlesex County and Williamsburg. They were to become the parents of thirteen children, Miss Grymes, “on her marriage, entered into a most remarkably pious family, President Nelson and his Lady being considered the most strictly pious persons then known. They were strict Episcopalians.”
Throughout his life, [Thomas Nelson] was active in the affairs of church and government. Before he was twenty-one, he was a member of the House of Burgesses. Later, he became “a member of those first sessions of Congress, which were deliberating on those weighty matters, which have since made the United States, the wonder of the world.” He was a signer from Virginia of the Declaration of Independence. As a general of the Virginia forces, he fired upon his own mansion house in Yorktown, unwilling to spare himself in the battle for independence. In that was he lost his fortune of many thousands pounds sterling. He succeeded Thomas Jefferson as the governor of Virginia.
General Nelson inherited his father’s vast estates of some 15,00 acres in the county of Hanover, named Offly, for their estate in England. It was at Offly that the general’s youngest child, Judith, was born in 1782, and here that the general died early in January of 1789 at the age of 51. He was buried at Yorkhampton Parish Church in Yorktown.
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #13: The Rev’d John Cooke
John Cooke, one of the most remarkable rectors of Saint Martin’s Parish, was born on 2 November 1801 in Saint Mary’s County, Maryland, son of a country lawyer. His elder brother [was] George Cooke (1793-1849).
When he completed his course of study at the [Protestant Episcopal] Theological Seminary [in Virginia,] in Alexandria[, he was] in its second class of 1824. And following his ordination as Deacon at St Paul’s Church in Petersburg, he was appointed by Bishop Moore to Saint Martin’s Parish, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. At the end of 1831 he married “at candlelight” the young widow Elizabeth Edmonia Berkeley (née Churchill). At once they began to plan their new home, living at Airwell until its completion in 1833. “Dewberry” was designed by Mr Cooke in a very interesting way, and the formal garden at the rear was laid out by his hand.
Though Mr Cooke resigned as rector of the parish in 1834, he remained in the neighborhood, and often travelled into other counties to bring the ministry of the Episcopal Church to the far-flung church families who had no parson. He was greatly interested in new ideas in agriculture, and at Dewberry experimented with crops and fertilizers. Much of his time was taken in watching over his wife’s estates, which were turned to good advantage by his watchful eye and efficient, businesslike methods and attention.
He travelled widely, and in 1843 made a lengthy trip to New England and points between. In December of 1861, he caught cold and died of pneumonia at the home of his son-in-law, John Poe Harrison, in Henrico County. He is buried beside his wife beneath the pulpit at Trinity Church.
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #14: Elizabeth Edmonia Churchill, Mrs. John Cooke
Elizabeth Edmonia Churchill was born at Wilton in Middlesex County in 1802, daughter of Thomas Churchill and Elizabeth Berkeley. Her mother died in childbirth, leaving her only child. She was baptized at Christ Church, Middlesex. At the age of 11, in 1813 she was brought to Airwell in Hanover County to live with that branch of her mother’s Berkeley family, and at Airwell she married he cousin Thomas Nelson Berkeley in 1820. The sole child surviving that marriage was Mary Edmonia Berkeley, who later married Callendar St George Noland.
Left widowed at an early age, young Mrs Berkeley was courted and won by the Rev’d John Cooke (1801-1861), then Rector of Saint Martin’s Parish. They were married by Bishop Moore (1762-1841) at Airwell “by candlelight” on 28th April 1831. To him she bore five children.
Mrs Cooke inherited a large estate as sole heir of her mother, who was a child of [the] “Barn Elms” plantation in Middlesex. Much of her income derived from “Enfield” in King William County, which she received from her uncle Carter Burwell Berkeley. To this plantation she and Mr Cooke made a yearly visit of inspection and reckoning, and from it she derived a tidy income. “Dewberry” was their home in Hanover, designed by Mr Cooke and erected through the wealth of Mrs Cooke.
Left widowed in the first year of the [Civil War], in 1861, Mrs Cooke lived on for many more years, dying at Airwell on 28th June 1888, in the 87th year of her age. “For more than half a century,” wrote Major John Page, “she had been the centre of church influence in St Martin’s parish from which emanated zeal and strength to both parson and people.” She was buried beside her second husband beneath the pulpit in Trinity Church, which she had largely helped to build.
