SKETCHES OF CHURCH HISTORY IN NORTH CAROLINA ADDRESSES AND PAPERS BY CLERGYMEN AND LAYMEN OF THE DIOCESES OF NORTH AND EAST CAROLINA. PREPARED FOR THE JOINT CENTENNIAL CONVENTION AT TARBOROUGH, MAY, 1890. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE JOINT CONVENTION. WILMINGTON, N. C.:WM. L. DE ROSSET, JR., PUBLISHER,1892.
ERRATA.
Page 20, bottom line, for “George,” read “Gregory.”
Page 52, ninth line from bottom, after the name “Mr. John Blount” insert “Mr. James Long.”
Page 67, tenth line from bottom, “1716” read “1715.”
Page 74, fourth line from bottom, for “Mills” read “Wills.”
Page 78, fourteenth line from top, for “Bertie” read “Northamptom.”
Page 139, line 5, for “Harell,” read “Hasell.”
Page 144, line 5, for “DeHerné,” read “DeHervé.”
Page 145, next to bottom line, for “Richard,” read “Edward.”
Page 154, line 16, for “E. Hall,” read “Edward Hare.”
Page 154, line 16, for “W. McKinnon,” read “Wm. McKinne.”
Page 154, line 21, for “M. Hall,” read “Moses Hare.”
Page 154, line 23, for “S. Cornue,” read “Saml. Cornell.”
Page 154, line 24, for “J. Moore,” read “A. Moore.”
Page 198, third line from bottom, for “Bonaroa,” read “Bonarva.”
Page 211, foot-note, for “Edward Jones,” read “James Macartney.”
Page 226, line 21, for “Grapy Creek,” read “Grassy Creek.”
Page 238, in the foot-note, the Editor meant to say that at this time, 1797, the Rev. David Caldwell stood at the head of the Presbyterians of North Carolina, rather than the Rev. Joseph Caldwell. The latter at that time was a young man of twenty-four years of age, and a stranger in the State, having but recently come from the North.
Page 256, line 7, fill blank with the word “Presbyterian.”
Page 276, line 7 from bottom the period (.) after “1822,” should be a comma (,), and the word following should be “she” instead of “He.”
Page 315, seventh line from the bottom, for “Wm. P. Bynum,” read “Wm. S. Bynum.”
Page 354, line 4, for “LL. D.,” read “S. T, D.”
Page 359, line 12, after the fourth word “fact” place a period (.), and let a new sentence follow with “As a matter of fact,” &c.
Page 390, fifth line from bottom replace the period (.) with a comma (,).
Page 422, last line “1782” should be “1792.”
SEAL OF THE DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA
A.D. 1817.
TO THE MEMORY OF CHARLES PETTIGREW, JAMES L. WILSON, NATHANIEL BLOUNT, SOLOMON HALLING, DR. JOHN LEIGH, WILLIAM CLEMENTS, AND THEIR ASSOCIATES CLERICAL AND LAY, WHOSE FAITH WAS TRIED BY FAILURE, BUT THE FRUIT OF WHOSE LABORS WE ENJOY, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, IN GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR THEIR FAITH AND PATIENCE “Super Pauca Fidelis.”
Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.
* * * *
There be some of them that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.
And some there be which have no memorial, who are perished, as though they had never been.
The Wise Son of Sirach.
INTRODUCTION.The occasion of the following Addresses and other papers, as well as their character and purpose, will be sufficiently explained by the extracts from the Journals of the Dioceses of North and East Carolina, which occupy the first place in this volume. The members of the Joint Convention at Tarborough, who heard the Addresses delivered upon that occasion, thought them worthy of preservation. The resolution authorizing and directing their publication was purposely so framed as to include one or two other papers which had been prepared for the meeting, but which had not been read.
It has been thought proper to include also the proceedings of the four meetings at Tarborough in the years 1790, 1793 and 1794, which the Joint Convention of 1890 was intended to commemorate. No records of their proceedings were known to exist until they were published by the present writer in a small pamphlet in the year 1882. The minutes of the meeting of November 12th, 1790, had been discovered by the Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D., President of the University of North Carolina, in an old news-paper, and were by him communicated to the writer, who himself exhumed the proceedings of the other meetings from a mass of MSS. kindly loaned him by the Rev. Wm. S. Pettigrew. Up to that time Bishop White's Memoirs of the American Church contained all the scanty information accessible concerning this period of our history, except a few additional particulars mentioned by Parson Miller in his letter to Dr. Hawks. This pamphlet having had a very limited circulation, it has seemed proper to print the proceedings of these Conventions as an Appendix to this volume. It is eminently fitting that we should preserve in permanent form the record of those meetings which the Joint Convention of 1890 was held to commemorate. The brief notes appended to the pamphlet of 1882 are retained, but the Introduction is omitted, since all that is valuable in it is contained in other parts of this volume.
The proceedings of the Joint Convention were not exactly in accordance
with the program prepared and reported by the Committee. Circumstances hindered some of those who had been appointed to write or to speak, from fulfilling the tasks assigned to them, and some papers which had been prepared could not be read for want of time. Special regret was felt that the Hon. John S. Henderson, and the late Hon. William L. Saunders, the one from the press of official duties, the other from continued sickness, were unable to prepare the papers which they had hoped to present to this meeting.
Something perhaps ought to be said in regard to the principle upon which the program for the Joint Convention was prepared, and the method by which it was sought to make the proceedings both interesting at the time and worthy of preservation.
Leaving out those brief addresses which served merely as the formal opening and closing of the Convention, the program falls natually into three divisions. First, the two longer Addresses Friday evening, were intended to set forth the true position of our branch of the Church, both historically in its connection with our Anglo Saxon race, and ecclesiastically as it is related to the primitive Apostolic Church, and to the Catholic Church in all ages. Secondly, the Addresses Saturday morning and after-noon were intended to present a series of studies in North Carolina history from an ecclesiastical point of view. And thirdly, the Sunday after-noon and evening proceedings were designed to set forth the Church in these two Dioceses as it is to-day—its present work, responsibilities, and duties. Bishop Watson's sermon Sunday morning fittingly connected the past with the present.
It will be apparent to all that the Saturday proceedings were the most important in their connection with the special character of the meeting, and the interest likely to be aroused by the commemoration of such an event in our local Church history. It was hoped that the persons to whom the several topics upon the Saturday's program had been assigned would endeavor to develop their themes with such fulness as might seem to be demanded, and as the materials should allow, without reference to that brevity proper to be observed in a popular address. This, to some extent, was done. The papers numbered III, IV, VI, and IX, were read only in part; they are however printed in full, with many interesting and important details which had to be omitted at the time of their delivery.
The subject of the paper numbered VII was assigned to the Rev. Dr. Huske. It is much to be regretted that continued sickness made it impossible for him to undertake the proper treatment of this most interesting and important topic. Finding that there was no hope of his being able to do so, the editor, upon whom, as Secretary of the Joint Committee, the responsibility of seeing that the program was carried out had been imposed, ventured to prepare the paper which appears under the title, “DECAY AND REVIVAL,” since its ommission would have left a very serious gap in the program. The writer will not with an affectation of diffidence profess himself entirely unfitted for this task. Very great interest
in the questions involved, much time and pains spent in their investigation, coupled with some special advantages of local and family traditions, rendered him in some respects as well qualified as any other to treat this period of our Church history. But at the same time he is of the opinion that if Dr. Huske had been able to address himself to this task, he could have produced a paper of greater value in many respects than the one which now stands in its place.
The members of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Dioceses of North and East Carolina feel that their position as Churchmen binds them in bands of special love and loyalty to the Commonwealth of North Carolina. In the Joint Convention at Tarborough they were celebrating the inauguration of that ecclesiastical freedom which was one of the greatest blessings connected with and growing out of our civil independence. The Addresses and other papers prepared for that meeting, we respectfully offer to all our brethren and fellow citizens of North Carolina, as a contribution to the history of the good old State which we all love. Whatever may be thought of the success of this attempt to treat the history of North Carolina topically and in detail, the writer is strongly of opinion that the attempt has been made in the right direction. We hear much of the unsatisfactory character of the histories of our State. During the last four or five years we have had opened to us a vast store-house of the richest historical material in the noble volumes of “The Colonial Records of North Carolina,” illuminated by the “Prefatory Notes” of Col. Saunders. The wish is very frequently expressed that some one would at once turn this material into a narrative history of the State. It is much to be feared that some rash author, or would be author, will endeavor to gratify this wish. It would be most unfortunate if any one should attempt this at present. So great a mass of material cannot be taken into the mind, and so digested as to allow of its proper assimilation, in a short space of time. To perceive the relations and proportions of the innumerable details of fact, to appreciate the force and tendency of the subtle currents of cause and effect working under the confusion of the surface, to discern and to portray that which is the real life of the community, and to relegate all minor matters to their proper place in the back-ground;—this cannot be done by any mind at once; and it is much to be doubted whether it can ever be done by a man who attempts to deal with the whole confused mass of these materials. The several periods of our history should be taken up separately, and the different parts making up the whole should be minutely studied by many minds. In this way the preliminary work should be done, and the chaff sifted from the wheat. A vast amount of criticism must be applied to the crude materials of history, as they exist in contemporary documents, before it can be ascertained precisely how much their testimony is worth, and the exact sense in which we must understand the witnesses. When this has all been done, then will some skilful hand gather up the results of the labors of many, and combine them in a narrative for the entertainment and instruction of all.
It is hoped that those papers included in this volume which deal with persons and events before the year 1820, will be found to be a contribution towards this preliminary work, not without some value. Certainly no part of our history has been so generally misunderstood, and so consistently misrepresented, as the ecclesiastical affairs of the Province of North Carolina. Williamson and Martin, our earliest historians, wrote at a period when prejudice against the Church was stongest, and they had only the vaguest and most general ideas upon the subject. They seem to have had access to no documents relating to the establishment or propagation of the Church in the Province, except the Colonial Statutes, included in the Revisals from 1752 downward; and, by reason of a not unnatural confusion in the name, they attributed the most unjust and offensive measures of the South Carolina government to our North Carolina Colony of Albemarle. Joining with this ignorance a theory, utterly at variance with the facts, that North Carolina had been settled by religious refugees from Virginia and New England, they were likely to take anything but a just view of our Colonial history and legislation upon its ecclesiastical side. And after them our other historians have told the same story, finding it easier to fall into the current than to discover the the true course for themselves.
It is too much to hope that there will be no errors in the following pages, covering so extended a period, and for the most part traversing entirely new ground. In pointing out the mistakes of former writers, who had not our means of knowledge, it is not meant to claim any exemption from the same imperfections. But it is to be hoped that the sum of error is continually lessened, and that every honest and intelligent investigator can give some aid in the work. The writers and speakers whose contributions make up this volume, are not free from the common prejudice in favor of those things which they have been taught to reverence. The Church in their eyes and to their hearts is a very sacred and a very precious thing. But of those who believe that the Church in its outward order and ministry is “the Tabernacle which the Lord hath pitched and not man,” this may be said: that not basing their claims for the Church upon the goodness of its members, and not believing that its authority is abrogated by the unworthiness of those who administer its affairs, they are less liable to be led into the errors of partisanship than if they took a lower view. We are conscious that there are many things in the history of the Church to mortify its devout members: we believe that there are many more to give us cause for joy and thankfulness. But good or bad, we wish to have the truth displayed, and we know that GOD has lessons for us all in the events of past ages, whether the memory of them cause joy or grief.
In justice to the writers of the papers following, which treat of the period just preceding the Revolution, it ought to be said, that those papers were prepared before the publication of volumes VII—X of the North Carolina Colonial Records, and with only such reference to the ecclesiastical documents contained therein as was possible by the use of very brief notes hastily made from the MSS, several years ago. It has been thought
best not to endeavor to recast those parts of the several papers, even where a more thorough acquaintance with the original documents gives a somewhat different coloring to the picture.
The editor must apologize for the delay in the appearance of this volume. He trusts that the Churchmen of North Carolina will feel satisfied that it has not been caused by any indifference or neglect. He has done his best to discharge the trust reposed in him, and he asks indulgence for the many imperfections of his performance. The work had to be done at a distance from his residence, and he was unable to give it that personal supervision which he would gladly have done had he been able
He desires to thank his friends, Col. Wm. L. DeRosset, Col. James G. Burr, and the Rev. Frederick N. Skinner, for their kindness in seeing the greater part of the work through the press.
JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE. JR.
CHARLOTTE, N. C.
THE JOINT CENTENNIAL CONVENTION.
EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNALS OF THE DIOCESES OF NORTH AND OF EAST CAROLINA.
DIOCESE OF NORTH CAROLINA : JOURNAL OFTHE CONVENTION OF 1889, PAGE 41 :
The Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., offered the following resolutions, which, on [his] motion, were referred to a Special Committee of five:
WHEREAS, The first attempt to organize the Church in North Carolina was by a Convention held in Tarboro’, in the year 1790:
1. Resolved, That the Convention of 1890 be held in Calvary Church, Tarboro’, on the . . . day of May, 1890, and that a committee be appointed to arrange a proper celebration of the Centennial of the first Convention of Churchmen in North Carolina.
2. Resolved, That the said committee be instructed to extend an invitation, in the name of this Diocese, to the Diocese of East Carolina to participate in this Celebration, and to appoint a Committee of Arrangements to co-operate with the Committee of this Convention.
3. Resolved, That the said committee be empowered to consult with the Bishop and Convention of East Carolina, and to agree upon a day for holding the Convention of 1890, so that both the said Conventions may meet upon the same day, and the Convention of East Carolina in some place from which, after the transaction of its regular business, the members can proceed to Tarboro’; and that the said Celebration begin Friday of Convention week, and conclude with religious services Sunday.
4. Resolved, That upon such agreement between the committees of the two Dioceses being certified to the Bishop, he is hereby authorized to
call the Convention of this Diocese to meet upon the day so agreed upon.
5. Resolved, That the said committees be authorized to make all necessary arrangements for proper services, addresses, papers, etc., at such celebration, to appoint local committees to co-operate in necessary details, and generally to take steps to secure the becoming commemoration of this interesting event.
The President announced the following as the Committee:
The Rev. Dr. Buxton, Rev. W. S. Pettigrew, Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., Hon. K. P. Battle and Mr. S. S. Nash. On page 59, of the same Journal:
The Rev. Dr. Buxton presented the following report from the committee to whom were referred the resolutions of the Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., regarding a Centennial Celebration at Tarboro’, N. C.:
The Committee to whom were referred the resolutions of the Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., concerning the proposed Celebration of the Centennial of the first Convention of Churchmen in North Carolina, and the appointment of a committee for arranging the celebration, respectfully report that they approve of such celebration, and of the appointment of a committee of seven to make the proper arrangements for carrying it into effect.
J. BUXTON,
Chairman.
On motion, the report was accepted and the resolutions of the Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., were adopted as a whole:
The President appointed the following Committee on Centennial Celebration:
The Rev. Jarvis Buxton, D. D., the Rev. W. S. Pettigrew, the Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D., the Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., Hon. K. P. Battle, Hon. John S. Henderson, Mr. S. S. Nash, Judge F. Philips and Mr. Charles E. Johnson.
Diocese of East Carolina, Journal of the Council of 1889, page 35:
The Rev. Dr. Carmichael presented and read the following subsidiary report to the Committee on the State of the
Church, and the appended resolutions were adopted by a rising vote:
Your Committee, to whom was referred the action of the Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina in regard to a Centennial Celebration of the first Convention of Churchmen ever held in this State, conveyed to this Council by their commissioner, S. S. Nash, Esq., duly appreciating the motives which initiated the movement, and cordially responding to the fraternal courtesy embodied in the overture, respectfully submit the following resolutions:
1. Resolved, That the Diocesan Council of East Carolina cheerfully accept the invitation of the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina to unite with them in the Centennial Services to be held in Calvary Church, Tarboro’.
2. Resolved, That to facilitate the attendance of the Council of this Diocese, the 14th day of May, 1890, be fixed as the day of our next annual meeting, and that Greenville be the place.
3. Resolved, That a committee of four Presbyters and five Laymen be appointed by the Bishop to assist in making all necessary arrangements for the Centennial Celebration—co-operating with a similar committee appointed by the Diocese of North Carolina.
Further Resolved, That the Secretary of this Council be instructed to furnish a certified copy of these resolutions to S. S. Nash, Esq., Commissioner of the Diocese of North Carolina.
And on page 37:
The Chair appointed the following Committee to confer with the Committee for North Carolina as to the joint meeting in 1890: Rev. Dr. Hughes, Rev. R. B. Drane, Rev. Robert Strange, Rev. N. Harding, Col. W. L. DeRosset, F. R. Rose, Wilson G. Lamb, Col. John W. Atkinson, DuBrutz Cutlar.
Diocese of North Carolina, Journal of the Convention of 1890, page 60:
The Rev. Jos. B. Cheshire, Jr., presented and read the REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.
The Committee appointed by the last Convention to co-operate with a like Committee to be appointed by the Diocese of East Carolina, in arranging a joint meeting of the two Conventions in Tarboro’ during the present month in commemoration of the first attempt to organize the
Church in North Carolina, beg leave respectfully to report, that the Council of the Diocese of East Carolina, in response to the invitation of our Convention, have agreed to meet with us in joint Convention upon the 16th, 17th and 18th of the current month, in Calvary Church, Tarboro’, where we are now assembled; and the Committees of the two Dioceses have prepared and caused to be printed a program of services, addresses, and papers, appropriate to the character of the meeting, a copy of which is hereto appended as part of this report.
Your Committee think it not improper to add a word with reference to the series of addresses and papers which are set forth in this program. This year is not the Centennial of the Diocese of North Carolina. It is the Centennial of the first attempt to organize a Diocese in this State. That attempt failed. It was in reality more an epilogue to the drama of the Colonial Church, than the prelude to our present corporate existence. The interest attaching to these meetings is, therefore, purely an historical interest. Their bearing upon the present condition of the Church as organized in North Carolina is remote. But they have a most important relation to the preceding history of the Church in the Province, and they do mark a crisis, though it is a crisis of disintegration rather than of construction and growth. Almost nothing has heretofore been done to ascertain the facts of our Colonial Church history, and to show the part played by the Church in the development of our people and of our institutions. The grossest mistakes and misrepresentations of the Church, our ministers, and the character of our ecclesiastical institutions pass current even with our historians. Your Committee have, therefore, thought proper to give great prominence in the program herewith submitted, to the history of the Church in North Carolina before the organization of our present Diocese. They were sensible that such a series of papers and addresses could not be fully delivered in the time at our command during the joint Convention. Some will have to be omitted entirely; those which are read will probably be read in part. It was the hope and the design of your Committee that this occasion should produce a series of monographs upon the most important points of our history in North Carolina, which, whether read at these meetings or not, could be printed, and thereby secure a wider audience, and preserve in permanent form the results of this most interesting meeting. It is believed that Churchmen throughout the Dioceses of North and East Carolina will be glad to possess such a record of the past, as well as the memorials of our more recent history which also have their place in the program.
Your Committee are deeply sensible of the difficulty of making such meetings both interesting at the time and valuable in their permanent results. They have exercised their best judgment and used every endeavor in order to combine as far as possible, these two things. This has involved an amount of labor, and has been accompanied by difficulty and perplexities, which may not be apparent in their performance.
Your Committee, therefore, ask the charitable indulgence of the Convention,
and trust that whatever may be the defects in their work, it may be in some measure successful in stimulating an intelligent interest in our past, and a renewed zeal to make the story of the next century more worthy of our Master and His cause.
Respectfully submitted,
JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE, JR.,
For the Committee.
ORDER OF SERVICES AND ADDRESSES AT THE CENTENNIAL CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESES OF NORTH AND EAST CAROLINA, TO BE HELD IN CALVARY CHURCH, Tarboro’, N. C., MAY 16TH, 17TH AND 18TH, 1890.
FRIDAY, May 16th.
EVENING PRAYER, 8 O'CLOCK:
1. Opening Address—Bishop Lyman.
2. Address of Welcome—Hon. Fred. Philips.
3. The Church and the Anglo-Saxon Race—Hon. A. M. Waddell.
4. The Church—Its Catholic Character—Rev. N. C. Hughes, D. D.
SATURDAY, May 17th.
MORNING PRAYER, 9:30 O'CLOCK:
1. The Church in the Province of N. C.—Rev. Joseph B. Cheshire, Jr.
2. Colonial Churchmen of N. C.—Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D.
3. Colonial Parishes and Schools—Rev. R. B. Drane.
4. Religious Antecedents of the Settlers—Hon. W. L. Saunders.
EVENING PRAYER, 4:30 O'CLOCK:
1. The Conventions of 1890-94, and the Bishop-elect — Rev. W. S. Pettigrew.
2. Decay and Revival, 1800-1830—Rev. J. C. Huske, D. D.
3. Missionary and Educational Enterprise—Rev. Jarvis Buxton, D. D.
4. Ecclesiastical Legislation in the Province of N. C., and its Effect upon our subsequent Legislation and History—Hon. J. S. Henderson.
THE SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION-DAY, MAY 18th.
MORNING PRAYER AND THE HOLY COMMUNION, 11 O'CLOCK:
Sermon-Address—The First Three Bishops of N. C., Ravenscroft, Ives, Atkinson—Bishop Watson.
EVENING PRAYER, 4 O'CLOCK:
1. The Present Condition of the Church in the State of North Carolina—Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D.
2. The Work of the Church in Hospitals, Homes, Sisterhoods and Orphanages—Rev. Robert Strange.
3. Voluntary Addresses and Discussion.
SPECIAL CLOSING SERVICE, 8 O'CLOCK:
1. The Church in the United States—Rev. Nathaniel Harding.
2. The Duty of the Church with reference to Unity among Christians—Rev. F. J. Murdoch.
3. Voluntary Addresses and Discussion.
4. Closing Address—Bishop Lyman.
COLLECTS AND BLESSING.
COMMITTEES HAVING THE MATTER IN CHARGE.JOINT COMMITTEE OF THE TWO DIOCESES.
On the part of the Diocese of North Carolina:
The Revs. Jarvis Buxton, D. D., W. S. Pettigrew, M. M. Marshall, D. D., Jos. B. Cheshire, Jr., the Hons. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D., John S. Henderson, Fred. Philips, Messrs. S. S. Nash, Charles E. Johnson.
On the part of the Diocese of East Carolina:
The Revs. N. C. Hughes, D. D., Robert B. Drane, Robert Strange, Nathaniel Harding, Messrs. William L. DeRosset, F. R. Rose, Wilson G. Lamb, John W. Atkinson, DuBrutz Cutlar.
Committee on Religious Services:
Bishop Lyman, Revs. George P. Hebbard, Robert Strange, Gilbert Higgs, Messrs. F. R. Rose, M. A. Curtis.
Committee on Addresses:
Bishop Watson, Revs. Jarvis Buxton, D. D., Joseph B. Cheshire, Jr., N. C. Hughes, D. D., Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D.
Committee on Local Arrangements and Hospitality:
The Revs. George P. Hebbard and Joseph B. Cheshire, D. D., the Hon. Fred. Philips, Messrs. S. S. Nash, John W. Cotten, James R. Gaskill, Thomas E. Lewis, John L. Bridgers, H. L. Staton, W. S. Clark.
JOINT CONVENTION OF THE DIOCESESOF EAST AND NORTH CAROLINA.
CALVARY CHURCH, Tarboro, N. C., FRIDAY, MAY 16TH, 1890, 8 P. M.
The Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina met in joint session with the Council of the Diocese of East Carolina, in Cavalry Church, Tarboro’, N. C., at 8 o'clock, for Divine Worship and addresses.
The Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, the Rev. Jarvis Buxton, D. D., of the Diocese of North Carolina, and the Rev. N. Collin Hughes, D. D., of the Diocese of East Carolina, in the Chancel.
Evening Prayer was read by the Rev. Julian E. Ingle and the Rector of the Parish, the Rev. G. P. Hebbard.
