Notes From Rev Charles Joy
Historic St. Martin’s Parish Sketches by Rev’d Charles Joy
St. Martin’s Parish 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.