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #15: Francis and Susan Page
Francis Page, third son of Governor John Page, was born at “Rosewell” in Gloucester County, in 1780. He had a fine classical education and frequently carried small volumes of the works of classical authors in his pocket. Although educated for the bar, he never entered practice but instead farmed his estate of “Rug Swamp” in upper Hanover County, as well as acting as Justice of the Peace for Hanover County.
In 1802, he married Susan Nelson (commonly called “Sukey”), fourth daughter of General Thomas Nelson. From her friendship with refugees from St Domingo who were living in Yorktown in 1791, she learned French of such fluency that the children and younger servants could obey an order from her as easily in French as in English. Among her close friends were the wife of Commodore Stephen Decatur, and Dolly (Paine) Madison. In 1812, when the British were advancing on Yorktown, Francis and Susan Page went “up the country” to Hanover County with their family and established themselves at “Rug Swamp,” where they lived for the remainder of their lives.
Susan Page was one of those who were forcibly moved by the ministry of the Rev’d John Phillips. “From that hour until her death she possessed the most confident, adoring, rejoicing faith, and lived in constant and devout communion with her Lord and Saviour.” In common with others who experienced something similar, “after going through a long period of conviction and sorrow for sin, she experienced . . . a sudden and ‘sensible’ conversion, having the love of Christ and the pardon of her sins revealed to her as by a flash of lightning.”
Susan and Francis Page were buried in the cemetery at the Fork Church.
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #16: Captain Thomas Nelson
Thomas Nelson, one of many of that name, was born at “Chilton” in Hanover County on 24th November 1780, during the Revolutionary War. He was the son of Hugh Nelson, the General’s second brother, “diligent in piety and good works,” a layreader of the Episcopal Church, who had prepared the first confirmation class in Virginia. Thomas Nelson was trained by his father and had “from childhood experienced the drawings of Divine goodness.”
He was a graduate of the College of William and Mary in the Class of 1798, from which his institution his son was to receive the Doctorate in Divinity three quarters of a century later. Married in November of 1804 to his first cousin Judith Nelson, Thomas Nelson divided his time for many years between Richmond, where he was the Commissioner of Loans for Virginia and Collector of Customs for the Port of Richmond, and “Oakland” in his native county, which he was ultimately to make his home. Though of a rather “stern appearance and manner,” he was nevertheless loved by many, including the children of his neighborhood, to whom he was “very kind.”
Much of his interest in life was directed to the welfare of the Episcopal Church. He was an early member of the Monumental Church in Richmond, whose Rector, Bishop Moore, was Thomas Nelson’s close friend, and he was one of the first pew-holders at St Paul’s on Capitol Square. “He gave his deepest interest to the cause of Christ in connection with the Church of his fathers. To it were devoted his prayers, his counsels, his contributions, his salutary example, and all his household.” In his household each morning, the family gathered in the dining room for prayers, and concluded each service with Bishop Ken’s morning hymn.
He died “of affection of the heart” at Oakland on 5th June 1859, and was buried at the Fork Church “with reverential love of all who knew him in every quarter of the Commonwealth.”
St Martin’s Parish History Sketch #17: Judith Nelson
Judith Nelson, youngest child of General Thomas Nelson and his wife Lucy Grymes, was born at “Offly” in Hanover County on May 8, 1782. From a very early age, she was “animated by that loving, joyous and efficient faith, whence thenceforward and to the end, rendered her life a bright and shining example to all around.” [She was married to her first cousin, Captain Thomas Nelson in 1804, and they made their home at Oakland.]*
Although the daughter of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Mrs Nelson was “immovable in her conviction of right in the endeavour to avert subjugation” at the advent of the War Between the States, and when someone remarked to her that the South was deficient in arms, she replied “with spirit, ‘We must fight them with stones!’” During the war, she began the custom of having prayers three times daily, which continued for many years after her death.
An ardent churchwoman, Mrs Nelson was always faithful at worship. “So soon after the close of the war, as means could be gathered from the general wreck for replacing the carriage which had become delapidated, full of years as she was, she resumed her attendance, when weather and roads admitted, alternately at the Old Fork Church 10 miles off, and at Trinity, 3 miles.” Only greatly advanced age and infirmity prevented at last her going to church, and then the Holy Communion was frequently brought to her room. It was her habit always to curtsey at the name of Jesus in the Creed.