At the close of the services, the Rev. Jarvis Buxton, D. D., Chairman of the Committee on the Centennial Celebration, requested the Bishop of the Diocese to take the chair as presiding officer of the Joint Convention, and to call to his assistance the Rt. Rev. A. A. Watson, D. D., Bishop of the Diocese of East Carolina.
THE OPENING ADDRESSOF BISHOP LYMAN.
The Bishop of North Carolina, upon taking the chair, expressed the great satisfaction felt by himself and the Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina in the auspicious presence of the Bishop and Council of East Carolina. So recently bound together in one Diocese, it was a great pleasure to welcome back our dear brethren, and to be thus re-united in sympathy and affection. And especially as we are met together to commemorate the first effort for Diocesan organization, made here in Tarboro’ one hundred years ago. Such a re-union must surely deepen our mutual interest in the welfare of the Church in North Carolina,
while recalling the great changes which have been brought about during the century, which is now numbered with the past.
With these few words of kindly greeting, the Bishop called upon the first speaker, Judge Philips, who had been designated to make the Address of Welcome.
ADDRESS OF WELCOMEBY THE HON. FREDERICK PHILIPS.
Rt. Rev. Father in God, Gentlemen and Delegates of the two Conventions:
In the name of the citizens of Tarboro, I welcome you.
In the name of the communicants of this Parish, I greet you with feelings of brotherly love.
In the name of our Rector, who has successfully undertaken the labors left off by him who has spent the best part of his life in our midst, I extend a cordial greeting.
For nearly half a century we had only one minister. He is still with us to rejoice in our rejoicings, and to give thanks to the Author of every good and perfect gift. Though his frame is chilled and weakened with the infirmities of age, and his foot-steps totter; though his hair is white with the frosts of many winters, eternal spring is in his heart. The influence of his example is felt, and the fruits of his labors are witnessed. His culture and zeal have left their impress, and his taste and handiwork are seen, all around us. For him I invoke your solemn blessing.
We have assembled to commemorate the effort made one hundred years ago to organize the Church in North Carolina, and to secure the benefits of Episcopal oversight and ministrations. Those men who met in Convention here in the years 1790, 1793 and 1794, deserve more than the
cold tribute of a passing notice. Those Conventions held to organize the Church in North Carolina and to procure the consecration of a Bishop, form an interesting chapter in our ecclesiastical history. The few ministers left after the Revolutionary war dropped off one by one. The Church fell gradually to decay all over the State. There was no Bishop, and hence no Episcopal Church. There were no colleges and few schools. The lack of proper education and training, added to the prejudice which existed in the minds of the American people at that period of our country's history, against England and English institutions, tended to throw the Church back. Travel was difficult, commerce was slow, and proud science had not taught the souls of men to stray. But religious thought was implanted on the bed-rock of political freedom and independence, and the Convention of 1790 which assembled in the old church yard over the way, was the first held in this State to inaugurate the movement for Episcopacy, and to lay the foundation for the establishment of the Church.
What a change one hundred years has brought! What advancement has been made in education and culture! What discoveries in science and philosophy! Who can estimate its blessings or calculate its benefits? Ignorance vanishes before the march of human progress, and superstition melts like waters which run continually. And standing on the threshold of our second century, and looking back at every step of progress to enlightenment and culture, which has been made in this broad and liberty-loving continent of ours, we see that every faith has found its shelter and every creed a sanctuary.
Like the golden rod which makes bright and gay the sides of the roads, hills and gravelly banks, and waves its golden wands from mountain heights to the very verge of the sea, so Christianity has shed its bright and joyous light,
and we find everywhere in its soft and benignant rays, our language, our people, our faith.
It is not my purpose to speak of the progress made in the moral and in the physical world during the past century, nor to trace the Church's growth and usefulness in this country and State. The duty assigned me in this our Centennial Celebration of the first Church Convention held in this State, is to welcome you to our homes, and to tell you that we are glad to see you—that we rejoice to meet with you in the same household of faith to talk about our ancestors and their efforts to secure for themselves and their posterity the benefits of Episcopal ministrations. Love delights to pay homage to the memories of the dead and to recite their virtues. That spirit of love prompted your coming here to-night. That same spirit bids me again to welcome you.
In accordance with the order arranged by the Committee the following Addresses were then delivered:
[I.] “The Church and the Anglo-Saxon Race.”
The Hon. Alfred M. Waddell.
[II.] “The Church—Its Catholic Character.”
The Rev. N. Collin Hughes, D. D.
After the singing of a hymn, and prayer, the Bishop of the Diocese pronounced the benediction.
The Joint Convention then adjourned to meet for Morning Prayer, Saturday, May 17th, at 9:30 a. m.
JOINT CONVENTION.CALVARY CHURCH, Tarboro’, N. C.,
SATURDAY, May 17th, 1890.
The Joint Convention met in Calvary Church for Divine Service and addresses.
The Bishop of the Diocese and the Rt. Rev. A. A.
Watson, D. D., the Bishop of East Carolina, were present in the Chancel.
Morning Prayer was read at 9:30 o'clock by the Rev. A. Burtis Hunter and the Rev. G. P. Hebbard.
The following addresses were delivered:
[III.] “The Church in Province of North Carolina,”
The Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr.
[IV.] “Colonial Churchmen of North Carolina,”
The Hon. Kemp P. Battle, LL. D.
[V.] “Colonial Parishes and Schools,”
The Rev. R. B. Drane.
The benediction was pronounced by the Bishop of East Carolina, and the Joint Convention adjourned to meet at 4:30 p. m.
AFTERNOON SESSION.SATURDAY, May 17th, 1890.
Evening Prayer was read at 4:30 o'clock by the Rev. Charles Carroll Quin and the Rev. Nath. Harding.
[VI.] The Rev. W. S. Pettigrew delivered an address—Subject: “The Conventions of 1790-94, and the Bishop-elect.”
Calvary Church, Tarboro’, N. C.,
SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION, May 18th, 1890.
Morning Prayer was read at 11 o'clock by the Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D., and the Rev. Robert Strange.
[VIII.] The sermon was preached by the Rt. Rev. A. A. Watson, D. D., Bishop of East Carolina. The text: Proverbs x: 7, “The memory of the just is blessed.” Subject: “The first three Bishops of fNorth Carolina—Ravenscroft, Ives, Atkinson.”
The Rt. Rev. the Bishop of East Carolina began the order for the administration of the Holy Communion. The Epistle was read by the Rev. Dr. Buxton, the Gospel by the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of East Carolina.
The offerings of the people for Diocesan Missions, to be equally divided between the two Dioceses, were received and presented by Bishop Lyman. The Exhortation was read by Bishop Watson. The Bishop of the Diocese proceeded with the celebration of the Holy Communion, being assisted by Bishop Watson.*
The benediction was pronounced by the Bishop of East Carolina.
AFTERNOON SESSION.SUNDAY, 4 o'clock P. M.
Evening Prayer was read by the Rev. Gilbert Higgs and the Rev. T. M. N. George.
Addresses were delivered as follows:
[IX.] “Missionary and Educational Enterprise,”
The Rev. Jarvis Buxton, D. D.
[X.] “The Work of the Church in Hospitals, Homes, Sisterhoods and Orphanages,”
The Rev. T. M. N. George.
The Rector pronounced the benediction and the Convention adjourned to meet at 8 o'clock p. m. for special closing services.
* The Communion Services used on this occasion were those belonging to the Parish of Christ Church, Newbern, N. C., presented by his Majesty King George III., circa, A. D., 1760;* and to the Parish of St. Paul's, Edenton, N. C., presented by Col. Edward Mosely, A. D. 1723, and the Rev. Mr. Garzia, circa, A. D. 1740.* There is some doubt whether the donor was George III. or George II.NIGHT SESSION.SUNDAY, May 18th, 1890, 8 P. M.
The special service, licensed for the occasion by the Bishop of the Diocese, and entitled “An ancient office for the last hour of the day,” with hymns, was conducted by the Rev. Elliot W. Bumstead.
The following addresses were delivered:
[XI.] “The present condition of the Church in the State of North Carolina,”
The Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D.
[XII.] “The Duty of the Church with reference to Unity among Christians,”
The Rev. F. J. Murdoch.
CLOSING ADDRESS,BY BISHOP LYMAN.
The Closing Address, by the Bishop of North Carolina, was entirely impromptu, as, owing to his impaired health during the weeks preceding the Convention, together with the pressure of official duties, he could find no opportunity for making the preparation which such an occasion called for. He gave utterance to his deep and tender feelings, in words which came fresh from the heart, and which found a sympathetic response in the hearts of the great congregation before him. Perhaps we cannot do better than to quote the words of the special correspondent of The Churchman in his account of this final service. They are as follows:
“The closing address by the Bishop of North Carolina was a splendid outburst of strong glad emotion, and moved the congregation visibly. No description would do it justice, and it is a thousand pities that no provision was made to preserve the most memorable utterance of a memorable occasion. Its effect upon the visiting congregation
was most felicitous, and its warm and glowing spirit will linger long in the memories of those who were so fortunate as to hear the venerable Bishop when his noble heart seemed indeed too full for utterance.”
After the singing of a hymn the Bishop of North Carolina pronounced the benediction.
The Joint Convention being in session for business after the religious services, Col. J. W. Atkinson offered the following resolution, which, on his motion, was adopted:
Resolved, That all the addresses prepared for the Centennial Services shall be published in book form, under the editorial direction of the Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr.
On motion of the Rev. Robert Strange it was
Resolved, That the thanks of the Joint Convention of North and East Carolina be extended to the Rev. J. B. Cheshire, Jr., for conceiving and carrying to so successful an issue, the re-union which has been so delightful and edifying to us all.
Upon motion the Joint Convention then adjourned sine die.
Before its final adjournment the Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina, upon motion of Mr. Henry A. London, adopted the following resolution:
Resolved, That as members of the Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina, we hereby express our appreciation of the pleasure it affords us in meeting with our brethren of the Diocese of East Carolina, and in engaging with them in the interesting services of this occasion.
ADDRESSES AND PAPERS PREPARED FOR THE JOINT CENTENNIAL CONVENTION HELD AT TARBOROUGH, MAY 16TH, 17TH, AND 18TH, 1890:
I. The Church and the Anglo-Saxon Race.
II. The Church—Its Catholic Character.
III. The Church in the Province of North Carolina.
IV. Colonial Churchmen of North Carolina.
V. Colonial Parishes and Schools.
VI. The Conventions of 1790-94 and the Bishop-elect.
VII. Decay and Revival, 1800-1830.
VIII. The first three Bishops—Ravenscroft, Ives, Atkinson.
IX. Missionary and Educational Enterprise.
X. The Work of the Church in Hospitals, Homes, Sisterhoods, and Orphanages.
XI. The Present Condition and Prospects of the Church in North Carolina.
XII. The Duty of the Church with reference to Unity among Christians.
XIII. Parson Miller and White Haven.
I
THE CHURCH IN CONNECTION WITH THE
ANGLO-SAXON RACE.
BY THE HON. ALFRED M. WADDELL.
The subject assigned to me for discussion on this interesting occasion is of vast proportions, and therefore the utmost I can hope to accomplish will be to present a very general outline of it.
To the student of Church history there have been few spectacles within the past two centuries more affecting than the persistent devotion with which—in the face of overwhelming prejudice and aversion—the sons of the Church in America, at the close of the Revolution, clung to her. In the hands of ambitious, or stupid, or reckless Colonial Governors and Councils, who frequently sought to enforce the ecclesiastical legislation of the mother country upon a people whose environment was wholly different, and because of its identification in the minds of the people with the political government and its oppressions, the Church had become an object of suspicion and finally of intense hate; and when the Revolution closed it was regarded with more hostility than Royalty itself. Left to struggle against this feeling, which dominated the minds of a majority of their fellow-citizens, and without an Episcopate of their own, they were compelled to see the Church which they loved decline and wither into numerical insignificance. It had been a growing power, especially in the Southern Colonies, and if its adherents had been willing to throw off the Episcopate as they had thrown off royalty, and adopt a new form of Church government, it might, and probably would have, enjoyed a very great advantage over any other ecclesiastical organization in the country, so far as increasing its membership was concerned. Within its folds were
gathered many of the greatest and best men in America, who had been chiefly instrumental in the establishment of the liberty and independence of the country, and these would, doubtless, have largely increased their individual popularity and influence by extending their work to the severance of all dependence on, or connection with, the Church of England. But their faith in the Episcopal form of Church government was honest and deep-rooted, and their love for the grand and noble Liturgy to which they were accustomed, was sincere and hearty; and not prejudice, nor hate, nor ridicule, nor abuse could shake their loyalty to their convictions, or induce them to abandon the hope of rebuilding and strengthening the shattered walls of their Zion.
They had only to look back at her history, and, in connection with it, to the history of the race from which themselves had sprung, to find both support for their convictions and encouragement for their hopes. Such a retrospect would show to them, as it will show to us, that the Church is indissolubly connected with nearly all the great achievements of the Anglo-Saxon race, from the first emergence of that race, under her guidance, out of the darkness of paganism to their day and to ours, when its mastery is recognized throughout the earth. The history of the one is, indeed, largely the history of the other, and hence the vastness of the subject to which I have already referred. Let us take a rapid glance at it.
With the history of Christianity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxon invasion we are not concerned. We know that when the pagan English had secured a foothold and acquired ascendency over the Britons, who were living under Roman government, the religion, law, literature, and manners of the country were swept away, and it became a heathen land. Before the English invasion, Christianity prevailed in every country in Western Europe except Germany, from which the English came, and the conquest of
the island by the English “thrust a wedge of heathendom into the heart of this great communion and broke it into two unequal parts,” says a great historian, who also adds that it was “the one purely German nation that rose upon the wreck of Rome. In other lands, in Spain, or Gaul or Italy, though they were equally conquered by German peoples, religion, social life, administrative order, still remained Roman. In Britain alone Rome died into a vague tradition. The whole organization of government and society disappeared with the people who had used it.”
Although Augustine and his monks landed in the year 597, and thereby renewed the union with the Western world which had been destroyed, and re-introduced the civilization, arts, and letters which had been driven out, the Roman Church soon came into rivalry with the Church of Ireland and Scotland, which had long existed before they came, and was superseded by the latter in the work of converting the English. Christianity in Ireland was more vigorous than elsewhere because that country was exempt from invasion, and had consequently greatly advanced in arts and letters. In the year 664, however, at a Council at Whitby, and in a controversy over the trifling questions of the tonsure, and the proper time for observing Easter, the Irish party were overruled by King Oswi, and they all, accompanied by some English clergy, returned to Iona leaving the Roman influence triumphant in England.
And now the history of the English Church proper began. Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek monk, became Archbishop of Canterbury, and at once set about organizing the Church by adding new sees to the old ones, and grouping them all around the central see of Canterbury. He then settled the clergy, who until then had been chiefly missionaries, and organized parishes. He gathered synods, and these were the first national legislative assemblies in England, long ante-dating the Wittenagemote or first Parliament
of the civil government. The canons passed in these synods were the real originals from which the national system of laws sprang. So that, in the matter of organization and legislation, the Church in England ante-dated and formed the model of the State, and it was the only bond of union between the people for about two centuries.
Its noblest product flowered two hundred years later in King Alfred, who has been justly pronounced “the first instance in the history of Christendom of the Christian King, of a ruler who put aside every personal aim or ambition, to devote himself to the welfare of those whom he ruled.” A thousand years have passed since his death, but the longing which he expressed—“to leave to the men that came after a remembrance of him in good works”—still finds its realization in the veneration entertained for his memory by all English-speaking peoples. They recognize in him not only the pious and self-sacrificing monarch and wise ruler, with whose reign English history began, but the real creator of English literature and the educator of his people.
After the death of Alfred appeared the first of the great ecclesiastical statesmen of England, who wielded all the powers of the realm for a series of years, Dunston, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of great versatility of genius, who gave to the English Constitution its first impress of genuine liberty, and lifted the Church from the degradation which threatened it into a higher, and purer atmosphere.
The successive sovereigns and primates of England had frequently resisted, or evaded the exactions of Rome upon the English Bishops, but it was not until the Norman Conquerer ascended the throne that an open defiance of any claim of papal supremacy was made. These claims had, with the persistency that has always characterized them, been continually urged, directly and indirectly, until they culminated in a demand by George VII. upon William
to do fealty for his kingdom, when that monarch proudly replied: “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor do I will to do it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours.”
But while he defied Rome he had reduced the Church of England to a state of dependence upon the Crown, which had crippled its influence for good; and the same policy was pursued by his sons, until the courageous Archbishop Anselm re-asserted its rights, and largely restored its independence.
Under the influence of the great religious revival, which occurred during the reign of Stephen, and by the power of the Church, Henry the Second became King, but his successor, Richard the Lion-Hearted, died as he had lived, at war with God and man.
Then came that consummate villain of the ages, King John, whose Charter, wrested from him at Runnymede, has ever since been the corner-stone of Anglo-Saxon freedom. The leading spirit in this great historic drama of Runnymede was Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who—although made primate by an act of papal usurpation—rebuked and protested against the submission of John to the supremacy of the Pope, rallied the Church aud the Barons to the support of their liberties, threatened the King with excommunication, and saved the country from the ruin that threatened it. The very first article of this great Charter of English liberty begins with these words: “Imprimis Concessiums Deo, et hac presenti Charta nostra confirmavimus pro nobis, et heridibus nostris in perpetuam, quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit et habeat omnia jura sua integra, et libertates suas illaesas.” First of all, the Church of England was to be free, and to have all its rights and liberties intact. Again, in the reign of Henry III. this great Churchman, Stephen Langton, whose services in the cause of English liberty were never surpassed, was chiefly instrumental in establishing
the great principle that redress of grievances must always be had before a grant to the Crown is made by Parliament.
The most striking feature of this epoch, however, so far as the Church was concerned, was the work of those wonderful men, the Gray Friars, whose self-sacrificing labors in the cause of religion are almost unparalleled in human history. They are, doubtless, generally very lightly regarded, because of the subsequent degeneracy of the order to which they belonged, but at this time their services to religion and humanity were almost beyond praise. We all, last year, did homage to the Christian heroism of that noble Roman Catholic Priest, Father Damien, who sacrificed his life in the service of the lepers of the South Pacific Islands, and he richly deserved the praise of the whole Christian world, for his unselfish devotion. The Gray Friars of the thirteenth century in England performed the same service. “The rapid progress of the population within the boroughs,” says Green, in his history, “had outstripped the sanitary regulations of the Middle Ages, and fever or plague, or the more terrible scourge of leprosy, festered in the wretched hovels of the suburbs. It was to haunts such as these that Francis had pointed his disciples, and the Gray Brethren at once fixed themselves in the meanest and poorest quarters of each town. Their first work lay in the noisome lazar-houses; it was among the lepers that they commonly chose the site of their houses.”
The patron of these Friars was the patriot, soldier and statesman, Simon de Montfort, whose piety equalled his wisdom, and whose reforms in the civil administration were of incalculable value.
It was to this mendicant fraternity that Roger Bacon—after forty years of devotion to study, whose only recompense, as he said, was that he was “unheard, forgotten, buried”—allied himself, supposing that thereby he would sink into oblivion; but it proved to be the means of introducing
him to fame. Some of his writings coming under the notice of the Pope, he was invited to continue his literary labors (although no pecuniary assistance was offered) and, amidst all sorts of embarrassments and difficulties, he produced his wonderful “Opus Majus,” which Dr. Whewell pronounced “at once the Encyclopedia and the Novum Organum of the thirteenth century.”
The reign of Edward the First, although the result of a process of evolution, was really the beginning of the England which we know. All the great reforms in the Judiciary and in legislation, which, with continued improvement, have reached our day, had their origin during his reign, and chief among those who did the work were the primate and the clergy.
But it was in the reign of Edward III. that the great reformer, John Wyclif, drove the wedge which ultimately separated the English Church from the dominion of the Pope. His work has borne fruit in every succeeding generation. Beginning his warfare on the practice of the Church in his day, he proceeded to attack the doctrines then prevalent—the central doctrine of transubstantiation being his first objective point—and by appealing to the masses of the people, in tracts written in their own tongue, he struck a deadly blow, not only at that dogma, but at the practice of indulgences, absolutions, pilgrimages, image-worship, and saint-worship, and thus began the movement which resulted a hundred years afterward in religious liberty.
Contemporary with Wyclif, too, was one whom they called “a mad priest,” John Ball, of Kent, who first stirred the hearts of the people by declaring, what was then regarded as the most abominable of all heresies, the equality of human rights. One of the most exquisite specimens of modern English literature, I think, is William Morris's little essay, entitled “A Dream of John Ball,” which portrays the first awakening of this idea and its
practical assertion by the sturdy English yeomen, and has on its title-page the rhyme which originated in John Ball's day:
“When Adam delved, and Eve span,Who was then the gentleman?”And then came Colet, and Erasmus, and Tyndal, the translator of the Bible, and Sir Thomas More, with genius, and scholarship, and the true spirit of enlightened progress—religious, educational, social, and economic—to try to inaugurate a new era in England. Defeated and disappointed in this noble aspiration by the temper of the times, and the policy of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII, as well as by the spirit of Luther and others, who, while they denounced popery, had just as little sympathy with the new ideas of toleration, it is the most splendid tribute to the genius of Sir Thomas More that he anticipated in his Eutopia some of the most advanced social and political theories of the present day. His murder and that of thousands of others, including many of the noblest and best in the realm, by Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar General of Henry VIII., make one of the foulest blots on the history of the Church. It was an age of violence and bloodshed, in which the efforts of those who had a true conception of Christ's religion and the brotherhood of man stand out as splendid features in the picture of human progress, all the more splendid because of the dark and bloody background against which they are projected.
In Edward VI.’s reign, notwithstanding the fact that the Book of Common Prayer—the Liturgy nearly as now used in the Church of England—supplanted the missal and breviary, and a new Catechism and Book of Homilies was published, and celibacy was abolished, and images were removed from the churches, and other great reforms were made by Archbishop Cranmer, it is still the truth that the close of that reign found England in a state of chaos ecclesiastically and politically; and the accession of Mary, of
bloody memory, produced a re-action that was well nigh fatal to the hopes of protestantism. It would have so proven if she had not crowned her bloody cruelties toward the protestant clergy—if she had not supplemented the murder of Hooper, Ferrars, Latimer, Ridley, Rowland Taylor and others—by the humiliation and fiery death of Cranmer, and the persecutions, confiscations, and terrorism which she spread throughout the realm. These things bore their natural fruit, and the fierce Revolution which would have been inevitable was only escaped by her death and the elevation to the throne of the ablest female sovereign that ever wore a crown.
As to religion Elizabeth had no convictions, and her whole course towards the Church was governed by political considerations. She plundered the property of the Church, as her predecessors had done, but she would allow nobody else to do so, as they did. While professing sympathy with the reformers of religion she favored the retention of crucifixes and the celebacy of the clergy, and while she omitted from the Royal title the words, “Head of the Church,” she asserted a practical supremacy as absolute as that of her father. The poulation of England at the time of her accession did not exceed five millions, and they were distracted and depressed alike by defeat and the loss of territory on the Continent, and by wide-spread social and religious discontent at home; but with rare sagacity she surrounded herself with a body of advisers of great ability, and, by a course of conciliation in religious matters, and a brilliant and vigorous administration of the affairs of the realm, she inaugurated a splendid era for her people. When she ascended the throne three-fourths of the people were adherents of the Roman Catholic party, but when she died only the poorest and least populated part of the Kingdom continued in that faith. The moral tone of the clergy was greatly elevated above what it had been, and their social character was entirely changed. In
the matter of public education it is a remarkable fact, as Mr. Morley points out in his “History of English Literature,” that of all the public schools established in England from the beginning to this day, more than one-half were begun during the period embraced between some year in the reign of Henry VIII. and the close of the reign of Elizabeth. These schools were chiefly instrumental in spreading knowledge and stimulating intellectual culture among the middle classes and the country gentry. The Universities swung around from extreme Romanism to extreme Puritanism, and the people of England, witnessing the atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Low Countries across the Channel, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, were inspired with a new hatred of the Papacy. It was an era of stirring events, in which English Churchmen were the leading spirits.
