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.