Although blind for a number of years before her death, she knew the Psalter, the services and many hymns by heart. When her grandchildren learned to read, she invariably corrected mis-readings of the Psalms as they read to her while she was knitting in her room. Having “by precept and example turned many to righteousness,” she died at Oakland on 19th February 1869 in the close of her 87th year. Mrs Nelson was buried beside her husband in Fork Churchyard.
*This sentence was not in the Father Joy’s original Sketch #17 but was added for clarity by the Rev’d K. Nicholas Forti.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #18: The Rev’d Parke Farley Berkeley
Parke Farley Berkeley was the son of Carter Berkeley, M.D., of Edgewood by his first wife Catherine Spotswood Carter of Shirley. The youngest of her five children, Parke Farley Berkeley was born not long before her death, and on November 8,1810, the doctor married Frances Page, widow of Thomas Nelson of Mont Air. Farley Berkeley, as he was commonly known, was a first cousin to General Robert Edward Lee, whose mother, Anne Carter, was a sister to Dr. Berkeley’s first wife.
Reared under the influence of a pious and devout home, Farley Berkeley was almost destined for Holy Orders. Dr. Berkeley, “the most useful Churchman in the parish” and the second Mrs. Berkeley, who was so kind to her small stepchildren that they remembered her in old age as “an elderly lady with lovely features,” greatly influenced the young child.
Born at Edgewood on March 31, 1808, Farley Berkeley first attended the Edgewood school in the company of other boys in the neighborhood, and then became a teacher in that school, in the company of the Rev’d John Cooke in his early days in the parish. He was a graduate of the Theological Seminary in the class of 1831, and one of the charter members of its Society of Alumni founded in Richmond on May 18, 1833.
A great lack of exercise and over-attention to his duties both in seminary and in parish led to certain digestive ailments which became of great concern to his physician father. “Daily and uninterrupted exercise of the body and much relaxation from intense and long continued study and sedentary occupation” was the prescribed cure that came from Edgewood.
Nearly his whole ministry was spent as rector of Raleigh Parish in Amelia County, beside whose Grub Hill Church the Rev’d Mr. Berkeley and his wife Mary Thweatt are buried. He died in Ameila on March 24, 1888, and his monument was “erected by his grateful parishioners in memory of his faithful service.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #19: Lucius Horatio Minor
Lucius Horatio Minor, son of General John Minor of Hazel Hill in Fredericksburg and his wife Lucy Landon Carter of “Cleve” in King George County, was born at Hazel Hill on September 22,1810. He prepared for his profession of engineering first at Kenyon College at Gambrier, Ohio, and then at Yale College from which he received the degree of A.B. in 1833 and A.M. in 1841.
While a student at Yale, he underwent a religious crisis and conversion. For guidance he wrote to the Rev’d John Cooke, who advised him to read the works of the Rev’d Dr. Timothy Dwight, former president of Yale, with the viewpoint that “after all the efforts which you may make – in securing your immortal interests and to whomever and to whatsoever source you may go for information – remember that they are only instruments in the hands of Christ, that without him they can do nothing.”
For the remainder of his life, Lucius Minor was a strong churchman in St. Martin’s Parish, serving on its vestry, and involved both in the remodeling of Fork Church in 1837 and in the building of the Rectory in 1842.
In 1832 he married Catherine Frances Berkeley, daughter of Carter Berkeley, M.D., of Edgewood by his second wife Frances (Page) Nelson. From this marriage a number of children were born. A scholarly man, Lucius Minor had a school for many years at Edgewood, which he and his wife inherited at Dr. Berkeley’s death.
He died in the turmoil of the Civil War at Edgewood, several years after his wife’s death, having requested in his will that his “body be decently interred without pomp or any more than necessary expense,” and that “my coffin shall not be bought in town, but that it be made at home by a carpenter hired by the day.” He was buried beside his wife in the old cemetery at Airwell, dying on October 26, 1863.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #20: The Rev’d George Washington Nelson
George Washington Nelson was born at Yorktown on March 2, 1800, son of Thomas Nelson Jr. and Frances Page. He was therefore the grandson of two governors of Virginia, General Thomas Nelson and John Page of Rosewell. His sister Tomasia (1796-1836) was the wife of the Rt. Rev’d William Meade, third Bishop of Virginia. As he was born less than three months after the death of General Washington, he received the name of his grandfather’s good friend and fellow general.