Francis Drake, the son of a Vicar in Kent, conceived the bold project of carrying the English flag into unknown seas over which the Spaniard claimed exclusive jurisdiction, and in accordance with this resolution he sailed through the Straits of Magellan, took away from Spanish South America great treasures of gold and jewels, and, continuing his journey around the world, doubled the Cape of Good Hope and returned with his spoils to Plymouth. This wonderful achievement electrified the country, and developed the spirit of adventure and national pride, which began more than ever before to manifest itself in every sphere of activity. English ships began to be seen in every quarter of the globe, and commerce followed discovery with rapid stride; and wherever these English ships spread their white wings the glorious Liturgy of the Church was heard. Here, in 1584, in this unknown land of America, and this our own State, where the grapes of Roanoke Island clustered to the water's edge—where, as the chronicler said, “the fragrance, as they drew near the land, was as if they had been in the midst of some delicate
garden, abounding in all manner of odoriferous flowers;” or thousands of miles to the southward, where the wild billows heaved skyward and the storm-blasts beat upon the rocks of Cape Horn—or, farther still, where the western sunbeams, falling across the watery wilderness of the virgin Pacific sea, smote with golden glory the forest-covered hills that sentineled the Bay of San Francisco—in every land and on every sea, circling the globe, and returning again to its island home, the voice of the Church, uttered in the tongue of tongues, was heard.
And while these glories of discovery and conquest abroad, and this rapid development of commerce and manufactures at home, were giving material strength to the English nation, a galaxy of men of genius, unsurpassed in the history of the world, was beginning to display itself in the realm of English letters. In one of them, Shakespere, was exhibited the consummate flower of Anglo-Saxon genius, the one mind that has held, and will forever hold, the supremacy among English-speaking peoples. With his, the names of Francis Bacon, and Richard Hooker, and Edmund Spenser, and Philip Sydney, and Walter Raleigh and others will be associated, as those of men who, in the realm of letters, made the reign of Elizabeth illustrious—and they were all sons of the Church, however far short some of them may have come in illustrating her teachings by their daily walk and conversation.
And here the stream on which we have embarked widens out into magnificent proportions; for with the accession of the first of the Stuarts, James I. began both in Church and State the real and permanent struggle for constitutional government, against the arbitrary power of the Crown, which lasted throughout the seventeenth century, and the results of which are in full operation to-day.
Early in the century, in 1611, those forty-seven scholars of the Church of England, selected for the purpose, gave to the world the Authorized Version of the Bible, which
has very justly been pronounced “the greatest treasure of English literature”—a treasure which is equally prized by all English-speaking Christians of every name, outside of the Roman obedience; and even among the latter it finds eulogists like Dr. Faber who, having transferred his allegiance to Rome, still pays a hearty tribute to it in these words: “It lives on the ear like a music which can never be forgotten; like the sound of Church bells, which the convert scarce knows how he can forego. Its felicities seem to be almost things rather than words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of the national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. It is the representative of a man's best moments; all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him forever out of his English Bible.”
This great gift of the Church to the race is, alone and of itself, sufficient to establish an everlasting claim to their gratitude. Wherever its precious pages are read—in palace or hut—amid the thunderous commerce of great cities or in the silence and solitude of primeval forests—by eyes eagerly searching for truth, or lighted by joy, or dimmed by tears—it is prized as no other book ever was or will be. The very men who, in the next reign, dissented from the doctrines and repudiated the authority of the Church, clung to the English Bible as their one priceless heritage; and so do those of like faith to-day, but alas! they stop not to think from whence it came or to whom they are indebted for this invaluable treasure, or else, while cherishing the gift, they despise the giver.
As it is not necessary to the subject under consideration, and would be impossible in the time allotted to me, to follow the history of the Church in England from this period, I will content myself by saying that in all the troubles which subsequently befell her—whether from the
insane assertion of the “divine right” of Kings, or the religious anarchy during the Protectorate, or the causes which afterwards led to the establishment of various parties within, and sects without, her fold—she not only retained every element of her organization and doctrines, as she had done even under the Tudors, but contributed, through her loyal sons, more to the civilization and advancement of our race than she had ever before done in her history.
Three years before the publication of the Authorized Version (1607’-8) the first permanent settlement of Englishmen in America was made in Virginia, and they brought with them the doctrines and worship of the Church of England, and from that day to this they have lived and been cherished on this continent. The history of the Church in this country during the Colonial period will be the theme of another address before this assemblage, and therefore it is not my purpose to enter upon it. It is, in some respects, a sad story, but full of noble lessons. That during that period, in the Middle and Southern Colonies especially, Churchmen were largely instrumental in laying the foundations of our civilization, is a matter of history. They were leaders in the struggle between the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races for supremacy on American soil, and when the splendid empire, which they had thus chiefly aided in securing to the British Crown, was threatened with the loss of its liberties, they were among the first to proclaim resistance, and to follow up their brave words with heroic deeds, which resulted in the establishment of their independence and the creation of a government which is, in freedom and power, at once the envy and the wonder of the world. And through every stage of its existence, from the beginning, when the leader of its armies (a Churchman) became its first Chief Magistrate, to this hour, the influence of those who have professed allegiance to the Church has been potent in shaping its destiny, and grows more potent with the advancing years.
It was the teaching he received in his youth as one of the children of the Church, no less than his after experience, that prompted Washington, in the opening and closing of his first inaugural address, and also in his Farewell Address to his fellow-citizens, to devoutly recognize the hand of God in the history of his country, and to invoke His blessing upon the government then established; and when the one hundredth anniversary of his inauguration was celebrated last year, it was from the lips of a Bishop, and in the church where he then knelt in prayer, that the most memorable utterance of that occasion fell.
The vast wilderness which, a century ago, stretched westward to the Pacific is now peopled by teeming millions, and is well seeded with churches where “the faith once delivered to the Saints” is held, and where the same glorious Liturgy, like celestial music, lifts the hearts of true believers into communion with the blessed company of Heaven. These believers will continue to multiply as they have done from the beginning, and though the masterful race to which they and we belong, and which has best illustrated Christian civilization on earth, should itself perish, it will only be to pass on to some other race the priceless heritage bequeathed to them by their Anglo-Saxon forefathers.
II.THE CHURCH—ITS CATHOLIC CHARACTER.
BY THE REV. N. COLLIN HUGHES, D. D.
That there has been, at least from the time of Abraham, a body of persons separated from the great mass of mankind to be admitted into covenant relations with God, and to enjoy special privileges at His hands, is very clear from Holy Scripture, and will hardly be denied by any one present. This body, originating with Abraham, at first comprised only his family; and, afterwards, the families of his son Isaac and of his grandson Jacob. The posterity of Jacob increasing rapidly in numbers, soon developed into a nation in the time of Moses. For about fifteen hundred years this single nation, carefully walled around and separated from the other nations of the earth, constituted the whole body of God's Church upon this earth. But it never was intended that the Church should thus continue. Peculiar rites, ceremonies, and institutions were established by Moses; but they were mere shadows of good things to come, and were consequently only of temporary duration. During the entire period of the Mosaic Economy, God's Church was as a son during his minority. When Christ came, then it attained its manhood, and entered upon a new and far grander career. Illumined by the rays of Him who was the Sun of Righteousness and the Light of the World, its nature was more clearly defined as the mystical Body of Christ; its relation to Him being symbolized and illustrated by that of a human body to the human head. The nature of the Covenant into which every member of the Church is admitted was more clearly set forth: a Covenant which conferred not mere temporal
blessings, but eternal life; a Covenant which heals the malady of original sin by putting God's laws into our minds, and writing them in our hearts; a Covenant which removes the sting of actual sin by conferring pardon upon the penitent believer. And as Christ, the great Prophet and High Priest of the new Dispensation, superseded the prophets and the high Priesthood of the old Dispensation, so He established a new ministry adapted to the new order of things. New rites also were instituted; and especially two holy Sacraments were ordained. And to the Church thus new modeled and perfected, the complete canon of Holy Scripture was committed, that she might be the keeper and witness of the Divine Oracles, the pillar and ground of the truth. But one of the most important of the characteristics of the Church of Jesus Christ is that it is no longer a mere national, but a Catholic Church, the Church of all the nations of this globe, and for all time. It is promised that the “Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.” And as it shall last as long as the earth itself shall continue, so is it destined to triumph over all adversaries, and to gather all nations into its fold. And this Church is not an invisible, but an outward and visible body, to be seen and known of all men. It began its new regime at Jerusalem, on the day of the first Pentecost following our Lord's resurrection from the dead, and received into it on that day an increase of 3,000 members. Authority in the Church was committed to the Apostles, and by them to successors in the Apostolic office, with the promise of the Lord: “Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”
A question of vital interest to every professed follower of Christ is: Is that Christian body to which I belong legitimately and historically descended from the Apostles without breach or schism? This question involves that of the reality of our Covenant relationship with God, and of
our assured interest in all the gifts and privileges which our Lord Jesus Christ has procured for us.
How then is it with that body to which we belong, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina? Is it a true branch of the Holy Catholic Church? The two principal marks of a Catholic Church we conceive to be: First, that it holds fast and teaches the pure Word of God, as it has been handed down from those to whom it was originally committed. Secondly, that it should be historically connected with the Church of the Apostles, in an unbroken line of descent from them.
We claim that this Church possesses the first mark of Catholicity, because she receives that canon of Holy Scripture which was transmitted to her, in part by the ancient Jewish Church and in part by the ancient Christian Church, and whose authority is therefore undoubted. She wisely rejects the authority of those books of the Old Testament commonly called Apocryphal, because they are never cited by Christ or His Apostles as Scripture; they were unknown to the ancient Jews generally; and about the first mention made of them by ancient writers, was by Athanasius in the fourth century of the Christian era, who speaks of them only to assert their lack of claim to be received as divine Scriptures. In her zeal to maintain purity in the teachings of her ministers, this Church declares the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for salvation; “So that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of Faith, nor be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” In her interpretation of the Scriptures, while recognizing the supreme importance of illumination by the Holy Spirit of God, she also recognizes the authority of the Church as the divinely commissioned, although not infallible, teacher, holding as she does the Creeds of the ancient Catholic Church, accepting the decisions of the first six General Councils, rejecting all
doctrines of modern origin, and carefully using the aid of the great lights of Christendom in the first three or four centuries in determining what is Scriptural truth. Surely with these precautions to exalt the Word of God, and to secure that interpretation of it which the universal Church of God has sanctioned, there is no body in Christendom which can with greater propriety claim to be Catholic in her faith. But in this day of a divided Christendom, a question of the deepest interest is: Is the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina legitimately descended from the Church of Apostolic times in an unbroken line of descent? In reply to this question, we say—First, that the Protestant Episcopal Church throughout the United States of America is a daughter of the Church of England. This relationship is universally acknowledged by our own Church in this country, by the Church in England, and by all other branches of the English Church in all the world. Indeed it is denied by no one, for there is not a Bishop in our branch of the Church whose lineage cannot be readily traced to Bishops White and Provoost, who were consecrated to the Episcopate on February 4th, 1787, in the Arch-Episcopal palace at Lambeth, by the Most Rev. John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury. Three other Bishops united with him in the imposition of hands, viz.: The Most Rev. William Markham, Archbishop of York, the Rt. Rev. Charles Moss, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the Rt. Rev. John Hinchliff, Bishop of Peterborough. The Episcopal pedigree of our own Bishops, Bishop Lyman and Bishop Watson, can be traced by various lines of ascent and with only a few intermediate links in the chain to these fathers of American Episcopacy. The claim of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina to be a legitimate branch of the one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is therefore identical with that of the Church of England. If the Church of England is a part of the Catholic Church,
then we are also. What then are the claims of the Church of England to Catholicity? Let us very briefly sketch the history of that Church from the beginning. It is thought by some that the Church was planted in England by the Apostle Paul. Mosheim, a Lutheran, and a German also, cannot be suspected of undue partiality to an Episcopal and an English Church. And yet he says: “Whether any apostle, or any companion of an apostle, ever visited Britain cannot be determined; yet the balance of probability rather inclines toward the affirmative.” Indeed, Eusebius and Theodoret, in the fourth century, do both of them declare that Christianity was preached in Britain by the apostles. And Turtullian, A. D. 200, says, that in his own day parts of Britain inaccessible to the Roman arms were subdued to Christ. But whatever may have been the precise period when the Church was established in Britain is not material to our argument. It is sufficient to know that it has existed there from a very early period; that its Catholicity was admitted, and, so far as we are aware, was never questioned by the ancient Church. Two of its Bishops are recorded as representing the Church in the Council of Arles A. D. 314. And thenceforth, until driven into Wales and Scotland in the sixth century by the Anglo-Saxons, there was nothing to detract from her standing as a recognized branch of the Catholic Church. Indeed it can hardly be doubted that in addition to its claims to Catholicity from its own Apostolic origin, the British Church must, from its nearness to Gaul and from the similarity of its customs to those of the Gallic Church, have incorporated into itself whatever claims that Church had to Catholicity. But it is unquestionable that Pothinus and Irenaeus, missionaries in the second century from the Church in Asia to Gaul, carried with them Apostolic authority from its source. For Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was Bishop of Smyrna, a disciple of the Apostle John, and one of the
seven angels addressed in the Book of Revelation. The re-introduction of Christianity into England in the latter part of the sixth century by Augustin, an emissary of Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome, whatever bearing it may, or may not, have on the question of Papal supremacy in England, certainly cannot be regarded as in any degree impairing the Catholicity of the English Church. For as it is a fact universally admitted that the ancient British Church and the Church planted in England by Augustin soon coalesced, it is evident that the united Church thus formed inherited the claims to Catholicity possessed by both of its ancestors. So that if the original Church of Britain was united by an unbroken chain of ascent to the Apostles, then the Church, formed from the union of this Church with the Anglo-Saxon Church founded by Roman missionaries, was united to the Apostolic Church by a two-fold chain. From this time forward to the Reformation there was nothing in the history of the Church of England which could even suggest a doubt as to her maintenance of her original Catholicity. The circumstances of the Reformation period of her history, however, have given occasion to many to deny her Catholic character. It is denied on various grounds. First: all her claims are by some supposed to be vitiated by the fact that the first decided step made toward paving the way to the Reformation of the Church of England was made by a man of such notoriously evil character as was Henry VIII. That step was the rejection of the Papal authority in the realm of England. But that act must be tried upon its own merits, not upon the merits of the individual who did it, nor upon any consideration of the character of the motives which induced him to do it. For were there even greater sinners upon the earth than Judas Iscariot who betrayed our Lord; than Annas, and Caiaphas, and their companions, who urged His crucifixion; and Pilate, who decreed it? But did their wickedness vitiate the glorious atonement for the
sins of the whole world effected by that death which they so wickedly compassed? But if the wickedness of the agents who brought about the death of our Lord did not abate one tithe of a hair from the blessed efficacy of that death, why should we imagine that the wickedness of Henry VIII. in any degree detracts from the glory of the Reformation of the Church of England? God makes even the wrath of man to praise Him; and in an untold number of instances has overruled the evil actions of evil men to bring about the fulfilment of His most gracious designs of beneficence to mankind.
But it is asserted by some that Henry VIII. founded the present Church of England—that he originated a new Church. What an astonishing assertion to be made by any one at all conversant with the facts of history! The Church in England after the Papal authority was abolished consisted of the same Bishops, Presbyters, Deacons, and baptized persons that had constituted that Church before the abolition of the Papal authority. And scarce any change was made in the doctrines of the Church during the lifetime of Henry. Transubstantiation, the invocation of Saints, the worship of images, and auricular confession, were all retained. What then was it that caused the extinction of the old church, and brought a new one into being? The only material step that Henry VIII. took toward the Reformation was, as I have said, the rejection of the Papal supremacy. Will any one say that the life of a national church depended upon the acceptance of that dogma? No, even more than this, that the rejection of the Papal supremacy not only killed one national church, but gave being to a new one? And yet a great portion of those who maintain that the action of Henry VIII. in rejecting the Papal supremacy over the Church of England destroyed the old Church of England, admit that the Papal supremacy is a false doctrine. But how unjust it is to speak of Henry VIII. founding the Church of England,
when the present Church of England does not date from Henry VIII. at all. That King did remove a barrier to the Reformation of the Church of England, and in the succeeding reign of Edward VI. advantage was taken of the removal of this barrier to effect a real reformation. But that reformation did not stand. It was quite overturned by Queen Mary, the sister and successor of Edward, and during her reign the Pope's authority was thoroughly re-established in England. Does not every one know that it was in the reign of Mary's successor and sister, Queen Elizabeth, that the Papal authority was again abolished in England, and a reformation effected? But no new Church was formed then. Most of the Bishops of Mary's reign refused conformity under Elizabeth; one of them, however, did not refuse; and there were still a number of the dispossessed Bishops of the time of Edward living; the whole body of the Presbyters and Deacons conformed save only about 200, and almost the whole body of the people. The Church was, as to its membership, substantially the same after the reformation that it was before; the only important difference in the Church was that it rejected the errors that had been fastened upon it. And we might as well say that a material church that had been defiled and used for profane purposes, and afterwards was cleansed and restored to its original use, was not the same building that it was before, as to say that the Church of England after the Reformation was not the same Church that it was before. But it is still further maintained that the Church of England is, at all events, a schismatical body. But we ask: On what ground is it to be considered schismatical? Will it be said that inasmuch as the Church of England was in, or not long after, the days of Augustin, brought into subjection to the Pope of Rome, that therefore her rejection of his supremacy is a schismatical act? I answer that the Church of England in the time of Gregory the Great, who sent Augustin to England, was not so much as
called upon to acknowledge the Papal supremacy. Rome had not grown then to what she afterwards became. In Gregory's day, the Bishop of Constantinople assumed a supremacy in the Church, and the title of Universal Bishop. But Gregory affirmed, time and again, that whoever claimed to be Universal Bishop was the forerunner of Antichrist, thus renouncing for himself and for all succeeding Popes all claim to supremacy over the Church of God. And if even that one Pope be infallible, he has sealed his successors, who claimed so much more than supremacy, with the stigma of being Antichrist. Did the Church of England then become schismatical, because she rejected a dogma which was repudiated as Antichristian by the Pope who was so active in the second introduction of Christianity into England? If the Papal supremacy is a false doctrine, how can the Church of England be schismatical because she rejected it?
But it may still be said: if the Pope was not rightfully entitled to authority in England by virtue of his supremacy, yet he was the rightful head of that Church as the great Patriarch of the West. But we answer that the office of Patriarch is not of divine, but purely of human origin. There were no Patriarchs until the fourth century. It was the outgrowth of a civil power, of the Roman Empire, an Empire which in the time of the Reformation had passed away. But with changes in civil governments it is lawful to make changes in those ecclesiastical arrangements which are the outgrowth of the civil power. But if the ancient Patriarchal order was still binding on the Church, it could not be so binding as to require the Church of England and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States to submit to unlawful terms of communion. It is impossible to recognize the Patriarchal authority of the Bishop of Rome without at the same time recognizing his supremacy, and likewise his infallibility, also his power to bestow empires, as he did when he gave to the Spaniards
this continent, which God had given to the Indian nations and tribes who inhabited it. The Papal supremacy cannot be accepted without admitting his power to release nations of people from their oaths of allegiance to their sovereigns, and to sanction marriage within degrees which God has prohibited. It is impossible to recognize the Pope's Patriarchal authority without worshiping, as GOD, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and accepting all the other dangerous errors of the Roman Church. We are bound to obey the civil authority, but not when it commands us to do what God forbids; or forbids us to do what God commands. We are bound to obey the Ecclesiastical authority; but in the days of our Lord men were required to submit to being cast out of the synagogue rather than to deny Christ. It is Rome that is schismatical by demanding such terms of communion with her as are inconsistent with the duty we owe to Christ. Even the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome rests on no better foundation than his claim to Patriarchal authority. It, too, has no scriptural foundation. Primacy in the beginning was neither in the Bishop of Rome, nor in St. Peter himself. The first Primate in the Christian Church was the Bishop of Jerusalem, not the Bishop of Rome. It was the Apostle James, not the Apostle Peter, as is plain from Acts XV, and from the testimony of Eusebius. And the same barrier arising from Papal claims and doctrine, makes the acceptance of the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome as impracticable as the acceptance of the Patriarchate.
The Catholicity of the Church of England therefore was unimpaired by the events occurring at the time of the Reformation. And since the Reformation, nothing has occurred to afford the slightest ground for suspicion that the Church of England, and the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State has lost that claim to Catholic character which the Church of England possessed at the Reformation. On the whole, therefore, we believe that this Church holds on
historically, by an unbroken chain, to that Church which more than 1800 years ago was founded by our blessed Lord and His Apostles.
And holding, as she does, to the Canonical Scriptures as containing all things necessary to be believed in order to our salvation, maintaining the obligation of the two Sacraments instituted by our Lord, and the rite of Laying on of Hands instituted by His Apostles acting under divine authority, accepting the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creeds, the two Creeds of the ancient Church, and maintaining that Episcopate, which even those who deny its divine origin must admit to have existed from Apostolic times, she must assuredly possess a just claim to Catholicity. Nor is this all. In this day of a divided Christendom, in this day of an awakening to the evil of division, and the sacred obligation of every follower of our Lord Jesus Christ to seek a return to that unity for which He so fervently prayed, she has peculiar claims to be regarded as a centre of unity to all those bodies of Christians who can not rightfully claim for their organizations that unbroken line of descent from the Apostles which she possesses. And to all others, she presents a basis of unity—in a faith founded on the word of God, maintained by the Church in its earliest ages, and uncontaminated by the errors of after times.
III.
THE CHURCH IN
THE PROVINCE OF NORTH CAROLINA.
BY REV. JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE, JR.
The Church owes its first theoretical introduction into North Carolina to the Englishman's characteristic desire to reproduce English institutions in every corner of the earth where he makes for himself a home: its real beginnings came from the christian zeal of a few prominent Colonial Churchmen, co-operating with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, in endeavoring to supply the scattered colonists with the ministrations of their mother Church.
The name Carolina was applied by the French Huguenot settlers of Florida in the years 1562 and 1564 to that part of the American continent lying north of the Spanish possessions, in honor of Charles IX. of France. In 1629 Charles I. of England granted to his Attorney General, Sir Robert Heath, the territory between 31° and 36° north latitude, and erected the same into a Province by the name of the Province of Carolina, reviving the old French name, but doubtless with reference to his own. This Province of Carolina was to be held of the King and his successors in Capite by Knight's service, by rendering, besides other things, “one circle of gold formed in the fashion of a crown, of the weight of twenty ounces, with this inscription ingraved upon it: DEUS CORONET OPUS SUUM, whensoever and as often as it shall happen, that we, our heirs or successors shall enter the said Region.”
Nothing was done towards the settlement of the country under this Patent of Charles I. but it is interesting as being the formal act whereby the name CAROLINA was authoritatively affixed by the English Crown to the region lying between Virginia and the Spanish settlements to the southward.
The first attempt at the actual settlement of the country, after the failure of Sir Walter Raleigh's schemes, so far as we know, was made by a clergyman of the Church. In 1653 the Virginia Assembly passed an act for the encouragement of “Roger Green, Clark,” i.e. clergyman, in settling the Moratoc or Roanoke river and the south side of Chowan river. Nothing, however, seems to have come of this.
The permanent settlement of North Carolina is usually reckoned from the date of George Durant's deed for Durant's Neck in Perquimans County, March, 1661—2. At this time the Governor of Virginia seems to have exercised some sort of authority over the territory, as representing the English crown, but in 1663, and in 1665, Charles II. issued his two Charters to the Lords Proprietors, granting them the Province of Carolina; the limits in the former Charter being identical with those of Sir Robert Heath's Patent of 1629, while the latter extended those limits two degrees on the south, and a half degree on the north, making the bounds of the Province from 29° to 36° 30′ north latitude, and from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the South Sea.
Both the Charters of Charles II. expressly provide for a religious establishment, in accordance with the ecclesiastical laws of England, and for the building and endowment of Churches, Chapels and Oratories; though they permit the Lords Proprietors to grant liberty of conscience and of worship, upon such terms and under such restrictions as they may think proper, to those persons who could not in their private conscience conform to the Church of England.
In accordance with the provisions of the Charters, the Lords Proprietors in their “proposals” for settlers advertised far and wide the advantages of their Colony of Carolina on account of the religious liberty to be allowed all its inhabitants, upon condition that they would not interfere with the like liberty of others, and that they should be obedient to the laws of the country, as well ecclesiastical as civil. These proposals were industriously circulated, especially in New England and Barbadoes, and the general promise of religious toleration allowed by the Charters became widely known before the Proprietors published any scheme of government for their Province. Indeed, the Lords Proprietors seem at one time to have contemplated granting to the people the right of regulating ecclesiastical affairs at their own pleasure. In 1667 their instructions to Governor Stevens seem to go to this length, as they offer to allow the Assembly of the Province to choose such ministers as they may prefer, and pledge the Lords Proprietors not to interfere with them. No such action, however, was taken by the Assembly.
In 1669 the Lords Proprietors published their famous FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS OF CAROLINA. These were never enforced in North Carolina, but they are to be noted as being the first formal establishment of the Church in the Colony in theory. It has frequently been alleged that those clauses of the Constitutions which provide that the Church of England shall be the only Church supported by grants from the public funds (it “being the only true and orthodox, and the national religion of all the King's dominions”), are contrary to the privileges secured to the people by the Charters. But it will be observed that these Fundamental Constitutions, while giving this support to the Church, are really much more explicit than either of the Charters in securing the fullest religious liberty to all who will subscribe themselves believers in God, even providing for the case of Jews and of the heathen. In providing
for the support of the Church they are but carrying out the plain requirements of the Charters. Locke was one of the most tolerant of men, and his hand is more plainly seen in the provisions concerning religion than in any other part of these “Constitutions;” but he believed in the principle of a public religious establishment, and he incorporated it in the instrument. It is further characteristic of Locke that the Fundamental Constitutions deny all civil privileges to atheists.
Thus in theory we see the Church established in the Province of Carolina. Whether we take the Constitutions of Locke and the Lords Proprietors, or the Charters of Charles II., to be the fundamental law—in either case the Church was “by law established” in the Province. Other forms of religion were to be freely tolerated, but this alone was the true and orthodox Church, and the national religion of all the King's dominions.
But what of the people during all this time? They had nothing to do with all this prescribing of rights and duties and liberties and toleration, and they probably cared very little about it. The population in the first instance had come mostly from Virginia and had followed the courses of the creeks and rivers along the north side of Albemarle Sound. Later they crossed over to Bath, and spread up the Roanoke, and began to come into the southerly parts of the Province from New England and Barbadoes. But they were mostly men of small means, intent upon taking up good lands, and careless of all forms of religion—though owning some kind of allegiance to the Church of England, where they had any religious preference. This is contrary to the commonly accepted theory of our histories. They would have us believe that the first Colonists were men of great earnestness of religious feeling, chiefly Quakers and Baptists, who for conscience sake had abandoned their former homes in New England and in Virginia, to escape from the persecution of Puritans and Calvinists in the one
and of Churchmen in the other. Every one of our State historians accepts this view of our early settlement and magnifies it. I undertake to say that is absolutely and entirely false; that it not only lacks a preponderance of testimony in its favor but that it is absolutely without any contemporaneous evidence whatever. And not only so, but such evidence as we have leads to the conclusion that the great majority of our first settlers along the north side of Albemarle Sound, up the Roanoke, in Bath and Pamplico, and along the mouth of the Cape Fear, were by descent and by preference attached to the Church of their mother country—so far as they had any religious convictions or preferences. The space at command is too limited to allow of a satisfactory discussion of so difficult a question, difficult not in itself, but because it has been so long and so persistently misrepresented. Only a brief summary of the evidence can be given.
George Durant's settlement was in 1662; William Drummond was appointed Governor by Sir William Berkley in 1663. By the year 1672 the number of the colonists had very considerably increased on the streams flowing into the north side of Albemarle Sound and on both sides of the Chowan river; but the population was almost exclusively confined to these localities. In the Spring of 1672 William Edmundson, the first Quaker preacher who ever came to North Carolina, made a dangerous and toilsome journey on foot from the Virginia settlements to visit a family of Quakers living on Perquimans river. They had removed to North Carolina from New England in 1665. When upon a Sunday morning in the end of March William Edmundson appeared at their house, and they found that he and his two companions were Quakers—or, in their language, Friends, they were so overcome that they wept for joy “not having seen a Friend for seven years before.” They soon called together their neighbors, who by Edmundson's own testimony were utterly ignorant of
his religious methods, and this Quaker preacher conducted the first public religious service in Albemarle. The next day he conducted another meeting a few miles off across the Perquimans river, and Tuesday he and his companions set out upon their return to Virginia. Edmundson made a number of converts at these two meetings, but his journal makes it plain that Henry Phillips and his family were the only Quakers whom he found in the settlements.
In November of the same year George Fox also visited the Colony of Albemarle. Instead of breaking through the swamps and forests by a direct journey on foot to the middle of the settlements, as Edmundson had done, he traveled from Nansemond in Virginia by way of Sommertown to “Bonner's Creek,” i.e. Bennett's Creek, on horseback; and leaving their horses there, he and his companions took a canoe and came in by way of the Chowan river. He held a meeting at Hugh Smith's on the Chowan (which he calls “Macocomocock”), but he tells us in his journal that there were “no Friends inhabiting this part of the country.” When he reached the region of Edmundson's ministrations he met with a very favorable reception, and found evidences of Edmundson's preaching in one or more persons who had been indoctrinated with Quaker principles thereby. Fox made a permanent impression upon the people along the north side of Albemarle Sound, and from this time we date the Quaker “meetings” in the region of Perquimans and Pasquotank. But it is plain from the journals of these two Quaker preachers, the first who visited this region, that they found none of their brethren in Albemarle save the single family of Phillips on Perquimans river. Fox testifies in positive and unequivocal language that there were none in the western section on Chowan river; and his closing words with reference to this visit are conclusive as to the general condition of the whole Colony before his coming: “Having visited the north part of Carolina,
and made a little entrance for the truth among the people there, we began to return again toward Virginia.”
These journals are indirectly of almost equal weight in proving that the Colonists were not Baptists, as has sometimes been alleged. The fact that Fox and Edmundson met with no kind of religious worship or institutions among the people, the admitted fact that for ten years after the settlement of the country there was no public worship whatever, shows that the inhabitants were not religious refugees of any kind. Men who go out into the wilderness for freedom of religion are men who care enough about their religion to give public expression to it after they have gained the freedom which they sought. If the men who left Virginia and New England to come to Albemarle professed to be Baptists and Quakers, and pretended to be in search of liberty of conscience and of worship,—“freedom to worship God,”—we can have but little respect for their sincerity, since in their new homes they neglected the public worship of God altogether for so many years.
But we have other most weighty testimony directly in point, and in part contemporary. Henderson Walker came into the Colony about 1679. He at one time or another held nearly all the most important offices in the government, dying in the office of Governor in 1704. He was one of the most admirable men who ever administered the affairs of Albemarle. He had been brought into personal contact and intercourse with the men associated with Durant in the settlement of 1662, and had made minute official investigations into the circumstances of that settlement. He had no motive to tempt him to misrepresent the facts, and his character is too high to allow any suspicion of untruthfulness to attach to his testimony. And though his testimony is direct, it is given incidentally. It was a matter of no concern to him what might have been the religious belief of the first settlers. Writing to the Bishop of London in 1703, and describing the spiritual
destitution of the people, he says, “George Fox, some years ago, came into these parts, and by strange infatuations did infuse the Quakers’ principles into some small number of the people; who did and hath continued to grow ever since very numerous by reason of their yearly sending in of men to encourage and exhort them to their wicked principles.” The first two missionaries sent to North Carolina by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, for permanent work, were the Rev. Wm. Gordon and the Rev. James Adams. They both testify that the only body of dissenters in the Colony were the Quakers. There were none of these in Chowan, nor in Curratuck, and apparently none south of the Sound in Pamplico. They were a strong minority in Pasquotank, and possibly a majority in Perquimans. Both these ministers met with a good deal of opposition from the Quakers, and they write fully and freely upon the subject. It is perfectly certain from their letters that there were no Baptists at all in the Colony, no Quakers to speak of outside of the two counties named, and that the few Presbyterians scattered about among the people willingly accepted the ministrations of the missionaries, and brought their children to be baptized into the Church. The claim that the Quakers had been the original settlers appears for the first time in Mr. Gordon's report to the Society May 13th, 1709. Mr. Gordon says he heard of such a “pretence” on their part; “but this,” he says, “(according to the best accounts I could get) seems false in fact,—that religion being scarce heard of there till some years after the settlement; it is true some of the most ancient inhabitants, after George Fox went over, did turn Quakers.” Here is both the statement of the fact and the explanation of the Quakers’ claim. They could truly claim that some of the first settlers were Quakers, but they had become Quakers after their settlement in Albemarle. Even here, however, there is no suggestion that they had come as religious refugees.
All the early authorities go to show that the first settlers were very much the same class of men as those who on our frontiers are to-day the pioneers of civilization; men of small means, of restless spirit, of immense courage and energy and independence; but careless in regard to the outward observances of religion. They were mostly of English blood, and by descent and by baptism members of the Church of England, but ignorant of her principles and indifferent to her claims, though accustomed to profess a certain kind of allegiance to her worship and ministry. Both the charters of King Charles provided for the establishment of the Church; the Fundamental Constitutions, published in 1669, formally enacted that the Church of the mother country should be the Church of Carolina. This was known and recognized by all; but they were in no hurry to lay taxes for the Church's support. They had gotten along pretty well so far; meanwhile there were the Quaker meetings, the pious could go to them. This was the condition of things at the end of the 17th century. With the beginning of the 18th there is a faint stir of life.
Under God the Church in America owes more to the Rev. Thomas Bray than to any other one man who ever lived. He founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; he established public libraries throughout all the American Colonies; he was instrumental in supplying schools and teachers for Indians and negroes as well as for the whites; and he came over himself and labored for the upbuilding of the church, as commissary of the Bishop of London in Maryland. He seems to have proposed visiting Albemarle, for under date of December 20th, 1699, the Lords Proprietors wrote to the Governor and Council concerning “the Reverend Doctor Bray, a learned, pious, and charitable man, coming into America Suffragan and Commissioner to the Bishop of London, your Diocesan, and designing to give you a
visit.” They are directed to entertain him, and to charge the cost to the public account. He did not make the purposed visit to Albemarle, but he sent a number of tracts and catechisms for popular distribution, and a little later he sent a clergyman, one Daniel Brett, and £100 worth of books for a public library to be kept at Bath. We know nothing of Mr. Brett, but that he proved to be an unworthy man who brought great grief and shame to the friends of the Church. After about six months service he disappears from our view.
But the incorporation of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the mission of Dr. Bray stirred up the friends of the Church in Albemarle, and gave them hopes of seeing the Church at last set up in this new Colony. In November, 1701, the Assembly passed an Act constituting each of the four precincts in Albemarle, i.e. Chowan, Perquimans, Pasquotank and Curratuck, and also one precinct, Pamplico, in Bath County, parishes, and appointing a select vestry in each. The vestry were empowered to lay a tax of not more than five shillings per poll to build churches, buy glebes, employ ministers, etc.; the minister's salary was fixed at £30 per annum in commodities of the country, equivalent to about £16 sterling. It may be interesting to see the names of the Chowan vestry appointed by this act of 1701. They were the Hon. Henderson Walker, Col. Thomas Pollock, William Duckenfield, Esq., Mr. Nicholas Crisp, Mr. Edward Smithwick, Mr. John Blount, Mr. Nathaniel Chevin, Mr. William Banbury, Col. William Wilkinson, Capt. Thomas Luten, and Capt. Thomas Blount. A church was built near the site of the present town of Edenton, and another was begun in Perquimans, but not finished.
In 1704 the Rev. John Blair was sent out by the Society, upon funds supplied by Lord Weymouth, that he might see what could be done for the Church. He remained only a few months, and returned with a rather discouraging
account of the prospect. He reported that it was useless to expect the people to provide a sufficient support for the ministers who were needed. He had been by the Governor appointed to take charge of the parish of Chowan, but upon leaving for England, he requested the vestry to expend the salary due him in charity to the poor.
In 1708 the Rev. William Gordon and the Rev. James Adams were sent out by the Society as permanent missionaries, with an annual stipend from the Society. They were put in charge of the four parishes of Albemarle; Chowan and Perquimans being assigned to Mr. Gordon, and Pasquotank and Curratuck to Mr. Adams. They were both, as was also Mr. Blair, most exemplary men and faithful ministers. Their labors are sufficiently described in their letters, which may be read in the second volume of Dr. Hawks's History of North Carolina. Mr. Gordon, however, had remained but a few months, when he felt obliged to return to England. Mr. Adams labored most faithfully for nearly three years, and died towards the end of the year of 1710, in consequence of the hardships and trials which he had so faithfully borne.
The Act of 1701, and the select vestries appointed by it, continued until the Act of March 12th, 1710—11, which appointed new vestries in all the parishes, and which marks a new period in our ecclesiastical affairs. An act had been passed in 1708 somewhat modifying that of 1701, but not making any essential change, nor appointing new vestries, though it somewhat enlarged the powers of the vestry in employing and dismissing a minister. But there was no important change in the ecclesiastical law during the period from 1701 to 1711. It is necessary to bear this in mind. In 1704 a most unjust “Church Act” was passed in South Carolina by the contrivance of Sir Nathaniel Johnston. Though it professed to be highly advantageous to the Church, it was really a political measure. It was bitterly opposed by the only clergyman
in South Carolina; and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel held a special meeting in London upon hearing of it, and resolved to send no more missionaries to South Carolina until it had been repealed. Upon an appeal from South Carolina, the House of Lords declared it void, as being against the Charters; and proceedings were threatened, and even begun, for declaring that the Lords Proprietors had forfeited their franchise.
Just at this juncture Henderson Walker died, in May, 1704, and Sir Nathaniel Johnston sent from South Carolina Robert Daniel, a politician of rather doubtful antecedents, to succeed Walker as deputy Governor. It happened that at the beginning of Gov. Daniel's administration the Act of Parliament, passed in the first year of Queen Anne, imposing the oaths of allegiance to the new sovereign, was officially transmitted to the Governor of North Carolina. Daniel tendered the oaths to the members of the Council and of the Assembly. The Quakers being unable to swear in the usual form, were thereby deprived of their places, and at once began a most bitter attack upon Daniel, sending an agent to England to represent their interests. For several years the government of Albemarle was a scene of unceasing contention and disorder. The Quakers, in order to have a handle by which to move the popular mind, took up their old opposition to the Vestry Act of 1701, and in Perquimans and Pasquotank created much feeling against the Church. On this account our historians have confounded our troubles in 1704 with those of the same date in South Carolina; and it has been asserted, and repeated from one to another, that Gov. Daniel had been sent by Sir Nathaniel Johnston for the purpose of effecting in the northern Colony the ecclesiastical arrangements just carried out in the southern; and that a like Act for excluding dissenters from all places of trust or of profit in the Colony was passed by our Assembly of 1704. Such a confounding of the two governments
was perhaps natural fifty or seventy-five years ago, but is inexcusable now. “The Colonial Records of North Carolina,” published by Col. Wm. L. Saunders, show indirectly, but still sufficiently, that there never was any such legislation in North Carolina; and there is contemporary evidence that Gov. Daniel was extremely indifferent to the interests of the Church. The troubles of 1704 in North Carolina were of a political character. They arose in the first place out of the exclusion of the Quaker members of the Council and of the Assembly, by the imposition of the oaths of allegiance, which were wholly political in their origin and intention. Being thus forced into opposition to the administration, the Quakers revived their old complaints against the Vestry Act of 1701, and strove to make it appear that they were fighting the battle of the people against ecclesiastical oppression. But that this was not the real point at issue is proved by the fact that some of the strongest and most zealous Churchmen, especially Edward Moseley, were leaders against the party represented successively by Govs. Daniel, Glover, and Hyde. In truth the history of this period is exceedingly obscure; and it is probable that whatever may have been the political principles or interests involved in its struggles, they soon became inextricably mingled with local and personal prejudices and passions, so that it is impossible for us now to disentangle their confused threads.
It is in the midst of these sad disturbances that we get our first account of the religious conditions of the people of the new government. The letters and reports of the Revs. Messrs. Blair, Gordon, and Adams set it forth with sufficient fullness. There was no organized religious dissent in the Colony except the Quakers, who were confined to the two precincts of Perquimans and Pasquotank. Mr. Gordon reckoned them as one-tenth of the whole population; Mr. Adams, as perhaps a seventh. It is likely that both these estimates apply only to Albemarle, leaving out
Bath, where there were no Quakers to speak of. A few Presbyterians were in Pasquotank, but they all conformed to the Church under the godly ministry of Mr. Adams. A little Colony of Huguenots from Virginia had recently settled in Bath County; these also conformed willingly to the Church, as the Huguenots in America have usually done. The rest of the population on both sides of Albemarle Sound and along the Pamplico were nominally churchmen, though, as has already been said, they were for the most part ignorant of church principles, and careless of religious obligations. Yet, with all their ignorance and carelessness there was never a time from 1701 to 1776 when the people of North Carolina did not persist in asserting through their legislative assemblies that the Church of the mother country was the Church of the Province.
It may be said in reply, that this was not the Act of the people of North Carolina, but only of a few individuals; that the Act of 1701 was due to Henderson Walker, the Act of 1708 to William Glover; and that the subsequent legislation of the same character was due to the exertions of Swann, of Pollock, of Moseley, or of other particular men. But these men were North Carolinians, and the very best of North Carolinians. What they did was but the expression of the highest and best feeling and thought of the Colony. They exerted only such influence as such men should exert, and always will exert, in the communities of which they form a part. Certainly the churchmen of that day compare favorably with their opponents, Carey, Porter, Lowe, et id omne genus. Why did such men insist upon the establishment and support of the Church by the State? We can see now that their system was a false one, and that in the end the supposed state support was really the ruin of the Church's cause. But to them the Church was an essential part of a well ordered commonwealth. In the midst of a half-reclaimed wilderness, and under innumerable difficulties and perplexities
and discouragements, they were endeavoring to reproduce English civilization and English institutions upon the shores of America. They remembered the part so lately taken by the Church in delivering England from the tyranny of the Stuarts and from the superstition of Rome; they appreciated her wide intellectual and spiritual liberty; they were proud of her great scholars and divines. They felt that the Church was best fitted to cultivate and to develop the rude population which was growing up in these western wilds, and at that same time to keep them close to the best memories and traditions of their race. The leading men in North Carolina at that day had sufficient intelligence and taste to be repelled by the ignorance and narrowness which to a very great extent characterized the dissenters of the Colony; while, being themselves active politicians, it is but too likely that they lacked that impartial and discriminating spirit and that generous religious sympathy, which would have enabled them to recognize under its forbidding exterior the piety and godliness which animated many an ignorant Quaker, who seemed to them only a contentious opposer of truth and common sense. While the leaders must be supposed to have taken some such view of the situation, the mass of the people accepted the establishment of the Church as being part of the necessary machinery of civilization. They were not forward to put the laws in operation, but it was well to have at least some nominal religion for their country.
Thus the ecclesiastical establishment was not only in accordance with the fundamental law as set forth on the two Charters; it also expressed the will of the people of the infant commonwealth. But after all, nothing could have been more disadvantageous to the Church in the end. This legal establishment exasperated the opposition of dissenters, and gave them a handle against the Church, while the pretended support was altogether illusory. The parish
revenues provided by law were never adequate to the support of the minister or to the building of churches. Private liberality always had to maintain the one and to build the other. For example, it was only in the parish of St. Paul's, Chowan, that the services of the Church seem to have been kept up with anything like regularity during the first part of the last century; and from the best data attainable it appears that the whole sum paid by that parish to its ministers for the first ten years, from 1701 to 1711, was only about fifty-five pounds, or possibly less, in the commodities of the country, equivalent to not more than twenty-five pounds sterling. An establishment which practically met the wants of nine-tenths, or at least six-sevenths of the people, could hardly be called very un-reasonable or oppressive, upon the accepted principles of those days. From a purely selfish point of view the money brought into the Colony by the missionaries (during this first period of ten years it must have been between £300 and £400 sterling), the advantage of their character and intelligence upon the new settlements and the ignorant people, the benefit to the young of the schools here and there established by their efforts and maintained as part of their work, and the books circulated among the people, were a very large return for the pitiful sums paid to the missionaries by the people.
The year 1711 was a notable, though not a happy one for the Province of North Carolina. The new Governor, Edward Hyde, had arrived towards the close of the preceding year, and in March 1710—11 the Assembly met. Having for years suffered from the uncertainties of the Proprietary rule, with its deputy governors holding under the Governor of the South Carolina, the Assembly, upon meeting under a Governor appointed for this Province with no dependence upon the Governor or government to the southward, passed an act ignoring the Charters, and asserting that this Province was annexed to, and a member
of, the Crown of England. They claimed their rights as British subjects, and asserted that the constitution and laws of England were the law of the Province, so far as the same were “compatible with our way of living and trade.” The act goes on to provide that the English laws for the establishment of the Church and for the toleration of Protestant Dissenters shall be in force in North Carolina. This is the first enactment of our local Assembly ascertaining and declaring the position of dissenters in the Province. The Charters had merely permitted the Lords Proprietors to grant freedom of religion under such restrictions as they might see fit. The Fundamental Constitutions had contained specific regulations for carrying this permission into effect; but the Fundamental Constitutions had themselves never been put into effect in the Province of North Carolina. This Act of 1711 therefore was the first law upon the subject. It put dissenters upon the same footing as dissenters in England, and settled the question for the rest of our Provincial period.
The law referred to—commonly known as the Act of Toleration—is I. William and Mary St. I. C. 18. It is entitled An Act “for exempting their majesties’ protestant subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the penalties of certain laws.” It does not profess to be an act for granting freedom of religion or of worship in general, but only to certain classes. It was framed expressly to exclude Romanists and Unitarians. But as there were no Papists or Unitarians in the Province, it practically covered the case of all dissenters in North Carolina, and it had been drawn for the very purpose of meeting the case of the classes to which they belonged. The terms of the Act were, in brief, that all penalties imposed for non-conformity should be remitted in the case of Protestant Dissenters who did not deny the doctrine of the Trinity, upon their taking the oaths of allegiance and the test oath (or affirming to the same, if Quakers); that
their places of worship should be registered in the Court of the Bishop, the Arch-Deacon, or the County Sessions; and that the doors of their places of meeting should be unbolted during their time of worship or other assembly. In the case of their ministers, besides the oaths before mentioned, they were to subscribe the Articles, with a reservation as to those which related to ecclesiastical government and infant baptism. This latter provision was aimed against Romanists and Unitarians, as it was understood that the doctrinal statements of the Articles were in accordance with the belief of the great body of English Protestants.
Thus the laws affecting dissenters continued until the Revolution. It is probable that in very few cases were dissenting ministers required to take the oaths or to register the places of religious worship in the County Court, though it was sometimes done. The records of the County Court of Edgecombe contain an entry which illustrates this point, and shows the practical application of the law. During the September term of the County Court for the year 1761, on Thursday of Court, before Aquila Sugg, William Haywood, Duncan Lamon, and Joseph Howell, the Justices holding said Court, “Johnathan Thomas, a Non-conforming Preacher, produced an Ordination Writing signed by George Graham, and John Moore, the Pastures of the Baptists ordaining him to [go] forth and preach the Gospel according to the Tenets of that Church, and he thereupon took the Oaths of Allegiance and subscribed the Test, appointed for that Purpose.” These oaths and test were also required of all civil officers, and of ministers of the Church at the time of their ordination. So far as they had any religious significance they were directed against the Roman Church, and were not objected to by Protestant Dissenters.