One of the four young men from St. Martin’s Parish to enter the ministry of the Church in the 19th century, George Washinton Nelson was a member of the Class of 1834 at the Virginia Theological Seminary, along with William V. Bowers, rector of St. Martin’s Parish.
Nelson’s ministry was destined to be short-lived, for after six years as rector of Lunenburg, North Farnham and Cople Parishes in Virginia’s Northern Neck, he died on February 20, 1840, “in the triumphs of the faith of that gospel which he preached.” He had been paying pastoral calls in the snow and caught a cold from which he contracted pneumonia. He was buried in the cemetery at his parish church of St. John’s in Warsaw, Richmond County, where his monument was erected by his parishioners.
In Alexandria he had married Jane Crease, daughter of John Crease, a bank officer of that city. She bore him five children, of whom three survived their father. One of these, George Washington Nelson, Jr., was born in the year that his father died, and himself became a prominent clergyman in the Virginia diocese. Mrs. Nelson spent the early days of her widowhood at Mount Airy in Richmond County, where the Tayloes had been among the most faithful of her husband’s parishioners. She then returned to Hanover where she married her second husband Philip Nelson of Mont Air and where she spent the remainder of her life “as an energetic advocate of and worker for the Church.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #21: The Rev’d William V. Bowers
William V. Bowers was born in Philadelphia on February 12,1806. He was one of the first people confirmed at St. Andrew’s Church in that city, one of the strongholds of Evangelical Churchmanship, on March 19, 1826.
He was graduated from the Theological Seminary of Virginia in the Class of 1834, along with the Rev’d George Washinton Nelson. He was made deacon in Alexandria and then priest at Fork Church in 1835. Until 1864 he served as rector of St. Martin’s Parish, building up the parish’s strength in the work begun by Mr. Cooke.
From the beginning of his ministry, when his salary was $300 yearly, with horse and saddle, he made his home in the household of Dr. Carter Berkeley at Edgewood. To Edgewood he brought his bride, Frances Amelia Campbell, whom he married in Philadelphia at St. Andrew’s in the summer of 1838. Several of their children were born at Edgewood, including their first, a still-born child who was buried in Airwell graveyard.
When Dr. Berkeley died, and the household at Edgewood was broken up, the land for a rectory was bought adjacent to Fork Church. Here the rectory was built, and the family of Rev’d Bowers first occupied the house on July 1, 1842. Their daughter Frances was the first child born in the house.
When Rev’d Bowers left St. Martin’s Parish, as the result of a dispute, he returned to his native city where he served various parishes, including St. Andrew’s. He died of cystitis at his residence in Olney on June 6, 1880, and was buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia. His daughter Frances (“Fannie”), who had been born in the Hanover rectory, was married to the Rev’d William C. Gray, who became the first bishop of South Florida.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #22: The Rev’d Robert Nelson, D.D.
Robert Nelson was born at Oakland in Hanover County on St. Andrew’s Day, November 30, 1819, son of Capt. Thomas and Judith (Nelson) Nelson. At an early age, having learned to read at the age of four, he was sent to Bishop Meade’s school in Clarke County where he was instructed in a regimen of hard work and study.
He was a graduate of Bristol College in Bristol, Pennsylvania, an Episcopal college which lasted only a few years, then received the Master in Arts degree from New York University. In 1839 he, with his first cousin John Page and another cousin, William Nelson Pendleton, became the first faculty at the Episcopal High School in Alexandria which was founded by Bishop Meade.
Although he considered becoming a soldier, he entered the Virginia Theological Seminary from which he graduated in 1845, and presented to Grace Church in Latimer Parish at Lexington in Rockbridge County, then a small mission of the Diocese of Virginia. It was while he was rector of this parish that he married Rose Points of Staunton, Virginia, on October 26, 1848.
Having applied and been accepted for the foreign mission field of the Episcopal Church, Mr. Nelson resigned his parish in 1851 and sailed for China, where most of the next 30 years his life and ministry was to be spent. Here several of his children were born, in the city of Shanghai, and baptized at the Church of Our Saviour in that city, which was the mission church he served. During the years in China, he was involved in a great many projects and undertakings, including the founding of St. John’s University and St. Luke’s Hospital. A height of his career was reached in 1876 when he was awarded the degree of Doctor in Divinity from his father’s alma mater, the College of William and Mary.