Only one case has come to notice where it has been charged that there was any attempt to make use of this
Act of Toleration to harass the dissenters in the Province. In 1740—June term—a number of Baptists applied to the County Court of Craven County for permission to build a chapel. At the same time affidavits were made charging them with sundry misdemeanors. The Court took their recognizances to appear at the September term, and postponed their petition to the same time. At that term, nothing appearing against them, their petition was granted, and they took the oaths, subscribed the test, and assented to the XXXIX Articles with certain reservations. It does not appear that any wrong was done to any one in these proceedings, though the Court certainly exceeded their powers, when they undertook to examine these persons upon the Articles. It seems likely that the misdemeanors charged against the petitioners had reference only to some irregularity in connection with their public worship; and the Court, being convinced of this, very properly passed over the matter, and granted the license prayed for upon their compliance with the terms of the Act of Toleration.*
After this digression we turn again to the year 1711. The Colony had lately been considerably increased by the settlements made by the French, Swiss, and German Protestants at Newbern, under Baron DeGraffenreid. These, though of Calvinistic faith, signified their desire to be included within the established Church, and took measures to have ministers ordained for them by the Bishop of London, and also to introduce the Book of Common Prayer in their own language.
In this year, or at the end of the preceding year, the Rev. John Urmstone arrived in Albemarle and took up his residence in Chowan precinct.
* The statement sometimes seen as a wandering paragraph in the newspapers, that these persons, or some others in a like case, were imprisoned or otherwise punished because they were Baptists, is absurd upon its face. It would have been utterly illegal, and would have subjected the perpetrators to heavy penalties by way of damages.Though Gov. Hyde met with some opposition at first, it soon disappeared, and all seemed to promise a happy administration. At the Assembly in March, Good Friday was set apart as a public fast day, and Mr. Urmstone preached before them, and administered the Holy Communion. The Vestry Act passed was probably not substantially different from the one previously in force, except that it left out the provision concerning the annual hiring of the minister, and abridged the power of dismissal. But on the other hand it did not give the minister a seat in the vestry, at which Urmstone made bitter complaint. He gives a most unfavorable account of a meeting of the vestry of some parish which he does not name. He is not worthy of credit where he had any interest involved, and his account is inconsistent with the character of at least some of the members of the vestry. In truth Urmstone is the most disgraceful character in the history of the Church in America. He was scurrillous, profane, intemperate, and mendacious. He did more harm to the cause of the Church in North Carolina than any man who has ever figured in our history, and it is utterly incredible that he should have been allowed for ten years to blast the prospects of the Church in the Province by his presence. Yet so it was. His letters are a tissue of abuse, vulgarity, and falsehood—though not lacking in a certain coarse humor, and considerable keenness of observation. His appearance upon the stage of action is one of the events which mark and which darken the records of 1711.
Before Gov. Hyde had fairly gotten into the administration of his government after the flight of Carey, came the terrible Indian outbreak and massacre of September 22nd. We can hardly realize the horror and hopelessness of the situation when from the Pamplico to the new settlements on the Neuse all seemed swept away in blood in one awful night. Reading the meagre accounts which have come down to us it seems amazing that there should have
been anything saved from the wreck. The whole country for weeks after seems to have been utterly unprotected, and at the mercy of the merciless savages.
For a year or two it would have been impossible for the most diligent missionaries to have accomplished anything. The Rev. Giles Rainsford, sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, arrived in Albemarle in May, 1712, and was kindly received by the new Governor, and other of the principal inhabitants. He and Mr. Urmstone entered into an agreement whereby Mr. Rainsford was to supply the country south and west of Albemarle Sound and the Chowan river, while Mr. Urmstone was to confine himself to the region north and east of the same waters. This agreement, however, was not long observed by Mr. Rainsford. He very soon removed from the south shore to the upper part of Chowan, and thence, after a few months to Virginia, where he took a cure from Lady Day to Michaelmas 1713. He may have officiated within the bounds of Albemarle after this time, and he seems to have interested himself a good deal in the remains of the Chowan and other Indian tribes living on the frontier between the two governments, but he returned to England in 1716, and we hear no more of him.
Gov. Eden took the oath of office in May, 1714. The second session of the Assembly after the beginning of his administration put forth in November, 1715, a revision of the Laws of the Province, and among others a new and enlarged Vestry Act. It was probably only a re-enactment of the laws on the same subject passed in 1701, 1708, and 1711, in its essential features, but it increased the number of parishes from five to nine, and allowed the vestry to fix the salary of the minister, at any sum not less than fifty pounds in the currency of the Province. An act was also passed for the suppression of vice and profaneness, and the
better observance of the Lords’ Day, January 30th, May 29th, and September 22nd.*
The Act of 1715 continued in force, new parishes being from time to time erected by the Assembly, until 1741. The provision thereby made for the Clergy was meagre enough, though liberal, considering the condition of the country. There was, however, little disposition on the part of the vestries to put the law into operation; and there were no clergymen to do the service required.
In October, 1718, Commissary Johnston of South Carolina, by the direction of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, sent the Rev. Ebenezer Taylor to Albemarle. Mr. Taylor spent his first year upon the south-west shore of Chowan, living with Mr. Duckenfield, and taking great pains to instruct his negro and Indian slaves, several of whom he baptized. He was stopped in this good work by a popular prejudice, which shows itself again and again in Colonial days, that the slave who was baptized was thereby manumitted. From the south shore of Chowan Mr. Taylor removed to Perquimans, and thence to Bath and the country to the south. Mr. Urmstone says that he was old and feeble, and very unfit for the work. He was certainly diligent, faithful, and devout. He rejected the legal provision made for the clergy and lived upon the voluntary offerings of the people, as did others of our Colonial clergy. He very much deplored the irreligion of the people, and the carelessness of even the professed Christians. They had been so long unaccustomed to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, that he could not prevail upon them to come to it; they seemed struck with fear that it would be to their condemnation. Mr. Taylor's end was a sad one. Making a missionary tour from Bath to
* January 30th, and May 29th, in the English Calendar commemorate respectively the Execution of Charles 1., and the Restoration of Charles II. September 22nd was by our Provincial Assembly appointed to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer in commemoration of the awful Indian massacre of September 22nd, 1711.Core Sound in February, 1720, he was exposed in an open boat for ten days in very severe weather, and died on an island near the mouth of Neuse river. He was buried on Harbour Island by men who were there hunting hogs; and there were very grave suspicions of foul play, since it was afterwards discovered that they had taken possession of money or other property which he had with him to the amount of two hundred and ninety pounds. This was eventually recovered by his administrators.
The death of Mr. Taylor left Mr. Urmstone again the sole minister in the Colony. But to the happiness of all parties he took a sudden leave in March, 1721, acquainting no one with his intentions save Col. Moseley, in whose hands he left his plantation and other interests in Albemarle. We are so thankful to be rid of him that we will not pause to moralize upon his character.
Very little is known of the scattered congregations for some years following Urmstone's departure. The Rev. John Newman was sent out by the Society in the Autumn of 1721 to succeed him in Chowan, but he died after only six months’ service, leaving a widow who seems to have been generously treated by the parish and by the people generally.
In the stormy times of Burrington and Everard, two ministers, Thomas Bailey and John Blacknall, appear for a moment in the midst of the tumult, and come in for a share of the scurrillous abuse of the period, which some of our later writers have repeated. There is, however, no sufficient evidence upon which to base an estimate of their character or of their work.*
* The Vestry of St. Thomas’ Church, Bath, and also the Vestry of Hyde precinct in 1726 petitioned the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in favor of Mr. Bailey, and testified of his character and work for the three years which he spent in North Carolina. As to Mr. Blacknall's having married a white man to a negro woman—or a mulatto most likely—the fact that he informed against himself is in his favor. He had probably been imposed upon; or being a new comer in America, he may have been ignorant of the law. Having inadvertently committed a breach of the local law, he could only come forward and submit to the Court, and lessen the penalty as much as possible by claiming half of it. Save this one matter there is not a word against him.Again, in 1732, the Rev. Bevil Granville, a clergyman induced by Lord Baltimore to leave England for Maryland, happened to be landed in North Carolina, and was persuaded to spend a year in Chowan, where his ministrations seem to have been very acceptable to the people.
Upon the Cape Fear there was no organized parish until 1729. But the year previous the Rev. John Lapierre, a French Huguenot, who had been ordained by the Bishop of London in 1708, and for many years had served a congregation of his own people in South Carolina, called St. Dennis’ Parish, came into the region of the Cape Fear river upon the invitation of the people, and with the consent of Commissary Garden. For a while he was supported by the voluntary gifts of the people. Afterwards the newly appointed vestry laid a parish rate for his support. After a few years he was supplanted, according to his own account, by the Rev. Richard Marsden, who offered his services gratuitously. Mr. Marsden had himself been a minister in South Carolina from 1705 to 1709, but had now become an inhabitant of New Hanover, and was chiefly engaged in planting and trading. He was anxious to be appointed to this field by the Society, but his application seems not to have been favorably received. He officiated also for a while in Onslow. At this same time, 1732, the Rev. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, officiated once a month in Bertie.
It is during this period of transition from Proprietary to Royal rule that we first find another body of dissenters besides the Quakers rising to notice. Paul Palmer, of Perquimans, the first Baptist preacher in North Carolina, began his work about 1727, and from this date the Baptists grew stronger and stronger in the Province. There was
no real provision made for the spiritual wants of the people, and so they gradually forgot their faint traditional attachment to the Church, and went to such religious meetings, Baptist or Quaker, as they could find.
One sign of life shows itself in this period of darkness. Mr. John Boyd, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, and for some years a physician in Virginia, went from North Carolina, our first candidate for Holy Orders, in 1732, and after having been ordained in England, returned, and became the minister in the North-West Parish, of Bertie. There were no dissenters in this parish, and the people seemed eager for his services. He reported to the Society that private subscriptions had been started to build four chapels. In 1737 Commissary Garden wrote to the Bishop of London that he heard had reports of Mr. Boyd, that he was intemperate and neglected his duties; but about this time he seems to have died, still one of the Missionaries of the Society.
Gov. Burrington was succeeded in 1734 by Gabriel Johnston. There was no legislation under his administration affecting the general interests of the Church until the Act of 1741; c. xxiii.
A Vestry Act had been passed in 1729, but it is doubtful whether it was ever operative. We are unacquainted with its precise character, as it has never been printed. It seems most probable that up to 1741 the original Vestry Act of 1771, as modified by the Acts of 1708, 1711, and 1716, remained in force. None of these acts made any provision for the election of vestrymen by the people. The vestrymen for each parish were named in those acts, and each parish vestry was a close corporation, independent and irresponsible.
The Act of 1741 provided that the Vestry should be chosen on Easter Monday of every alternate year beginning in 1742, by the freeholders of the parish in an election to be held by the Sherff. Besides the five parishes created by the Act of 1701, the four added in 1715, and six by
special acts from 1715 to 1740, the act of 1741 added two new ones, making the whole number seventeen. The vestrymen were required to take the usual oaths and to subscribe a declaration that they would not oppose the liturgy of the Church. Professed dissenters were, as in former legislation, allowed to decline to serve, if elected upon the vestry, though they were free to serve, if they chose to do so. In short, the act of 1741 is substantially the same as the former law, except as regards the biennial election of the vestry by the freeholders of the parish, and the power now given the vestry to withdraw the stipend from a minister guilty of scandalous immorality. The provision of 1715, allowing the vestry to fix the minister's salary, but setting the minimum at fifty pounds in the currency of the country, was continued in this act of 1741.
The marriage act passed the same year, 1741, c. I., has been quoted as if it conferred upon clergymen of the Church the privilege of performing marriages, which it witheld from other ministers; but a careful examination of our legislation will show that the Assembly of the Province never professed to give to the clergy such a right, but only recognized a right which rested upon prescription. Our earliest colonial legislation provided that the civil magistrate might perform this office, upon the express ground of necessity, because there were no clergy. As soon as ministers of the Church came into the Province they were recognized as having this right, without any act of the Assembly. The act of 1715 distinctly recognizes this, and only gives the magistrates the right to join persons in marriage in cases where no minister is to be had. The act of 1741 c. I. simply brings forward this feature of the former legislation in slightly altered phraseology, and declares the right to be in the clergy. Furthermore, in 1741 there was no organized body of dissenters in the Province, and, so far as we know, not a single dissenting minister who claimed any
ministerial authority to perform the marriage ceremony, or considered that a part of his pastoral duties or functions.*
The ministers of the Church in the Province of North Carolina in 1741 were the Rev. Mr. Garzia of St. Thomas's Church, Bath; the Rev. James Moir, who had lately come from South Carolina to St. James's Church, New Hanover; the Rev. Richard Marsden, who by this time had ceased officiating, and who died about the end of the year 1742; and the Rev. John Lapierre before mentioned, who, being ousted from New Hanover by Mr. Marsden's gratuitous ministrations, seems to have gone to Newbern about 1735, and to have remained in those parts until his death, which did not occur, as we have reason to believe, earlier than the year 1755. It may be mentioned here, though this is anticipating the proper order of events, that there was at this time on the Cape Fear, where he had lived since 1729, a certain Christopher Bevis, in Holy Orders, who in 1748, after Mr. Moir's departure, for a moment resumed the ministerial character, and was forced by the necessities of the people to exercise the sacred functions which ill health had caused him to lay aside since 1728. But he relapsed as suddenly into oblivion after a single letter to the Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
* It seems probable that all through the Colonial period the people acted upon the Common Law principle that consent, in whatever public and formal manner expressed, followed by cohabitation, constituted a valid marriage; and though the law might prescribe some special manner of consent, and provide a means of its certification, and the preservation of the evidence thereof, it would not deny validity to such marriages, however defective the contract might be in regard to legal formalities. We know that from the beginning of the Quaker meetings they married after their own fashion, calling in neither minister nor magistrate. And the Presbyterian marriages, performed by their own ministers before the enabling act of 1766 c. IX., and in direct violation of the law, which required all marriages to be either by license or by publication of banns, were held to be legal. It is more than probable that the law upon the subject was but carelessly observed in the settlements remote from court houses and clerks. The sanctity of marriage depends not upon the mode of solemnization, but arises out of the relation itself.Mr. Garzia had come to St. Thomas's Church, Bath, about 1735. He was a faithful and devoted minister. He died November 29th, 1744, from injuries received by a fall from his horse in returning from a visit to a sick parishioner. He left a wife and three children but ill provided for, who seem to have been recipients of the bounty of the Society, which had enrolled him upon its list of missionaries several years before his death. It was probably during his incumbency that St. Thomas's acquired its glebe of three hundred acres and its glebe house, the only one ever owned by any parish during the provincial period.
Mr. Moir continued in New Hanover, first at St. James's, Wilmington, and then at St. Philip's, Brunswick, until about the beginning of 1747, when he removed to Edgecombe upon the invitation of the inhabitants of that large and populous parish, at that time perhaps the most populous in the Province.
In 1743, or early in 1744, Clement Hall, Esq., of Perquimans, in the Commission of the Peace, with a reputation for “honour, diligence and fidelity,” who had been for several years a lay reader in his parish, laid before the Bishop of London testimonials of his character, and applied for Holy Orders. After being examined he was ordained Deacon and Priest in 1744, and returned at once to North Carolina with a commission from the Society as their itinerant missionary. He found his patrimony much wasted from want of proper care during his absence. He at once set about the work of his holy calling with the same “honour, diligence and fidelity” which had marked his secular life. Two Sundays in each month he officiated in St. Paul Church, Edenton, and the other Sundays in distant parts of the parish. But regularly every year, in fulfilment of his duty to the wider field, he took his journeys east and west. From the old settlements of Perquimans and Pasquotank, to the distant frontiers of Granville, this eager messenger made his annual or semi-annual
tours, baptizing infants and adults, catechising the children, churching women, and administering the Holy Communion to the rude folk, who learned to love and trust this holy man. Everywhere he preached to such crowds that no house would hold them, but they were forced to seek the shelter of the groves, where the birds were the choristers, and where, in the pauses between their music, they “heard the bass of heaven's deep organ blow.” Upon one of these tours, during the pleasant September and October weather of the year 1753, he reports that in thirty-five days he traveled 536 miles, officiated in 23 congregations, baptized 467 white and 21 black children, and 2 white women. Such zeal as this bore fruit in the people upon whom it was poured out. Where other missionaries could find only misery and discouragenent, profane people and contentious vestrymen, he found happiness and hope, and some measure of response to his own goodness. The work upon St. Paul's Church, Edenton, was renewed with vigor; even Corbin, Earl Granville's unpopular agent, assured him that he would spare no pains to accomplish the work; and he lived to see it put in a fair way of being completed. In 1755 he lost his house, his books, and pretty much all his personal property, by fire. He went to his reward in 1759, after a ministry of fifteen years. We have no exact account of all his labors, but we may judge the whole from his account of a part. In 1752, when he had run half his course, he estimated that he had travelled 14,000 miles, preached nearly 700 sermons, and baptized more than 6,000 persons, (including several hundred negroes and Indians). He reckoned the number of communicants in his circuit at 400, which, considering the backwardness of the people in those days to come to the Holy Communion, was a wonderful number. In Anderson's “History of the Church of England in the Colonies” the account of him closes with these words: “In weariness and painfulness, yet with faith and hope unbroken, he persevered unto
the end; and * * * worn out with sickness and hard toil, Clement Hall closed, in the bosom of an affectionate and grateful people, a career of pious usefulness which has rarely, if ever, been equalled.”
The Rev. James Moir, in Edgecombe, had also a laborious life, and for a while he travelled and preached extensively. A church was built on Tar River, about eight miles above the present town of Tarborough, and also two chapels in other parts of the county, one of which was probably old Conacanara in Halifax. The vestry also took orders for building four others. In 1756 the lower part of the county was made a separate parish, called St. Mary's Parish, which became Mr. Moir's charge. The upper part remained Edgecombe Parish, but soon after became a separate county by the name of Halifax. Mr. Moir is an example of the Establishment idea applied to the facts of American colonial life. His case illustrates the whole story of the failure of the Church in the Province. He did not lack abilities or worth, but he was all the time vexing himself and railing at his circumstances because he could not make the established system work. Clement Hall, born in the new country, and desirous simply of bringing the Gospel to bear upon the people, found the system no insuperable barrier, because he was not working the system. James Moir, side by side with him, accomplished little or nothing, because he was fettered by that system under which he had been brought up. He remained in Edgecombe until the summer of 1762, when he removed to St. George's Parish, Northampton county, where there was a church, and also three chapels, though he continued to officiate in St. Mary's until his death in February, 1767. He was one of the Commissioners appointed in 1760 to lay out the town of Tarborough, and perhaps it is to him that we owe the ecclesiastical nomenclature of the streets—St. George's, St. Patrick's, St. David's, and St. Joshua's. He also, like Mr. Hall, reports a wonderful
number of baptisms, but is not so exact in his statistics. In one report he excuses himself for this by saying that he had no one to count the children as he baptized them, and so could not tell the exact number.
In 1753 there came into the Province the Rev. Alexander Stewart, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and minister of St. Thomas’ Church, Bath. His name deserves to be put alongside of that of Clement Hall. Until the spring of 1771, through much sickness and fatigue, and amid vexations and hardships, he spoke the word of God to the people of Beaufort, Hyde and Pitt counties, serving thirteen chapels besides his parish church. The negroes and Indians claimed his special care. He visited the remains of the “Attamuskeets,” Hatteras and Roanoke tribes of Indians in Hyde county, and endeavored to teach them the principles of Christianity. As agent and superintendent for North Carolina of the society called “Dr. Bray's Associates,” he established a school for their benefit. He paid a school-mistress to teach Indian boys and girls, and also one or two negro children, to read, and supplied them with books. The church at Bath, though begun some years before, was not entirely finished until 1762. He suffered much from sickness during the latter part of his life, and upon one occasion had to be carried from Bath to Newbern in a horse litter to consult physicians in regard to a dreadful attack of rheumatism which had deprived him of the use of his limbs. He crowned his work in Bath by sending forward two notable men to England as candidates for Holy Orders, Mr. Peter Blinn and Mr. Nathaniel Blount. The latter did not go over until the second year after Mr. Stewart's death, but we can not doubt that it was his influence which helped to prepare so worthy a successor to stand in his place when he was gone, and to hand down, almost to our day, his testimony to the truth.
The same year which brought Mr. Stewart to Bath gave
the Rev. James Reed to Christ Church, Newbern. He came over from England with his family in response to an offer and appeal sent to England by the vestry of Craven Parish. The special agreement between him and his vestry was confirmed by Act of the Assembly 1754 c. XVI. In 1758 he was made one of the missionaries of the Society. He well deserved the appointment, for besides his church in Newbern he served nine chapels in Craven and Carteret Counties. His long and faithful services can not be adequately presented in a summary. He acted as Chaplain to the Assembly; he built and carried through to such measure of success as it attained, the Newbern Academy. Mr. Reed saw the troubles of 1776 coming on, but he stood to his royalist principles, and he disappears from our North Carolina annuals praying heartily for King George, while the drums of marching soldiers drown his voice and the clouds of war wrap him from our view. He left behind him the memory of a man of honor and a faithful minister of God. The patriotic churchmen of Newbern, Nash, and Speight and Leech, thought not the worse of him for bravely siding with the country of his birth.
The Rev. John McDowell in 1754 became minister at Wilmington, by that time grown to be the largest town in in the Province. He was put into orders upon Gov. Dobbs's recommendation, and spent the whole of his ministry in New Hanover, at St. James’,s Wilmington, and St. Philip's, Brunswick. In 1760 he was made a missionary of the Society. Handsome churches had some years before this been begun both in Wilmington and in Brunswick, though the latter was not finished until 1768, while the former was still longer in building. Mr. McDowell died in 1763, and was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. Barnett in 1765. The Rev. John Mills became the minister in 1769, and in 1774 the Rev. Nicholas Christian was in charge; we know very little of either of them.
In Edenton the Rev. Clement Hall was succeeded in
1759, immediately upon his death, by the Rev. Daniel Earl. The large and handsome parish church, begun by private subscription before the year 1740, towards which the Lords Proprietors had given £200, was probably so far finished in Mr. Hall's time as to be occupied, but was not completed until many years after. Mr. Earl frequently speaks of its being in a dilapidated condition. He confined his ministrations chiefly to St. Paul's Church, and continued in charge for the greater part, if not the whole, of the Revolution.
The Rev. Thomas Burges became the minister of Edgecombe Parish, Halifax county, in October, 1759. His special agreements made with the vestry of that parish were confirmed by two private acts of the Provincial Assembly, the first by the Act of 1760 c. VII.; the second by Act of 1764, 2d Sess., c. XVII. He continued rector of this parish till the Revolution, or thereabouts. It may be mentioned that when the town of Tarborough was laid off in 1760, and the lots sold, parson Burges bought the lot upon which Calvary Church was erected in 1834. When the church came to be built his grandson, Thomas Burges, Esq., conveyed the lot to the vestry for that purpose.
With the administration of Gov. Tryon a new era of activity in ecclesiastical affairs begins. Gabriel Johnston and Arthur Dobbs were both zealous churchmen, but Tryon's activity in seeking to advance the cause of the Church and of religion in the Province, was quite beyond anything which had been seen before. Yet it was not the zeal of a mere sectarian bigotry. All our historians have admitted that he met the dissenting interests of the country with a generous appreciation and tolerance which to a very great extent won their good will. Upon the outbreak of the first Regulation troubles in 1768 the Presbyterian ministers united in an address to him, in which they declared that they had the highest sense of the justice and benevolence of his administration, under which they say that they enjoyed
all the blessings of civil and religious liberty, or words to that effect. They also put forth a pastoral letter to their people, quite as ardent in its expressions of loyalty to King George as was parson Micklejohn's sermon before the troops at Hillsboro’ upon the text, “The powers that be are ordained of God.” Gov. Tryon, on his part, always speaks of the Presbyterians, and also of the Quakers, with the highest respect. As a civil administrator, bred in the school of military discipline, he had less respect for the ruder and more extravagant forms of religious enthusiasm—the “New Lights” and the “Separatists”—who were becoming so numerous in some quarters. But no complaint has come down to us from any religious body against his ecclesiastical administration. His zeal for the Church, and his great interest in the business of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, probably had their origin in some close relationship to that work. In 1730 the treasurer of the Society was “William Tryon, Merchant, Lime Street, London;” a few years later “William and Thomas Tryon” shared the office. It is probable that Gov. Tryon was a son of one of these, and that his boyhood had been nurtured in close association with the venerable Missionary Society of the Church of England. Certain it is that he zealously promoted the interests of the Church in North Carolina, and all her ministers found in his house hospitality and hearty sympathy, and in him a ready and indefatigable friend.