Returning home, he served as rector of St. Paul’s Church at Woodbury in the Diocese of Connecticut until his death at Oakland, while on vacation, on July 15, 1886. He was buried with a number of his children at Fork Church.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #23: Fannie Berkeley Minor
Frances Berkeley Minor, commonly called “Fanny,” was born at Edgewood, Hanover County, on November 8 and baptized at Fork Church on December 30, 1833. She was the daughter of Lucius Horatio Minor and Catherine Berkeley, his wife.
Like her father, a graduate of Yale College and a civil engineer, Fanny Minor had a remarkable intellect. Not only was she highly fluent in French, but unlike most women of the day, she was an excellent Latin scholar. Delighting in the young boys who were students in the Edgewood school, in middle age Fanny Minor would secretly help them with their Latin lessons, easily rendering Caesar, Ovid or Cicero into English line-by-line as it was read to her. “Indeed,” says Thomas Nelson Page, one of the students whom she helped, “I have even seen Horace read to her as she sat in the old rocking chair after one of her headaches, with her eyes bandaged and her head swathed in veils and shawls, and she would turn it not only into proper English, but English with a glow and cloour and rhythm that gave the very life of the odes.”
She was very musical, playing the piano with grace and talent, even composing tunes for her favorite poems. Deeply religious, she “kept the church doors open” after the Civil War “to teach the church chants to the children of the neighborhood.” And, unusual for her time, she was highly sympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church, finding that “its choral service satisfied something in her soul.”
She died at Rock Castle on March 10, 1885, while tending an ill cousin, and “she was carried in a little old spring wagon, drawn by Fashion, the pony, through the snow” to Airwell where she was buried “in the garden in a vacant space just beside her mother.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #24: Colonel William Nelson
William Nelson, second son of Captain Thomas and Judith (Nelson), was born in the Nelson House, recently restored, in Yorktown, on December 19, 1808. When he was still a small boy, his family moved to their estate in Hanover County where, as well as Richmond, he lived for the remainder of his life.
His earliest schooling was in an “old field school” near his home, conducted by the Berkeleys at Edgewood. When he was 16, he went to Richmond to be presented to General Lafayette, who also stood as godfather to his youngest sister, and in that meeting the General referred to the young man’s grandfather, General Thomas Nelson, as “the noblest of the patriots,” a memory that remained with him throughout a long life.
At an early age, William Nelson was apprenticed to a Mr. May, a merchant in Richmond where “he acquired those habits of business which made him most accurate and methodical.” Then, during the administrations of Presidents Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler and Polk, he was in charge of the custom house in Richmond, as his father and brother had been before him.
He strenuously opposed secession and stood as an anti-secession candidate for the Convention, but though he had served two terms in the Legislature from Hanover, he was defeated on that unpopular platform. When war came, however, he became colonel of the Hanover Artillery, although already far above the age to be drafted. At Cold Harbor, the strap of his cap was cut by a Minie ball, and later at Winchester, his horse was shot dead under him.
An ardent and devout churchman, he was Senior Warden at the time of his death, and many years before a lay reader, and many times delegate to the Council of the Diocese. He died of heart failure at Oakland on Easter morning, April 17, 1892. “No man ever stood higher with his neighbours. He ministered to their sick, he buried their dead, he divided their lands, always without charge.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #25: The Rev’d Horace Stringfellow
Horace Stringfellow, son of Robert Stringfellow and Nancy Herndon, was born at his father’s estate, “The Retreat,” in Culpeper County, Virginia, on November 9, 1799.
A graduate of Taylor’s Law School, he entered legal practice in Madison Court House, Virginia, where he soon became Commonwealth’s Attorney; but having been “born again in a time of refreshing about 1831-32,” he, with his wife Louisa Gibbs Strother of Madison County, moved to Alexandria where for two years he attended Virginia Seminary. He was ordained in 1835 and sent to Bishop Meade’s own parish of Millwood in Frederick County from which, after several years, he was called to Trinity Church, Washington, D.C. In Washington he numbered among his congregation a group of Congressmen, among whom was Daniel Webster. Congressman W.C. Preston, in tribute to Stringfellow’s closely reasoned sermons, called him “the Almighty’s Prosecuting Attorney.” In 1847 he was called to become rector of St. Paul’s Church in Petersburg where he remained until 1854, when he became rector of St. Martin’s Parish, Hanover County. In Hanover he remained for the rest of his life.
He built Forest Hill about two miles west of Fork Church on the Ridge Road, and here he lived with his family until 1881 when old age and increasing blindness forced him to move to Ashland where he died on St. Stephen’s Day, December 26, 1883. The body was sent by train to Richmond where it was met by the Bishop of Virginia and escorted to Hollywood Cemetery for burial.
Two of his sons were clergymen, and one of his grandsons. He was a “cool, clear-headed, strong-minded man, wedded to the world, in the prime of life and on the flood-tide leading to fame and fortune” when he “deliberately turned his back upon the tempting prospect and devoted his life to the last gasp in truth and loyalty to the ministry of the gospel.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #26: Colonel Hilary Jones
Hilary Pollard Jones, son of Dr. Basil Magruder Jones and Lucy Dixon Timberlake, was born at “Union Mills,” the residence of his parents in Fluvanna County, in 1833. He came from a family who were physicians and Methodist ministers.
In 1854 he received his degree of Master of Arts from the University of Virginia, and joined the faculty of the Hanover Academy, which had been founded by Lewis Minor Coleman in 1850. When Coleman resigned in 1859 to accept the Chair of Latin in the University of Virginia, Hilary Jones became headmaster of the Academy.
When the Civil War broke out, the Academy was closed, and Jones joined the Hanover Artillery at the time of its organization in the spring of 1861, under the leadership of its Captain, Lewis Minor Coleman. He was promoted to Major in 1862, and in 1864 became a Colonel in Wise’s Legion.
When the war was over, Jones returned to Hanover and re-opened the Hanover Academy, running it until at least 1886. In his school “there were but two rules: ‘Be a gentleman’ and ‘Know your lessons.’” Although mastery of the lessons was insisted upon by the scholarly and soldierly man at the school’s head, nevertheless the “old boys” remember that “the school was like a big family.” The Jones family ate with the boys at long tables, and after supper all went upstairs where “all were welcome, the older boys who could write a perfect Latin exercise or read Sophocles even filling their pipes from the Colonel’s big box of tobacco on the centre table.”
Through his marriage with Claudia Marshall, the granddaughter of Chief Justice John Marshall, Jones became an Episcopalian, attending Divine Service with the boys at Fork Church. When the Civil War was over, Jones joined with Colonel William Nelson of Oakland in making contributions to keep the parish supplied with ministers, provoking the comment that “the parish was under martial law.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #27: The Rev’d William Alrich
William Augustus Alrich, descendant of a Dutch family long resident in America, was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on April 23, 1836, youngest of 11 children of Thomas Canby Alrich and Mary Ann Taylor. He was a graduate of Washington College in Pennsylvania, of which his uncle was president. He was a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York and of the Virginia Seminary in Alexandria. He was ordained priest in 1868 by Bishop John Johns, after, against the wishes of his family, having spent the Civil War as a military chaplain.
In 1869 he was called to become rector of St. Martin’s Parish from Truro Parish in Fairfax County. In the same year he married Mary Jones Love, who was to die in childbirth in St. Martin’s Rectory in 1871, and was buried in the churchyard. His last parish was at Perryman in the Diocese of Maryland, where he died on March 25, 1903, the Feast of the Annunciation, and was buried in the graveyard of Spesutia Church.
His second wife was Mary Berkeley of White House in the St. Martin’s Parish, daughter of Edmund Berkeley and his first cousin Susan Berkeley.
Mr. Alrich was considered “one of the best rectors” of St. Martin’s Parish. Although he was very short, “He had a big heart and attracted the hearts of his people.” Although he was a faithful person to his parishioners, country life was something of a puzzle to him, having been brought up in the city. On one occasion, Colonel William Nelson “noticed that the wheels on the right side of Mr. Alrich’s buggy were greased but not those on the left and asked why; Mr. Alrich said that the taps would not unscrew, not knowing how the threads run on the left side.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #28: Major John Page
John Page, son of Francis Page and Susan (Nelson) Page, was born at Rug Swamp in Hanover County on April 26, 1821. As a child he attended the Berkeley School at Edgewood, and then went to Bristol College in Pennsylvania with his first cousin Robert Nelson. In company with Nelson, and their cousin William Nelson Pendleton, he became a part of the first faculty of the Episcopal High School in Alexandria which was founded by Bishop Meade in 1839.