The exact state of the ecclesiastical laws during Dobbs's administration is not very clear, owing to the repeal of some laws by royal proclamation, and the consequent failure of other laws dependent upon them. As well as I can understand, it was about as follows: A number of acts were passed from 1754 to 1764, but from one cause or another they were repealed by the Assembly or disallowed by the King in Council, until in 1762 the Province was somehow left without any legal vestries whatever, and the ministers
had to manage as they could. This was remedied, however, by the passage of the act of 1764 c. II., making elaborate provision for the election of vestrymen and the support of the ministers, etc., which was to continue only five years, but which, with some slight amendments, remained the law of the land until the close of the royal government. This law raised the minister's salary to £133 per annnm, and provided better security for his getting it. It still, however, left the election of vestrymen to the free-holders of the parish, and thereby winked at the disregard of the law in those parishes where the inhabitants did not desire to have the services of the Church. But the vicious system of a legal establishment was bearing its fruit, and we see a sign of it, in this act of 1764, in the provision that any person elected a vestryman who should refuse to qualify, if a known dissenter, should be fined three pounds. Heretofore, dissenters had been excused from serving; now they alone are forced by a penalty to serve if elected. This points to the fact that the law had been defeated by dissenters taking advantage of the former indulgence of the law, and procuring themselves to be elected vestrymen, in order that by refusing to serve they might render the law ineffectual.
So far as we know only one contest took place under these acts between churchmen and dissenters in regard to the enforcement of the law. It happened most fortunately for peace and harmony that each section of the Province had been settled by a homogeneous population. In the northern counties, from Orange to the seacoast, and generally throughout the seaboard, the people were almost wholly English, and professed an allegiance to the Church. West of these counties the Presbyterians had their settlements, and the Lutherans and Dutch Reformed theirs, but each in separate and distinct communities. The upper Cape Fear country was wholly Presbyterian. In the dissenting communities vestrymen were elected and performed
their civil duties, but as they wanted no Episcopal clergy or services they ignored their ecclesiastical functions. The Moravians, upon their own request, were organized into a separate parish called Dobbs Parish, and transacted their own parish business by themselves. This order of things was usually respected by the Governor, the Assembly, and the Episcopal clergy. When in 1766 the Rev. Andrew Morton was sent out from England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to take charge of St. Martin's Parish, Mecklenburg County, he wrote back to the Society that upon inquiry he learned that the inhabitants of that parish were all Covenanters and Seceders, and therefore, with the consent of Gov. Tryon, he had agreed to take charge of St. George's Parish in Bertie.
But in Rowan, where there were many Presbyterians, there was also a strong colony of churchmen, men of English blood, who had come from Maryland and Pennsylvania. They desired a minister, and in 1769, or at the very beginning of 1770, the Rev. Theodorus Swaine Drage, who had been licensed for North Carolina by the Bishop of London the 29th of the preceding May, came to Salisbury and undertook to have a vestry elected. On Easter Monday a vestry was elected, but it was composed largely of Presbyterian elders, and all its members were pledged not to enforce the laws. Mr. Drage, in his letters to Gov. Tryon, asserted that his party were in a numerical majority, and, as the Lutherans seem to have acted with him, he was possibly correct in this estimate. But he says that most of his people were new-comers into the Province, and that on account of the troubles in the Earl of Granville's land office, they had been unable to get patents for their land, and so were not technically freeholders. Mr. Drage undertook to argue the question with the Presbyterian elders, alleging that as they had chosen to come into the Province knowing its laws, they ought to obey those laws until they could procure their repeal. Failing of converting them, he
appealed to the Governor, and then got the Governor to lay the case before the General Assembly; they declined to interfere, and Mr. Drage seems to have left Salisbury after a year or two.
It will be remembered that the legislation of the Province up to this time, while recognizing the right of the clergy of the Church to perform the marriage ceremony, had not authorized its performance by any other ministers. At the time of this legislation this was no hardship, because there were no other ministers in the Colony who considered this a part of their ministerial functions; but when the Presbyterian settlements were made in the up-country and along the Cape Fear, the Presbyterian ministers continued to marry their people as they had been accustomed to do. One of the acts passed in Gov. Tryon's administration, and generally believed to have passed by his procurement, was an act (1766 c. IX.) to validate these marriages and to make it lawful thereafter for dissenting or Presbyterian ministers to perform this function. It is to be noted, however, that the preamble of the act recites that the validity of these marriages had been called in question, (though in law they were unquestionably valid), not because they had been performed by Presbyterian clergymen. There is not a particle of evidence that any one attacked them on this ground; their validity was questioned because the Presbyterian ministers, not being named in the Act of 1741, had considered themselves at liberty to violate the terms of the law in other respects, and had been in the habit of performing marriages without publication of the banns or the procuring of a license, as was required of all persons. It seems an ungracious provision of this law, meant to be an act of courtesy as well as of justice, to the growing settlements along the Yadkin and the Catawba, that it provided that the Episcopal minister in the parish where the marriage was performed should be entitled to the fees, if he had not refused to perform the service. This, however, was of
less consequence, as there was not a single minister in any parish in the Province where a Presbyterian minister resided. And when, a few years afterwards, the two bodies did become mingled together in a few localities, there is no reason to think that any minister of the Church ever so far forgot Christian courtesy as to desire to take advantage of this provision.* Indeed, it may be said that in no one of the thirteen Colonies was there less ill feeling between religious denominations. Whatever may have been the theory of the law, or the provisions of our Colonial statutes, Christian moderation and charity so controlled their application that they never became a source of irritation or of popular discontent.
The effect of Gov. Tryon's interest in the Church, and of his constant correspondence with the Bishop of London and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, was soon apparent. During the seven years of his administration the number of clergy in the Province rose from five to eighteen. These were distributed in different parts of the Province from Salisbury and Hillsboro’ to the seacoast, some supported solely by their stipend from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the voluntary offerings of the people, and devoting themselves to gathering congregations in new parts of the field; others settled over established congregations, and busy trying to lay foundations of educational and other institutions.
It is hardly fair to find fault with men of those days for not
* This act of 1766 c. IX., speaks in the preamble of “Presbyterian or Dissenting” ministers, evidently using the words as synonymous, and not as representing two different classes; and in the enacting clauses it uses the word “Presbyterian” alone. This was probably because at that time the Presbyterian ministers were the only dissenting ministers in the Province who considered the performance of the marriage ceremony for their people part of their pastoral duty. It has sometimes been stated that this act of 1766 c. IX. was repealed by royal proclamation, but there is no note of such repeal in our statute books. It is brought forward in every revisal and was the law of the land for the rest of our colonial period.seeing with our eyes, but it seems strange to us that the churchmen of the Province of North Carolina should not have recognized how impossible it was to build up the Church upon the English parochial system. The support provided by the most liberal legislation was totally insufficient for the maintenance of the clergy and the building up of church institutions. All sorts of shifts had to be resorted to by the vestries, even to finishing their churches by selling the fee-simple of the pews, and by lotteries. It is to the credit of the people of Edenton that they protested against selling the pews in St. Paul's, and petitioned the Assembly to finish it by a tax upon the parish, so that all, paying equally, might have equal rights in their house of worship. But while the laws were inadequate to the support of the Church, they exasperated such opposition as there might be to the Church in the several parishes where its worship was maintained, and they kept the people from realizing and performing their duty.
In another way the system was unnatural and pernicious. In theory the right of presentation to a parish was clearly in the King and his representative, the Governor. The Charters of Charles II., under which the people or their Assemblies were continually asserting their rights, had expressly provided that the right of presentation to all churches, chapels and oratories should be in the proprietors, and after 1728 the King stood in place of the proprietors; this right was also vested in the Crown by act of the Assembly. But Tryon's exercise of this right of presentation provoked much opposition, and occasioned controversies between himself and several of the parishes, even where there was a perfect willingness to receive the minister whom he proposed to induct.
But for a time the affairs of the Church seemed to prosper, and all testimonies agree that it yet retained, and continued to retain down to the Revolution, a majority of the population of the Province. In large and populous
sections there were no dissenters at all, and where they were most numerous in the English settlements (as distinguished from the Scotch and Scotch-Irish,) many of them declared that they were dissenters only because they had no opportunity of enjoying the ministrations of the Church. At the beginning of the Revolution there were only two Baptist Associations in North Carolina. The Methodists were becoming numerous, and had local preachers here and there, but as a body they were still loyal to the Church. When Mr. Whitefield preached at Newbern he publicly proclaimed that he was a faithful minister and son of the Church of England, and he found fault with Mr. Reed, the minister at Newbern, because he gave the name of Methodists to an extravagant sect in that part of the country who had separated from the Church.
One of the best remembered of the clergy who came into the Province during Gov. Tryon's administration, is the Rev. George Micklejohn, S. T. D., minister of St. Matthew's parish, Orange county, from 1766 to 1776. He preached loyalty to the Regulators in 1768,* and so when, following his teaching, the Regulators of Alamance, (which was then in Orange county and a part of his parish,) marched to join McDonald at Cross Creek, he seems to have gone with them, probably as their chaplain, and to have been captured with the other Tories, Highlanders and
* When Gov. Tryon and his militia forces, raised to put down the first “Regulation,” in 1768, were encamped at Hillsboro, Sunday, September 25th, Rev. George Micklejohn, rector of St. Matthew's, Hillsboro, and Rev. Henry Patillo, an eminent Presbyterian minister of Granville County, were appointed to preach to the troops. Mr. Micklejohn took for his text: “The powers that be are ordained of God,” etc., Romans xiii.: 1-2. He was so well pleased with his effort that he had it printed by James Davis, of Newbern, and presented one hundred copies to the next Assembly. What was the character of Mr. Pattillo's discourse we know not. He did not include that sermon among those published at Wilmington in 1788. But we know that he was quite as stout a supporter of government in 1768 as was Micklejohn himself, and in the pastoral letter put out by him and his brother ministers, they bring to bear upon the Regulators the same text, Romans xiii.: 1-2.Regulators, at Moore's Creeek in February 1776. The Provincial Congress at Halifax paroled him the 3d of May following, but did not allow him to return to Hillsboro lest he should corrupt the patriotism of his parishioners. He was required to go to Perquimans County, and to remain there on the south side of the river. We shall hear of him again in the story of the Church in North Carolina.
Another well remembered name is Charles Cupples, minister of St. John's parish, Bute county, (now Warren and Franklin), from 1766 until some time during or after the Revolution. Though an Englishman, he took the American side in the contest. While his name and character are well remembered we know little of the particulars of his life. He was specially interested in the welfare of the slaves, and endeavored to impress upon their owners the propriety of coming up with them to baptism, and of acting as god-fathers and god-mothers for these poor people to whom they owed such sacred duties.
We begin now to find a number of young men coming forward among our people, and offering themselves for the work of the ministry. We have no complete list, but a number of names appear incidentally in the records of those times.
First we have James Macartney. After having been an assistant teacher in the Newbern Academy, he went to England for Holy Orders in May, 1768, and the following July he was ordained. Gov. Tryon placed him in Granville Parish, where he had Richard Henderson for one of his vestrymen, and the Presbyterian divine, Henry Pattillo, for one of his neighbors. He says he found many Presbyterians in his parish, and he seems to have lived in peace and charity with them.
In the same year Henry John Burges and Francis Johnston went over, recommended by parson Burges, the father of the former, and Gov. Tryon; the next year Edward Jones, recommended by parson Micklejohn, and Peter
Blinn, by parson Stewart, of Bath. Gov. Tryon joins Mr. Stewart in giving Mr. Blinn the highest testimonials. There were others, also, who went from this Province to seek ordination to the same holy office. Their names may be included in the clergy lists of this period, but the scanty records of that day do not enable us to identify them. To anticipate a year or two, so as to close this subject, it may be added that Nathaniel Blount, another member of Mr. Stewart's parish in Beaufort county, and Charles Pettigrew, from St. Paul's Church, Edenton, were ordained shortly after this time, and returned to serve the Church faithfully and long in their native country.
The Rev. Henry John Burges, after his return from England, was minister in St. Mary's Parish, Edgecombe, for a year or two. He then moved to Virginia, and had a school in Southampton county for many years, where a number of eminent men were educated, among them the late Dr. Simmons J. Baker and President Wm. H. Harrison. The Rev. Francis Johnston became the minister of Society parish, Bertie, and Edward Jones of St. Stephen's parish, Johnston county. Nathaniel Blount succeeded the Rev. Alexander Stewart, who had died a year or two before Mr. Blount's ordination, and Mr. Pettigrew, after a short service in Berkely parish, Perquimans, succeeded the Rev. Daniel Earl in St. Paul's Church, Edenton.
Of Mr. Peter Blinn I have seen no account after the note of his ordination by the Bishop of London in September, 1769. It may be that he did not live to take up the work of God in North Carolina as a minister. Many a noble spirit crossed the ocean from America stirred by a holy ambition of returning as a herald of the Cross, to whom God, in His inscrutable wisdom, denied that privilege. The perils of the ocean, the accidents of travel, the infectious diseases then so terribly destructive, the great length and expense of the journey, all these were a sad hindrance to the increase of the number of native American
ministers upon this continent. It is said that at least ten per cent. of those who undertook this journey for ordination died without having been able to return to take up the work. Our own annals contain as pathetic a story illustrating these difficulties and hardships as can well be imagined.
Sometime in the year 1768 Mr. Edward Jones, of the Province of North Carolina, applied to the Rev. George Micklejohn of St. Matthew's, Hillsboro’, who seems to have been his pastor, and laid before him his desire to serve God in the holy ministry. Upon examination, Mr. Micklejohn approved his purpose of offering himself as a candidate for orders, and gave him such information as he could, concerning the time required for the journey, the expenses of travel, and the like. Upon consideration, Mr. Jones found that the expense of travel and of living during the time he must remain in England, would require a much larger sum than he could command; but as he had set this holy calling before himself as the work of his life he determined to keep back nothing. He therefore sold his patrimony, notwithstanding the great loss incurred thereby in the wretched condition of our Colonial currency, converted the proceeds into available funds, and provided with letters and testimonials from the Rev. Mr. Micklejohn, he set out for England. In due time he arrived at Liverpool, but almost immediately upon landing he was stricken down with sickness, and lay for a long time helpless and suffering. Gradually, as he lingered on, his money slipped away in the many expenses of lodging, medicine and attendance, so that, when able once more to resume his journey, he found himself absolutely penniless and alone in a strange land. He set out however to make the rest of his journey on foot, and thus made his way to London, obtaining a scanty supply of food upon the journey by selling such articles of clothing as were not indispensable. Footsore and weary he at length reached London and made his way to the
residence of the Bishop. He made know his business, though not his sad plight, and laid before the Bishop the letter and papers given him by Mr. Micklejohn. These proved to be in some way informal or insufficient, and the Bishop informed him that he must communicate with his friends in North Carolina, and procure certain other documents before he could feel justified in ordaining him. Mr. Jones, at this mortifying intelligence, left the Bishop, in utter perplexity and discouragement. He wandered about the streets in a state of desperation bordering on insanity. He afterwards confessed, with expressions of shame, that more than once he was on the point of committing suicide. Penniless in a great city, of all places the most solitary to him who is without friends, utterly ignorant of places and of persons, we can imagine his forlorn state. Whether this lasted a day or several days, we do not know. He may have had some trifles of clothing or other property to dispose of to keep him alive a day or two. His deliverance from this depth of woe has a touch of romance which sheds a soft light over the sad picture. While in the depth of his misery, he hears by some accident that Gov. Tryon has a sister in London, Miss Tryon. With a feeling which a North Carolinian can still understand, it comes to him that she must be interested in the country which her brother governs. He finds out her abode and appeals to her sympathy and compassion. He had not judged amiss. Miss Tryon responded most graciously to his appeal, and in a way which showed her tact as well as her generosity. She introduced Mr. Jones to a certain Capt. Collett, who had been in North Carolina, and they at once put him out of his perplexity and distress by their friendly interest and help. He wrote to Gov. Tryon, March 29th, 1769, giving this account of his experience since he had arrived in England, and requesting the Governor to send him such testimonials as should meet the demands of the Bishop. But he did not have to wait for an answer to
his letter. The record shows that Mr. Edward Jones was licensed for North Carolina by the Bishop of London on the 29th of May, 1769, just two months after the date of his letter to Gov. Tryon. And very shortly thereafter we find him minister of St. Stephen's Parish, Johnston County. We may be very sure that he had always a good word for the gracious ladies of the Governor's family.
With the administration of Gov. Martin there seems to come a relaxing of the tension in the life of the community, and our ecclesiastical affairs shared the general languor. Whatever may be thought of Tryon, his vigor and administrative talents are not denied. Gov. Martin had neither his force of character nor his address in the management of men. Perhaps the very eagerness with which Gov. Tryon had pushed the work of supplying vacant parishes with clergymen caused a reaction when the vigorous hand was removed from the helm. Almost without exception the ministers who came in under Tryon's administration were men of force and of zeal. But there was a great temptation to relax effort in a country where there was no oversight exercised; and the low tone of feeling and living in the community must have had a depressing influence upon the clergy. It had long been felt by persons throughout the Colonies that an Episcopal Church without a Bishop was an absurdity. The question need not be discussed here. I will only say that the need of a Bishop was apparent both to our Governors and to the clergy themselves. Time and again they wrote to the Society and to the Bishop of London that a Bishop was absolutely necessary in order to the success of the Church in America. The English Bishops saw it. George III. unlike his Hanoverian predecessors, loved the Church, and was a most religious and exemplary man. He would gladly have seen the Church truly established in America and organized upon the Apostolic model. But, as under his grandfather, George II., Sir Robert Walpole had defeated the
hopes and plans of such great men as Secker, Butler and Berkely, so the ministers of George III. hindered and thwarted every scheme devised for the sending of Bishops to the Colonies. To the miserable union of Church and State in England we owe it that with all the appeals of our clergy and of our Governors, and with all the many acts of our people through their representatives in the General Assembly in favor of the Church, the Church had never its proper organization or constitution in the Province of North Carolina. The Mother Church was enslaved and her daughter was bound with her. When the political changes of 1776 put an end to the civil status of the Church, so thoroughly had State patronage done its evil work, and so entirely had both people and clergy been taught to lean upon a broken reed, that while a majority of the people of the State were nominally her children, and our great men of North Carolina were almost without exception her own, the Church stood helpless, blind, paralyzed. Not until all the men who came out of Egypt had died in the wilderness could Israel enter into the Land of Promise; and not until a new generation of churchmen had grown up in North Carolina, who looked upon the Church as a spiritual kingdom, could any permanent organization be effected, or the upward course begun. It is a significant fact that the Diocese of North Carolina was organized just seven months after the death of Nathaniel Blount, the last survivor of our Colonial clergy.
One or two things need to be said before closing. In the first place, such civil recognition as was given to the clergy of the Church, and such support as was derived from public taxation, was given by the people of North Carolina themselves, acting through their representatives in General Assembly. It has been affirmed by grave historians, and repeated by all the generation of lesser writers, that the clergy of the Church were paid by the British governmeut. This view is presented by writers of
our local history and biography with perfect assurance of its truth. There is not one particle of truth in it. Our North Carolina people did what was done in giving the support of the State to the Church. But it is further to be remembered that the laws were so framed that they were inoperative except in those communities where the great body of the people were attached to the Church. And lastly, in this connection, there was practically no discontent among the people. We have the testimony of the whole body of the Presbyterian ministers, the largest and most intelligent body of dissenters in the Province, that under Tryon, the most masterful of the royal govorners, they enjoyed the blessings of good government and civil and religious freedom, according to the conception of religious freedom prevalent at that day.
Another and a more serious popular misapprehension needs to be corrected. It is frequently alleged that the character of the Colonial clergy explains the decay of the Church. Now from the nature of the case there were unworthy ministers during colonial times as there have been since. And the want of any supervision of the clergy aggravated the evil. But it is a most gross and groundless slander to represent the clergy of that period as being on the whole an unworthy, much less an immoral or irreligious class. I have not consciously omitted in this paper the name of one clergyman against whom there is serious evidence of grevious misconduct, nor have I failed to point out the fact that there were charges against him. True it is that as time went on, and various religious bodies grew strong in the State, bodies which had bitter prejudices against the Church, they did not spare the reputation of her ministers, living or dead. There are yet clergymen amongst the most honored in our conventions, who can remember how in their early ministry the purest life was no security against charges of immorality and dissipation. Happily we live in better times. Living men can
live down slanders. But who shall protect the dead? I have studied the history of our provincial period with some attention. I have sought out, as well as I could, the scanty memorials of our brethren who first trod these shores as ambassadors for Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. And while I have seen and deplored sins and follies here and there, I have thanked God for the good examples, the faithful labors, the persevering zeal, the holy devotion, of many of those, our brethren, who having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labors.
IV.THE COLONIAL LAYMEN OF THE CHURCH OF
ENGLAND IN NORTH CAROLINA.
BY KEMP P. BATTLE, LL. D., PRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA.
It is not right to give a description of prominent laymen of the Church of England in Colonial North Carolina without a passing notice of those who, although never having resided in the Province, had much to do in shaping its destinies.
The name of Sir Walter Raleigh, that great but unfortunate soldier, statesman, historian, staunch Churchman. and man of the world, one of the noblest and most accomplished gentlemen of the brilliant age of Elisabeth, should always be had in admiring affection by every North Carolinian. It is true his schemes of colonization, schemes in which he expended the equivalent of a million of dollars of our money, seemed to come, as did his noble life, to a tragic end. It is also true that he did not, as some historians assert, set foot on our shores; yet his efforts brought our land to the notice of the world, and after the turmoils of the great civil war had ended by the restoration of Charles II to his throne, the narratives of Amidas and Barlow, Sir Richard Grenville, Hariot, Lane, and White, written while in his employment, inflamed the imaginations of the restless spirits who looked for homes beyond “the great Western Ocean.”
The “City of Raleigh” did not grow up on the spot
selected by him, but, three hundred years later, located far from the green island of Roanoke, it is, as the capital of our State, a fit monument to one of the world's heroes.
Nor should we omit to chronicle Ralph Lane, the first Governor of Roanoke, the first English Governor in America, a relative of Henry VIII's sensible queen, Catharine Parr, along with Amidas the gallant admiral of the new conntry, and Cavendish, the soldier, circumnavigator and mathematician, leading his hundred colonists to lay the fouudation of a new kingdom, all ending in the miseries of famine and the horrors of massacre. In the minds of millions he was a benefactor of mankind by first carrying tobacco to Europe. In the minds of all he was a hero after Kingsley's heart, energetic and impetuous, penetrating into the interior as far as the hills of Warren, but lacking business talents for permanent success in building up a colony, returning to fight under the terrible Drake the colossal Armada and receive his knighthood for desperate wounds in conflict with wild Irishmen.
The second Governor too, John White, should receive a passing notice, the grand-father of Virginia Dare, an artist whose water colored pictures illustrate well the wonders of the new land. To him belongs the honor of establishing the first corporation in America, “the Governor and his assistants of the City of Raleigh,” this corporation charged with laying the corner stone of the first city.
Returning to England, at the request of his people, to bring back more settlers and provisions, his voyage was delayed by hostile Spaniards, and he was denied the opportunity to make proper search for his lost colony, the fate of which is one of the most mournful problems of history.