Not long satisfied with the life of a schoolmaster, John Page entered the University of Virginia from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Laws in 1843. From that time until the close of his life, he practiced law in his native county.
His marriage on November 10, 1847, to his first cousin Elizabeth Burwell Nelson united him with an amazing woman, and produced three children: Frank, the oldest, an Episcopal clergyman; Thomas Nelson, a lawyer, an author, and under President Wilson, Ambassador to Italy; and Rosewell, also a lawyer and ardent and devoted churchman.
During the Civil War, John Page fought in the Confederate Army, entering with the rank of Private and ending with that of Major. Although he fought for the Southern side, he had been staunchly opposed to secession until it came.
Much of his adult life was spent in the service of the Church. When he was a child, he was frequently late to the prayers that his family had, but at the time of his death he had been for many years not only a vestryman but Senior Warden, and the oldest communicant. “He was ever foremost in planning for the good and welfare of our parish and ready to devote his time, energies and means for its support.”
He died at Oakland on October 30, 1901, and was buried in the cemetery at Fork Church.
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #29: Colonel Edmund Fontaine
Edmund Fontaine, son of Colonel William Fontaine and Ann Morris, was born at “Beaver Dam,” his family residence in Hanover County, on January 20, 1801. At the age of 17, he was apprenticed to a merchant in Fredericksburg for several years until he returned to Hanover sometime before 1834 to care for the property which he inherited from his father. A great patron of the agricultural revival then going on in Virginia, Fontaine used new and scientific farming methods on his worn-out land and built Beaver Dam into a productive and prosperous plantation.
His marriage to his second cousin Maria Louisa Shackleford produced a number of children, of whom two sons died during the Civil War.
From 1834 to 1842, Fontaine represented Hanover County in the State Senate. But his public interests reached also into transportation, and he became a pioneer in Virginia in the development of railroads. He was a member of the first Board of Directors, and later President of the Virginia Central. After the war he served as first president of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad, his plantation of Beaver Dam lending its name to one of the stops on the railroad. “With imagination, honesty and administrative ability he drew together the elements of legislative support, private capital, labor and engineering talent to help create one of the country’s major transportation systems.”
An active Episcopalian, he served from 1854 to 1860 as vestryman of Saint James Church in Richmond and was a frequent delegate to the annual Council of the Diocese. He was on the vestry of St. Martin’s Parish when the Rectory was built in 1842, supplying money and oversight for the project. He died at Beaver Dam, where he was buried on June 26, 1869, and his final words were: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
St. Martin’s Parish History Sketch #30: Berkeley Minor
Carter Nelson Berkeley Minor, commonly known as Berkeley Minor, was born at Edgewood in Hanover County on October 6, 1842, son of Lucius Horatio and Catherine Berkeley Minor. He was baptized at Fork Church on May 26, 1843.
In 1870, having served in the Rockbridge Artillery during the Civil War, he left St. Martin’s Parish to go to Alexandria to teach in the Episcopal High School. Teaching was to become his career, in Lynchburg, and finally at Stuart Hall in Staunton where he was a member of the faculty for 35 years until his retirement in 1915. His education had taken place in the Edgewood school, like so many boys of his neighborhood, and at the University of Virginia which he had attended in 1859 and 1860, leaving to join the war effort. Child of a devout household, his specialty was the Bible, which he taught with love and devotion for so many years, opening each class with the Collect for the 2nd Sunday in Advent, “Bible Sunday.” He wrote frequently for the Southern Churchman, official organ of the Diocese of Virginia, and published an article on the meaning of Epiphany only a few weeks before his death.
Red-headed and fiery with zeal for the rights of the South, he maintained a fierce Southern patriotism until his death, even begrudging the presence of Virginia solders in the American army in the Great War.
He was fascinated with history, and in 1918 he produced a lengthy essay of his recollections of people and places of his boyhood in St. Martin’s Parish.
His wife was Susan Watson Fontaine of Rock Castle in St. Martin’s Parish, daughter of James and Juliet Morris Fontaine, whom he married at Rock Castle on September 7, 1875. They were the parents of two sons.
Berkeley Minor died at “The Grove” at the University of Virginia of pneumonia, after an illness of only 12 hours, on January 26, 1930, and was buried in Charlottesville.