Over seventy eventful years in the history of our race elapsed, years in which the great Cromwell and his colaborers and co-fighters had given a death blow to the hoary claims of despotism, before there was the beginning of organized government in our land. Eight Lords Proprietors,
or as DeFoe calls them, Property-Kings, by the gift of the vilest king of the degenerate race of Stuarts, possessed the ownership and jurisdiction over this fair region.
I will not go into the details of their fantastic government, further than to call to your minds that the cool and skilful general, to whom Providence gave the opportunity and the will to end anarchy in England by the restoration of Charles II, George Monk, created Duke of Albemarle by his grateful sovereign, was as Lord Palatine, the first official ruler of this province, though he never paid a visit to his palatinate.
The Lords Proprietors, when they adopted the Fundamental Constitutions, may have entertained a momentary desire to be contented with the honor of founding a grand government, which should be the fountain of blessings to a happy and prosperous people. Any such philathropic spasm, if held, was quickly followed by a deep and abiding longing for working their property for their own pecuniary benefit.
The Governors, and Deputy Governors and Chief Justices, Surveyors, Collectors and other officers, were regarded as their factors, charged with the duty of collecting their rents and selling their lands. In general, these administered their offices not for the people of the Province, but for their overlords beyond the water and their own emolument. These agents were naturally the connections, or dependants, of the proprietors—in rare cases members of their own body.
The Charters of Charles II, having granted royal authority to the Proprietors, their deputies claimed similar powers in all matters not forbidden by their superiors. Being at such great distance, often sixty or seventy days sail, from their lords, they felt but little restraint, and on a smaller scale some imitated the examples of Felix or Verres, while
others, more humane and virtuous, demeaned themselves with the moderation of Festus or Cicero.
When in 1728, the Crown acquired seven-eighths of the territory of Carolina, and the jurisdiction over the whole, the same evils continued, the Crown taking the place of the Proprietors.
It is only by remembering these things that we can realize why there was always a gulf between Governors and governed; oppression and contempt on one side, hatred and discontent, and often open rebellion on the other.
With this explanation, I propose to take up firstly such of the Governors and officers as seem deserving of special mention, only including those knowu to have been churchmen. The early Governors appointed by the Lords Proprietors after July 21st, 1669, when the Fundamental Constitutions were adopted, were probably of this communion because this instrument, although granting much freedom of religion, provided that there should be an established Church, and that the ecclesiastical laws should be in accordance with those of England, and they would hardly have appointed dissenters to put it in operation. We may therefore assume that Sir John Yeamans, who was for a short while on the Cape Fear, and Samuel Stevens, the first Governor of Albemarle, under the Constitution, and their successors, except Archdale, the Quaker, viz: Peter Carteret (or Cartwright), Thomas Miller, John Culpepper, John Harvey, John Jenkins, Henry Wilkinson, Seth Sothel, (Southwell properly,) Philip Ludwell, Alexander Lillington, and Thomas Harvey, might strictly come within our sketch, but as we know nothing that they did or thought for the cause of religion, we omit them all.
Henderson Walker, who, as President of the Council, was acting Governor from 1699 to 1704 when he died, deserves special mention.
Before occupying his high office Walker was an active man of affairs. He held the office of Attorney General and
Associate Judge of the General Court. He was Surveyor General of the Province. He was appointed a Commissioner to settle the disputed boundary question with Virginia, but Virginia for technical reasons declined to prosecute the work. He was a member of the first vestry ever organized in the State, that of St. Paul's Parish, Chowan County.
His official letters show that he was deeply solicitous for the welfare of the people and the Church. In a letter to the Bishop of London, dated October 21st, 1703, he gives a sad account of the religious destitution in the County of Albemarle. For twenty one years, in his own knowledge, and before that time matters were worse, they had been without priest or altar. Quaker principles introduced by Fox had thriven because there was none to oppose them. Rev. Dr. Bray, by God's infinite goodness, had aided to stop them by sending catechisms and other small books, and afterwards a library given by the corporation for establishing the Christian Religion. He deplores the sad defection of Rev. Daniel Brett, the only minister that had been sent to them. He and others with a great deal of care and management, had about two years before got an Assembly to pass an act for building churches and establishing a maintenance for a minister. Under this act one church had been built and two others were in progress. He praises Govenor Francis Nicholson of Virginia for the gift of £10 to each church. He asks the assistance of the Bishop of London in inducing the Lords Proprietors to ratify the foregoing act, and expresses the fear that as about one-half of the burgesses recently elected were Quakers, they would repeal the same. He closes with the following pathetic appeal: “I humbly entreat your lordship to send some worthy good man amongst us to regain the flock and so perfect us in our duty to God, and establish us by his doctrine, life and conversation in the fundamentals of our christian profession,
that we in our time, and those as come hereafter, may bless God that he has raised up so noble a pillar as your lordship to regain those who are going astray, and put a stop to the pernicious growing principles of the Quakers.”
The letter shows good feeling and principles, and education rare among the citizens of Albemarle. As it was the custom to send to Virginia and Carolina the younger sons of the nobility and gentry, I conjecture that he was a relative of Sir Walter Walker of Buskey Hall, who, as advocate to the Queen of Charles II, was naturally influential with the Lords Proprietors. He married a daughter of Governor Alexander Lillington, and the tombstones of himself and his wife, who, after his death married Edward Mosely, may be seen a few miles from Edenton. History sustains the inscription on Walker's tablet that he “governed the Province to the satisfaction of the Lords Proprietors and the ease and happiness of the people.”
Governor Robert Daniel was doubtless a churchman. Some of the historians say that he was selected by Governor Nathaniel Johnston of South Carolina to procure the passage in North Carolina of the outrageously disfranchising acts of South Carolina, acts so contrary to the chartered rights of the Colonists as to provoke the trenchant satire of De Foe and threats from good Queen Anne of suits against the Lords Proprietors for forfeiture of their Charter. There is no contemporary evidence of this. Certainly, no such unconstitutional measures were passed. We find only the re-enactment of the act mentioned by Walker, which confered on vestries the right to levy taxes for building churches and supporting ministers. The influence of the dissenters procured his early removal. He was a man of strength; the only soldier who gained laurels in the disastrous expedition against St. Augustine, his military reputation however not escaping the taint of cruelty.
It seems evident that acting Governor, Wm. Glover, of Perquimans, the head of the aristocratic party in the so-called
rebellion of Cary, was, as missionary Adams testified, a good man and an ardent churchman. He at one time held the office of Associate Judge of the General Court, and sometimes acted as Chief Justice. His letter of 1708, to the Bishop of London, places him in a favorable light in regard to his religious character. Among other things he says, “if anything, my Lord, in this life was able to raise in my heart a joy without mixture, it was to see unbaptized persons with their children in their arms, offering themselves to Christ, which I have seen, and therefore, I ever will rejoice.” He apologizes for his parish in Perquimans, not being in as good order as that in Pasquotank, giving as a reason, that the Quakers were numerous, were elected on the vestry, and took advantage of his absence while engaged in the unhappy controversy with Cary.
Into the discussion of this controversy, I have not time to go, merely remarking that in my opinion it was, as Messrs. W. L. Saunders, and Samuel A. Ashe have shown, a part of the hundred years’ fight between the claimants of power almost despotic, and the defenders of the rights of the people. Glover certainly seems to have acted with dignity and firmness, adhering to his principles even to the extent of flight into Virginia when fortune was against him. The principle, that the burgesses and officers should take the oath of allegiance to Queen Anne, seems certainly reasonable, as Cary when in power was forced to acknowledge.
Governor Edward Hyde, was probably a member of the family of the Hydes, of Castle Hyde in Cork, a distant relative to the Queen of England, and a near relative to Governor Edward Tynte, of South Carolina; and it was probably to repair his fortunes, broken by the contest between William III. and James II, that he came to North Carolina. Tynte was ordered to give him his credentials as Governor, but this was prevented by his death. The
Council on the faith of letters in his possession, elected him its President, but as he had no commission as a deputy of one of the Lords Proprietors, Col. Cary disputed his right to be a Councellor, and so he was forced to call on Governor Spottiswood, of Virginia, for aid.
Hardly was this successful before the terrible Indian massacre broke out and in the war which ensued, there was little time to care for the Church. We have, however, a letter from Hyde to Rev. Mr. Rainsford, showing that he was attached to its principles. He promises to assist the missionary in all ways possible, extends to him an offer of unlimited hospitality, and cautions him against the unfortunate temper of Mr. Urmstone. He warns him that the people are not to be won by any, but gentle methods to what is serious, devout and moral.
He gives his estimate of the people. “It is by nature,” he says “one of the best countries in the world, tho’ the people are naturally loose and wicked, obstinate and rebelious, crafty and deceitful, and ready to invent slander on one another, and sow such seeds of seditions that they have generally reaped them in a plentiful crop of rebellion.”
It is not fair to accept this estimate, because there was reasonable doubt of his right to assume the duties of the executive until his commission from the Lords Proprietors arrived in January 24th, preceding, and he enjoyed the undisputed office only about nine months, his death being reported to the council on September 12th, 1712. The actors in civil strife always invest their adversaries with very hateful attributes.
He enjoys the distinction of being the first Governor of North Carolina, distiuct from South Carolina, and from him is an eastern county named..
The successor of Hyde, who, as President of the Council, assumed the duties of chief executive, was a churchman, one of the most conspicuous men in our early annals, Major General Thomas Pollock. He was born in Glasgow,
in 1654, and emigrated to Albemarle as the deputy of Lord Carteret in 1684. He came from an ancient family, whose heirs owned the estate of Balgre, continuously from the reign of James III of Scotland. In the Colonial Records is an interesting letter from him to Sir Robert Pollock, written five years before his death, stating that he had been prevented from revisiting his native land by the troubles in Albemarle and the Indian wars. He was a member of the Council until his death in 1722. He was twice its President and acting Governor, first during the stormy times of the Tuscarora war, from the death of Hyde to the coming of Eden; secondly, for a short while after the death of Eden.
His management seems to have been energetic and prudent. From his letter book we get glimpses of the horrors of the times. The terrors of the Indian foe paralyzed the labors of the farmers outside of Albemarle. There was great difficulty in feeding the troops from South Carolina, who came to suppress the insurrection. Pollock complains that Col. Moore's Indians consumed the corn and the cattle so that the people were as ready to rise against them as against the enemy. He himself lost during the contest as much as £2,500, besides £682 lent De Graffenreid, who left the Province in his debt.
The war tax was £5 on every titheable, i. e. white males 16 years old and upwards, and slaves of both sexes 12 years old and upward, and in addition six bushels of corn and 25 per cent. of all the wheat from each family. He has given his testimony that while the Quakers would not fight they paid their taxes cheerfully.
Pollock was a warm supporter of Glover and Eden, and at one time took refuge in Virginia to escape the wrath of Cary. In his private affairs he possessed in full share the thrift of the canny Scotchman. Thousands of acres of the richest lands of the East went into his possession, and many slaves, both negroes and Indians. The old records prove
that many of the light colored negroes of our time are descendants of Indian slaves.
In advancing money to De Graffenreid, he was careful to take a mortgage on the lands bought by him for the Swiss and Palatine Colonists, and those lands on foreclosure went into the hands of his heirs, for which loss, however, by Tryon's kindly influence, the Swiss and Palatines received compensation out of crown lands in the interior.
He was the pioneer of the town builders and land improvement companies of our day, in laying out and selling lots in the town of Edenton, half an acre for twenty shillings, with the privilege of clearing and cultivating three acres of woodland.
Pollock seems to have been a stalwart churchman, though one of the Missionaries complains that he was lukewarm on the subject of receiving the communion. He was a member, and the second named of the first vestry of 1701, the first named being Governor Walker. Afterwards there was a second chapel, and he was constantly a member of its vestry, and often one of the wardens. In a list of voluntary subscriptions in 1702 for the support of ministers, the pioneer of an unending line of similar documents, his name is first, and opposite to the largest sum, £5, the only subscription equalling him being by the prosperous lawyer, Edward Mosely.
In a letter to his kinsman, Sir Robert Pollock, of Scotland, Governor Pollock spoke with pardonable pride of his three hopeful sons, Cullen, George, and Thomas. Of these Thomas and Cullen became frequently members of the Council, often acting as assistant Judges in the General Court; and Thomas, by appointment of Burrington, was Chief Justice, during the absence of Gale in England.
This Thomas Pollock, the younger, left three sons, Thomas, Cullen, and George. The third Thomas Pollock married in New Jersey, Eunice, a daughter of Jonathan
Edwards, and from their union was Frances, the wife of John Devereux, and by him the mother of the late Thomas Pollock Devereux, and Frances, the wife of the late Bishop Leonidas Polk. The last survivor of the name was George Pollock of Halifax County, who was killed by a fall from his horse in 1839. All the Pollocks were churchmen and during the war of the Revolution adhered to the Crown.
The Governor who succeeded Hyde was of a good English family, one of whom afterwards became Lord Auckland, Charles Eden, who assumed the duties of his office in May, 1722. Opinions differ as to his character. His enemies charge him with complicity with Blackbeard, the pirate, and with injustice to Mosely, the leader of the people's party.
The first charge is supported by no tangible evidence, though it is impossible to acquit Chief Justice Tobias Knight, who married Glover's widow, of knowingly receiving Teach's stolen goods, except on the ground that he thought they were only smuggled. As to the second charge, Eden must be judged from the standpoint of his times. As Hawks, Wheeler, and others have this matter all wrong, I will explain it as the records show.
The facts were that Col. Maurice Moore, then of Perquimans, Col. Edward Moseley and others, of the party opposed to Eden, suspected him of complicity with the pirates and believed that such complicity could be proved from the Council Records. They claimed, that under the law these records were open to the public, and being denied access to them they broke open the office in which they were kept and spent some hours in inspecting them. For this they were criminally prosecuted. When the officer arrested Moseley, in the heat of anger he indulged in violent language, accusing the Governor of acting illegally and despotically, and threatening to blacken his character. For this alleged seditious language he was indicted, fined £100, and declared incapable of holding office for three
years. Hawks and others say this punishment was for breaking open the public office, but they are mistaken. For that trespass Moseley was fined only one shilling, and Moore £5.
Accustomed as we are to boundless ferocity in the criticism of public men, this punishment of Moseley, for angry words reflecting on the Governor, seems harsh and tyranical, but in Eden's time the views especially of those in authority were very different. In Queen Elisabeth's day poor Stubbe waved the bloody stump of the right arm, from which his hand had been struck by a cleaver, for saying that the Queen was too old to get married, and cried “God save the Queen.” Scandalum magnatum was most severely punished as late as the beginning of this century in England and America.
The imprisonment and prosecution of the seven Bishops, about twenty-five years before Moseley's offence for presenting to James II a respectful petition, and the prosecutions and convictions under the Sedition Law of John Adams’ administration, and of Cobbett in England, as late as 1809, for publishing an article ridiculing the Irish judges, are cases, out of many, in point.
We must admit that Eden showed courage in grappling with so powerful a leader as Moseley, even though we disapprove his action. He showed vigor in pushing the survey of the boundary line and was thanked by the General Assembly of South Carolina for prompt and effective assistance in their contest with the Yemassees. As to his religious character the testimony is favorable, Rev. John Urmstone, who was a chronic grumbler and reviler calls him “an honest gentleman.” “Our new Governor” he writes, “seems resolved to promote the Church discipline by being a strict observer himself.”
Eden had what was rare among the Proprietory Governors, a kindly feeling toward the people. “They are as willing,” he says, “as any people on the continent to pay,
provided ministers are of good lives and affable behavior and conversation.” He urges the sending of ministers and teachers. “In their absence” he writes, “lay readers are paid as high as £30 per year,” a larger sum than appears at first sight, because of the low price of farm products. Wheat for example brought only six pence a bushel in English goods.
Eden showed his kindly temper too by taking the part of the people in their claims to pay in commodities, instead of sterling money, but he was overruled by the Proprietors.
In his last days his mind must have been weakened, for John Lovick offered witnesses to prove that he had made him his legatee and the Council believing the story gave him the executorship. The will was contested by his sister, wife of Rev. Mr. Lloyd of London, possibly for his daughter, Penelope, but the records do not show this fact, nor the result of the litigation. At any rate his lands seem to have descended to his daughter, who, the authorities say, married Governor Gabriel Johnston, and resided with him at Eden House on Salmon Creek in Bertie county.
The fact that Eden's sister, instead of his daughter, should have contested the will, makes some doubt whether there was such a daughter. I have been unable to find any explanation of this historical puzzle.
The successor of Eden, after a short interval, was George Burrington, of a good family in Devonshire, twice Governor, once by the appointment of the Lords Proprietors, and afterwards of the King, was what might be called a double man. He had a strong mind and tireless energy, both in private and public affairs. He underwent terrible hardships in acquainting himself by personal visits with his province. His official papers show that he studied the interests of his people with intelligence and was sagacious in devising means for advancing them. He was a friend of the Church and a warm advocate of its extension. In theory, though not in pratice, he was a churchman. The
Province prospered under his administration, and many of the people bestowed unstinted praises on him. On the other hand he was excessively despotic and impatient of contradiction. All who opposed his will in small as well as great matters he hated with intense virulence, and his hatred found expression in opprobrious epithets and personal violence. His most trusted officers, as soon as they ceased to follow his arbitrary lead, were at once transformed, to use his own words, into “liars,” “perfidious scoundrels,” “egregious sots,” “silly boys,” “guilty of innumerable villainies,” “infamous characters,” “would-be assassins.”
He led a midnight attack on the Chief Justice; threatened to slit his nose and crop his ears; reviled and insulted him in open conrt.
When Everard became his successor, he assaulted the Governor's house, swore he was a noodle, an ape, no more fit to be Governor than a hog in the woods, no more fit than Sancho Panza; dared him to come out and fight, offering benignly to scalp his thick skull. He attacked the house of the marshal, broke open that of the collector and beat a constable. And when indicted for these offences, he resolutely defied the law and was never even put on trial.
His father had distinguished himself in behalf of the Hanoverian dynasty, and his extraordinary courage and loyalty account for the preferment of the son at a time when the memory of the Rebellion of 1715 was fresh in the memories of the statesmen of George II. The records show that the old story about his being killed while brawling in London cannot be true, as he was found in North Carolina at a ripe old age in 1754, and as Col. Saunders shows must have died not long before 1759.
Sir Richard Everard, probably from Tipperary, Ireland, as there were Baronets of that name there residing not many years before 1725, when he became Governor of
North Carolina by appointment of the Lords Proprietors, was no improvement on Burrington. He had less ability, less energy and spirit of improvement. On the other hand his brawling was on a smaller scale. He was evidently much given to convivial habits. I suppose that on Governor in ancient or modern times ever procured from his Council, as he did, in order to rebut the charge of habitual intoxication, a certificate that they had never seen him publicly drunk. Another charge against him was of clandestine questioning by him and his lady of servants as to the disposition of his subjects towards him, thus imitating the example of the Roman Emperors in the employment of delatores. On the whole, though his interest in the Church, and his efforts to procure clergymen for the Colony, make it necessary for me to discuss his character in this paper, I freely admit that his adversary, Burrington, slandered the Governor of Barataria when he placed Everard and Don Quixote's faithful esquire on the same level.
It is refreshing to turn from Burrington and Everard to Gabriel Johnston. Our able Secretary of State, Col. Saunders, has shown in his Prefatory Notes to the 4th volume of Colonial Records that the unstinted praise bestowed by our historians on Governor Johnston is not merited. He undoubtedly endeavored to carry measures through the Assembly by trickery and surprise. He called a meeting of the Assembly in the southern part of the Province at a time when it was unlikely the members would attend, and he approved, and perhaps advised, the reversal of the immemorial rule in the Assembly that a majority of the members was necessary for a quorum. By this means he strove to procure not only the deprivation of the Albemarle counties of three out of the five members to which they were entitled under the laws of Province, but to procure the removal of the seat of government from Edenton to New Berne and the inauguration of a new Court system. He had frequent bitter disputes with his people about
various matters, such as the validity of the “Blank Patents,” the issuing of larger volumes of paper currency, the impeachment of Chief Justice Smith. But there are many favorable words which can truthfully be said of him. He was a scholar and a gentleman by family and association, a scion of the noble house of the Johnstones of Annandale, the friend and relative of Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was a member of the great house of Northampton. His State papers show that he was a statesman and a man of humanity and regard for religion and education. He advised the inauguration of a militia force. He advocated more efficient execution of the penal laws. He pointed out the defects in the methods of acquiring lands. He saw clearly the evils of the issue of depreciated currency and endeavored to check it. He showed no greed for money, as we find his salary twelve years in arrears, although he could have retained the same out of public funds. There was no tangible charge of corruption against him.
As an excuse for his errors it may be said that politicians then, as now, in England and America, did not, and do not, hesitate to use questionable means to accomplish what they consider great public good. The Albemarle counties with their five members each, while the other counties had only two, always controlled the lower House of the Assembly, and refused to allow many good laws to be passed. What statesmen stand higher than those who procured the Union of England and Scotland?—and yet the Scotch Parliament was notoriously bribed. The passage of the Union bill through the Irish Parliament by unblushing corruption does not diminish the lustre of the fame of Wm. Pitt. The Congressional Districts in our day, gerry-mandered for political purposes, are quite in the line of Johnston's efforts. When forty members were a quorum of the House of Commons of England, and three members of the House of Lords, it was not a grossly extravagant claim
that fifteen should be a quorum in the diminutive House of Burgesses of North Carolina.
The Governor trusted that the authorities in England would see the reasonableness of the change, and by ratifying make it final. The object sought to be accomplished was praiseworthy. It was not best that the seat of government should continued at Edenton in the extreme northern part of the Province. The Court system for which he struggled was vastly superior to the old system. It certainly was unjust that certain counties should have five members, and counties larger and more populous, should have only two. And it must be remembered that the action of the Governor was sustained as a political necessity by many of the ablest and best men, such as Mosely and Swann, and Ashe and Starkey and others like them, good and wise inhabitants of the counties south of the privileged region of Albemarle. As to his actions in other matters, it should be noted that as deputy of the Crown he was compelled either to carry out orders and enforce its demands, or lose his place, and possibly be subjected to punishment for malfeasance. In truth, he was sharply censured for yielding too much to the demands of the people.
While not always wise I think he was on the whole a good Governor according to the political ideas of that day and under the difficulties of being compelled to act in accordance with the views of distant directors, not one of whom had ever visited the Province. He came to his government under the most adverse circumstances. The opening words of his address to his first Assembly are no exagerated picture of the evils resulting from the misrule of Everard and Burrington.
Everything was in “disorder and confusion.” “The members of the Council and the Superior Court expelled the country by violence, and such men arbitrarily put in their places whose characters alone was sufficient to bring
all magistracy and government into contempt and ridicule.” The inferior Courts in some places quite discontinued, and in others under the management of persons who, instead of protecting the people in their just rights, made use of the power they were invested with to harass and oppress them. In short, all business, commerce and improvements seemed to be very much at a stand. The answer of both branches of the General Assembly admitted the truth of this statement. The Governor should certainly have credit for evolving order out of this chaos.
The accusation that he did not regularly report the state of the Province to the Board of Trade is well founded. The inference is that he was not of an active temperment. He was not disposed to undergo the fatigue, discomfort, and dangers of journeying through his Province, as did Burrington and Dobbs and Tryon, to get materials for his reports.
The long continued anarchy resulting from the refusal of the Albemarle counties to submit to the laws passed, as they contended, by a rump legislature, cannot be altogether attributed to him, because he sent the action of the Assembly to the Board of Trade for approval, and the seven years delay on the part of the Board could not be foreseen by him. He asked for troops to enable him to enforce order, but none were furnished.
He certainly was in favor of education and the advancement of religion, and was of a humane disposition. His benevolent action in favor of the people on the subject of quit-rents met with strong censure from the Board of Trade. Among other recommendations by him was one in advance of the age, that the brutal practice of boxing, so brutal that it had been the cause of four deaths in a short while, be prohibited by law. Certainly he is entitled to considerable credit, because of the rapid increase of population and wealth under his administration. There must have been confidence in his character and purity of intentions.
It is fitting that his name should be honorably perpetuated by one of our central counties.
Matthew Rowan, whose name belongs to one of our counties which once stretched from about the longitude of High Point to the Mississippi river, who, after the short incumbency of Nathaniel Rice, was, as President of the Council, acting Governor for nearly two years, was always faithful and trustworthy.
He was a member of the Council from 1732 until 1760, and for several years its President. He showed activity and wisdom in the performance of his private and public duties. He was the son of a clergyman of the Church, Rev. Andrew Rowan, of an old Scotch family, rector of Dunaghy, diocese of Connor, county of Antrim in Ireland. He settled as a merchant in Bath and was one of the church wardens in 1726. He represented his county (then called precinct) in the Assembly. He was an importer in Irish goods, and as such often crossed the ocean to his native country. He was for a while Surveyor General of the Province, and as such assisted in 1735 in running the boundary line between North and South Carolina. He became before his death an inhabitant of New Hanover county. As he seems not to have been involved in the bitter quarrels so prevalent during his long official career, and as we find no censure of him by the people or Board of Trade, and although one of nine children of an Irish clergyman, he accumulated a handsome estate and left legacies to three of his brothers in Ireland. It is clear that he was a good specimen of the level headed and good hearted, sagacious and energetic, cautious and wide awake, Scotch-Irish. The sense of justice which led to the provision in his will for an illegitimate child reveals to us the only obliquity in his conduct of which we have any knowledge.
Arthur Dobbs, one of the landed gentry of Ireland, though a Scotchman by descent, was very different in character
from Rowan. Born, according to Burke, in 1689, he was in October when he took the oath of office as Governor of North Carolina, sixty-five years old; according to other authorities he had passed his three score and ten. He was a man of letters and an author, having published several books on subjects of interest in his day. He had held the important office of High Sheriff of Antrim, and of Engineer and Surveyor General of Ireland. He had also been a member of the Irish Parliament. His estate in Ireland, called Castle Dobbs, is still in possession of his descendants, among whom has been a clergyman of the Church. One of the females married a Duke of Manchester.
He was a man of considerable sprightliness and great energy. He wrote on questions of commerce relating to Ireland, and even stirred up the Admirality to find the mythical North West Passage. An official letter to the great War Secretary, Wm. Pitt, written in 1759, gives a clear view of the character of the mind of Governor Dobbs. He heaps congratulations on the Secretary on account of the capture of Quebec and defeat of the French in Germany. Then follows this gorgeous sentence:
“The glories and remarkable interposition of Divine Providence against such superior numbers will, I hope, induce his majesty, by your active and intrepid administration, with the unanimity of the Ministry and Parliament, to pursue his conquest until the French be expelled from this continent and Mississippi and Mobile, which is absolutely necessary for the peace and safety of these Colonies to be put into his Majesty's possession, and also the Sugar Islands, which will effectually ruin the French marine and give future peace to Britain. Upon account of such glorious success I have appointed a day of solemn Thanksgiving, and upon this happy event, and important crisis, have composed a Hymn to be sung that day through this Province, which I beg leave to send to you as being at
present conformable to all the prophecies according to my interpretation of them at this era, 1760.”
The following is the Hymn of Thanksgiving over the victories of Quebec and of Minden. I cordially commend it to the notice of the Hymnal Revision Committee. It will be appropriate when we come to celebrate the blowing out of the water of the fleet of the next Roman Catholic power conquered by us with the aid of our dynamite guns. This was probably the first Thanksgiving service in our State.
HYMN.To God, our God's Almighty name.Let Britons all their voices raiseAnd publish by the mouth of fameIn songs of joy our Saviour's praise.For when surrounded and at bay,By mighty powers gainst Britain join'd,Our Allies country made a preyBy papal pow'rs jointly combin'd;Then Christ our God commenced his reignAnd o'er our councils did preside,Did o'er our fleets and armies deignTo rule, and all their actions guide.The glorious dawn, the morning starWhich ushers in the sun of lightThro’ the bright glade extended farAnd vanquished all the powers of night.His Church from papal thraldom freedAnd Gallic powers’ united force;His great Vicegerent he decreedO'er Briton's Isle to steer his course.From wood the British lion roars;Uprears the Christian sanguine cross,O'er Eagle, Beast, triumphant soarsWith angels riding the white horse.Now Angels charged with vials direOf Gods great wrath against Papal Beast,Are poured forth in Gods great Ire,O'er Beast, False Prophet, Heathen Priest.Let Angels then in chorus singWith us in Hymns of joy abroad,Hosanna to our Saviour King.Hosanna to his Christ our God.
This sophomorical State paper, with its accompanying doggerel, is a good index to the character of Dobbs. It shows that he was inclined to piety, that he was a student of the prophecies of Scripture, tha the erroneously thought himself gifted with eloquence and poetic fire, that he had abundant self-esteem. He was not lacking in courage, but his mind was narrow, his taste execrable, his ideas obscure. He was utterly lacking in business sense. He was fond of notoriety, a fussy, consequential gentleman of the old school. That such a man, transported to the wilds of a new country, with high ideas of his prerogative as lieutenant of a King, ruling over a people who claimed vested rights of freedom, with pluck to maintain their claims, should have perpetual turmoil, was most natural. Accordingly we find that though he started out with the best intentions he was a failure. The issuing of paper money, the bringing Sheriffs and Treasurers to account, the establishment of an independent judiciary and convenient Courts, the location of the Capital, the selection of public printers, exorbitant fees, and other questions, were the causes of difference between him and the Assembly. He was fond of money, and sometimes stretched his prerogative in order to grasp fees not allowed by any law. He strove to take away from the Assembly their power of appointing the agents of the Province in London, Public Treasurers and Receivers. He occasionally ordered, without authority of law, payment to be made out of the money granted by the British Parliament for reimbursing the Colonies for their war expenses. He labored to establish a seat of government at a point not acceptable to the people.
But the old Governor had his good points. He was possessed of enthusiasm and energy, and a kind of tumid rhetoric, which had on some minds the effect of eloquence. He was exceedingly active in securing the subjugation of hostile Indians. He urged provision for the support of the clergy, not only by payment of salaries, but by purchase
of glebes and rectories, as “the first and greatest principle and foundation of all social happiness, is the knowledge of true religion, and the practice of morality and virtue, to know, love, and adore the Divine Being.”
He urges on the Assembly provision for the education of youth. With his sonorous rhetoric he inveighs against the schemes of the Pope of Rome and the Spanish and French Catholics to “conspire, conquer and enslave all our Colonies,” and exhorts the Assembly to join him in behaving like “generous, brave, and true christians, to confine their appetites and luxuries, and part with a reasonable part of their wealth to preserve the remainder and our happy constitution in Church and State to our latest posterity.”
His eloquent portrayal of the evils of French domination was successful in urging the Assembly to furnish men and money beyond the resources of the Province, and greater in propotion, it is claimed, than any other Province.
The old Governor was stalwart for education. He writes to the Board of Trade that the chief want of the Province is a sufficient number of clergymen and proper schoolmasters to instruct the youth. He discerned the true needs of the Church by applying for a Bishop “to confirm the youth, and keep the clergy to their duty, and concur in putting the laws into execution.” He advocated the education of the Indians and inducing them to engage in cultivation of farms. He urges that the killing, wounding, and maining of Indians and negro servants, shall be placed upon the same footing as similar offences toward other people.
The corruption charged against him in endeavoring to secure the location of the seat of government on his own land is found to be untrue.
Another charge, that he brought from Ireland swarms of impecunious kin, is a gross and unjust exaggeration. His second son, Edward Brice Dobbs, was a Captain in the
British army and, properly, as experienced officers were scarce, was given the command of a company sent on Braddock's expedition, was afterwards Major in the expedition to New York, and was for a short time a member of the Governor's Council.
Richard Spaight, who married the sister of Dobbs, was made Secretary and Clerk of the Crown, was appointed one of the Associate Judges, and also was Paymaster of the troops, who served in Virginia. This appears to have been the extent of the nepotism of the Governor.
Both these officers were good men. Spaight was the founder of a family, whose members have been and are conspicuous for their services to our State and to our Church. His son, Richard Dobbs Spaight, hastened home from his studies in the University of Glasgow when only twenty years of age, and engaged actively in the military and civil service of the State, assisting greatly in moulding her institutions, as State and National Legislator, and as the chief executive. I add that the change of the name of the county of Dobbs to Lenoir, was not until 1791, eight years after the close of the war, and probably was as much an ebullition of displeasure by a Republican Assembly against the strong Federalist nephew of the Governor, then in his grave over a quarter of a century, as it was against the uncle.
Wm. Tryon had qualities more brilliant than any of our Provincial Governors. He was a military man, having attained the rank of Lt. Colonel in the British army. He was in the prime of his life and vigor, ambitious and energetic, accustomed to the best society, stylish in his tastes, courteous in demeanor, a good soldier and statesman-like in his aspirations. He committed grave faults in his administration; such as extravagance in the survey of the Cherokee boundary, and building his “palace,” and cruelty in punishing the Regulators.
In mitigation of censure in these regards it might be urged
that a display of power was useful in overawing the Cherokees, that a handsome official residence was needed to give a turbulent people respect for government, and that the appropriations were voted by an Assembly composed of some of the most prudent men in the Province, and presumed to know what taxes their constituents could bear. In defense of his conduct about the Stamp Act, it may be said that it was his sworn duty to execute the orders of his King for carrying out the Act of Parliament levying the tax; and lastly, that the Regulators had defied his authority, broken up a Court, frightened the Judge into unseembly flight, and treated with outrageous indignity and cruelty officers of the law; that they were in arms against the lawful government, and threatening to march on the Capital; and that his treatment of captured traitors in arms was wonderfully mild compared with that accorded those who followed the ill-fated standard of Charles Edward a few years before, or that accorded the Irish who resisted the English power a few years afterwards.
And then it may be said in his behalf that he was supported and approved by those we are accustomed most to honor. In his little army of 1100 men, were such patriots as John Ashe, John Sampson, Francis Nash, Richard Caswell, Abner Nash, Robert Howe, Adlai Osborne, Samuel Spencer, James and Maurice Moore, Alexander Lillington and Hugh Waddell. The bloody Act of Assembly under which the insurgents were prosecuted, was drawn by Samuel Johnston, and was passed by an Assembly of good North Carolinians, signed by Richard Caswell, as speaker, and approved by James Iredell, who, although not a member of the Assembly, was watching with interest all its actions.
Admitting that the Governor was blameable for not accommodating his expenditures to the situation of a poor people, that he was not careful to adopt mild before resorting to violent measures in many other respects his character
appears to have been that of a good man and wise executive officer. He was undoubtedly an energetic advocate of education and supporter of the Church.
In 1730, one Wm. Tryon, Esq., merchant of London, was Treasurer of the S. P. G. Six years later it appears that Wm. and Thomas Tryon, merchants, were jointly Treasurers. About this time Charles Tryon, of Bullwicke, in Northamptonshire, married Lady Mary, daughter of Earl Ferrers, a near relation of the eminent Admiral, Earl Washington Ferrers. As Governor Tryon's sister was called by the Lutheran Commissioners the “Honorable Miss Tryon,” she may have been “Maid of Honor” to the Queen. Considering his rapid advancement which then went by Court favor, even more than now, and further his uncommon respect for religion, I think he was a son of Charles Tryon, and his noble wife, and nearly akin to the two Treasurers of the S. P. G. His wife, “Lady Tryon,” who brought him a dowry of £20,000 sterling, was probably a daughter of the noble house of Wake, which gave to the Church the learned Archbishop of that name, who died about thirty years before Tryon came to North Carolina. One of the daughters of the Archbishop bore the same name as that of the facinating sister of Tryon's wife, Miss Esther Wake, who left an exceedingly pleasant memory among our people.
The missionaries speak enthusiastically of Tryon and his “lady.” Rev. J. Barnett mentions also the Governor's liberality in the building of St. Philip's Church in Brunswick. Rev. George Micklejohn writes, “He rules a willing people with the indulgent tenderness of a common father.” Rev. Mr. Morton calls him, “that amiable, good man, who may be called the nursing Father of the Church in this Province.” Nor was this the opinion of Churchmen alone, but of Presbyterian Ministers, such as David Caldwell, Pattillo and McAden. He and his sister headed a subscription to enable the Lutherans of Rowan to obtain
a minister and a schoolmaster for their first congregation organized in North Carolina.
Col. Wm. L. Saunders in his very able “Prefatory Notes” to the 7th volume of Colonial Documents, while on the whole not approving Tryon's character, gives him the great credit of seeming “earnestly to desire to fill the parishes with clergymen of good character, a class of men that he said were greatly needed in the Province.” “When Tryon came to this Province there were here just five clergymen of the Established Church. When he left it there were eighteen.” In six years the number was trebled.
His wife and her sister won all hearts by their beauty, generosity and affability. And his sister was distinguished for her charitable acts. The old rule, noscitur a sociis, is especially true when the associates are women. We must conclude that Tryon had many noble qualities when we reflect on the three excellent ladies, whose virtues threw a radiance over him visible down the dim vista of a century and a quarter.
The letters of Tryon, public and private, show that he was a good writer, and an active man of business, an executive officer of promptness, system and ability. He was too an accomplished gentleman and of great personal influence. In apportioning to him censure, which his public acts call for, let it be remembered that he was called to the dual position of minister of George III, and Governor of a people, claiming the rights of Englishmen, and exasperated by a long course of misgovernment and oppression. The wind had been sown by his predecessors and he was forced to reap the whirlwind.
Of Josiah Martin little need be said. He began his administration well by procuring Acts of amnesty to the Regulators, and he showed concern for religion and education, but the causes of dissension between him, the supporter of the royal prerogative, and the people, aiming at
securing for themselves all the rights of Englishmen, and ultimately at separation and independence, were such as to paralyze all his efforts, and to drive him from the State. Opposing his feeble protests and proclamations against the mighty forces leading to Revolution, he was in the absurd condition of Mrs. Partington fighting the angry waves of the Atlantic Ocean with a broom. His presence may have stimulated the Tory element to greater mischief, but the only lasting result of his rule is the name of a county. Even that would probably have been changed as were those of Dobbs and Tryon, but for a popular Governor of free North Carolina bearing the same name.
Having finished the discussion of those who wielded the chief executive authority, and were known to be churchmen, I now take up the laymen of the church, who in less exalted official station, or in private life, were most conspicuous in moulding the institutions and developing the resources of the Province of North Carolina- It will be found that they have been the foremost in resisting oppression, encouraging education, promoting religion, and training our people for striving for and attaining the blessings of a free government.
The names of the first vestry ever appointed in North Carolina deserve to be recorded. They may be found in the vestry book of St. Paul's Parish, Chowan Precinct, and are as follows:
The Hon. Henderson Walker, Esq., Col. Thomas Pollock, Wm. Duckenfield, Esq., Mr. Nicholas Crisp, Mr. Edward Smithwick, Mr. John Blount, Mr. James Long, Mr. Nathaniel Chevin, Mr. William Banbury, Col. William Wilkinson, Capt. Thomas Leuton, Capt. Thomas Blount.
They met at the house of Mr. Thomas Gilliam, December 15th, 1701. Nathaniel Chevin was appointed Clerk of the Vestry, Col. William Wilkinson and Capt. Thomas Leuten were the first Church Wardens.
Mr. Edward Smithwick made the first donation, viz: one acre of land for a site for a church building.
The wardens were ordered to raise the money for building a church by contributions if possible, if not by a poll tax. They were further ordered to provide a reader and agree with him for his services.
The inhabitants of the South West Shore, i. e. of the South Eastern part of Bertie, were authorized after the church should be finished, to build a chapel of ease and to have a separate reader employed, by either the Hon. Col. Thomas Pollock or William Duckenfield, Esq.
The tax was twelve pence on each titheable of whom there were two hundred and eighty-three. After the church was finished at an expense of £33, say about one hundred and seventy dollars, the tax was raised to five shillings per titheable for the same, and for other charges, including £7 10 sh. paid the reader. The name of this first lay reader was Richard Churton, the first regularly employed “minister” in the State.
The church, the first in the State, was twenty-five feet long, with posts in the ground, had a floor, and benches for pews. It was ceiled with planks, the stained appearance of which was offensive to the vestry and so it was ordered to be white-washed.
At first it had no glass windows, but provision was made for securing some. John Porter was the contractor for the building. Soon afterwards the wardens were instructed to procure at as cheap a rate as possible “one fair and large book of Common Prayer, and the book of Homilies.” It is to be presumed that they had a Bible.
On the 9th of September, 1705, to the vestry meeting at the chapel, was presented the first voluntary subscription list ever signed in this Diocese, the progenitor of a never ending series of such formidable documents. The names of the donors and the amounts pledged, deserve to be handed down to posterity.
| £ | s | d | |
| Col. Thomas Pollock | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Wm. Duckenfield, Esq. | 4 | 0 | 0 |
| John Ardern, Esq. | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| Mr. Edward Moseley | 5 | 0 | 0 |
| Capt. Thomas Luten | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mr. Nicholas Crisp | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| Mr. Edward Smithwick. | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mr. John Blount | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Mr. Wm. Banbury | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| Mr. Nathl. Chevin | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| John Wheatley. | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Richard Rose | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| John Linnington | 0 | 15 | 0 |
| Capt. David Henderson. | 0 | 20 | 0 |
| Henry Bonner | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Total | £25 | 8 | 0 |
This subscription was for compensation to Rev. Henry Gerrard, in addition to the £30 paid him from receipts of taxes, in consideration of his entire services in the Parish of Chowan, he having reported that on account of the great distance and “dirtyness of the roads” to Pequimmins,” (Perquimans) he was not able to serve two parishes.
Of the vestry, Acting Governors Walker and Pollock have already been mentioned. Wm. Banbury, which name was afterwards spelt Benbury*, often a member of the Council, was founder of the Church family of Benbury of our day, two of whom, John A, and Lemuel C, from the same county of Chowan, both churchmen, were alumni of the State University, and gallant Confederate officers, the former killed in the desperate fight of Malvern Hill.
Thomas, son of Wm. Banbury was likewise a vestryman of St. Paul's Parish, and was one of the signers of the spirited resolutions of defiance of British tyranny adopted by St. Paul's Parish on the 19th of June 1776, and an active member of the State Congresses of 1774 and afterwards.
William Dnkinfield, which name we learn from Burke's Peerage, to have been formerly DeDokenfield, was the
*NOTE.—The early settlers gave e the sound of a. e. g. Merchant was Marchant, Clerk was Clark, Bertie—Bartie, Hertford—Hartford, &c.relation of Sir Robert Dukenfield, son of a noted Colonel in the Parliamentary army of the same name. William was a constant attendant on the meetings of the vestry. His name appears at the head of the vestry, Edward Moseley being the second, subscribed to a letter of thanks to the Bishop of London for sending to them the Rev. Wm. Gordon. The description of Mr. Gordon shows that the early churchman had a proper conception of the character of a true minister of God.
They write of him, as one, “whose meekness of disposition and spotless conversation is so highly engaged, together with his most excellent and practical way of preaching, as have prevailed even with the enemies of the Church to be silent at his deserved applause.”
Such language suggests that the laymen, who used it, were themselves largely endowed with christian graces.
The next Dukinfield appearing in our annals, Nathaniel, probably the son and heir of William, was an enlightened churchman as appears by his letters to the Bishop of London, July 14th, 1724. He declares that the people have a longing desire for missionaries, and as evidence of their good disposition, he states that, when the missionary last sent, Mr. Newman, died after six months service only, they gave his widow the salary for the year, being £60 and the Assembly gave her £40 more. He recommends that there be sent other ministers with salaries of £50 each paid by the S. P. G., which with the allowance established by law, and other considerable advantages, would make a comfortable living.
He concludes by hoping “that the Bishop will be the happy instrument of establishing the glorious Gospel in that remote and dormetory part of the Universe.”
This is the first charge on record of Rip Van Winkle-ism against North Carolina. The son of this Nathaniel Dukinfield of the same name inherited the baronetcy in Chester county, Great Britain, by the death of Sir Samuel of that
ilk without heirs male. Returning to England about the beginning of the war, his lands in North Carolina were confiscated. He purchased an office in the British army, but at his request was allowed not to fight against America. He was a warm friend of Judge James Iredell, and his unsuccessful rival for the hand of the sister of Governor Samuel Johnston.
The devotion of this family to the Church is further illustrated by the fact that one son, Rev. Charles Egerton Dukinfield, became vicar of Eden Hall, and another son, Rev. Sir Henry Robert, was also in holy orders. Two other members of the earliest vestry were of a family which has had an extensive inflence in our State. Capt. Thomas Blount and John Blount.
During the reign of Charles II, three sons of Sir Walter Blount, a prominent Cavalier during the Civil Wars, descended from the le Blounts, who were trusted officers of William the Conqueror, emigrated to America. One settled in Virginia, the other two, James and Thomas, in North Carolina. Thomas Blount, the vestryman of 1701, was either the emigrant or his son. His son Jacob, removed to what is now Pitt county and resided on a plantation called Blount Hall, which is still owned by his descendants. Jacob was constantly a vestryman of Christ Church, Craven, and was a member of the Provincial Congresses of our State during the Revolutionary struggles. He left very distinguished sons, Wm. Blount, Senator of the United States, and Governor of Tennessee when a Territory; John Gray Blount, the great land owner and a useful member of the General Assembly; General Thomas Blount, a Revolutionary officer and member of Congress of the United States. Major Reading Blount likewise a Revolutionary officer and member of the Legislature, and Willie Blount, Governor and Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. The late General Wm. Augustus Blount was a son of John Gray Blount.
John Blount, also a vestryman of 1701, was son of James who settled in Albemarle in 1669. The records show that he was a regular attendant on the meetings, and a supporter of the Parish, often acting as reader, until his death in 1725.
The extracts which I have given from the letters signed by him, Dukinfield and others, show his appreciation of the character of a good minister. A curt entry in the vestry book of St. Paul's Parish shows that they could be severe in denouncing a bad clergyman.
We find that Col. Pollock and Mr. John Blount gave notice to Rev. Henry Gerrard to “disprove charges of debauched practices or be dismissed.” They did not propose to have one of those ecclesiastical nuisances, a church trial, but reversed the common law method and acted on the principle that a clergyman, whose right conduct could not be shown by himself, should have no place in the parish. A son of John Blount, by the same name, Col. John Blount, of Mulberry Hill, was prominent in civil as well as Church matters, and his daughter married the first Bishop elect, Dr. Charles Pettigrew. The Elder John's youngest son, Joseph Blount, likewise took up the mantle of his father. He was a useful member of many of the Colonial Assemblies, was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Port of Roanoke and was named first in the Act of Incorporation of the Edenton Academy in 1770, which was in effect a Church school; the other incorporators being such eminent churchmen as Samuel Johnston, Joseph Hewes, Thomas Jones, and others. He transmitted his name to his son, who was a warden of the Church and a member of the Standing Committee of the Convention which elected Dr. Pettigrew. And we see the name of Joseph Blount likewise affixed to his grandson, a loved and venerable clergyman, whom it warms our heart to see with us to-day, after fifty years devoted labor for the Church of his ancestors. Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, D. D.; and
to his great-grandson, who is following in his father's footsteps, whose tireless energy has made him the originator of the scheme of this glorious centennial, Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, Junior. May I express the hope that the little Joseph Blount Cheshire, the third, of the seventh generation from the vestryman of 1701, inheriting the graces of his ancestors, may carry on their work of loving labor in the Master's vineyard.
I will not describe in detail the other members of the first vestry of 1701. I learn from my esteemed friend, Col. R. B. Creecy, whose mind is a storehouse of North Carolina history, especially of that of the Albemarle country, that the names of all, except Crisp, Chevin, Leuten, and Dukinfield, are found still among the Albemarle people. Leuten died out within his memory, Blounts are numerous, also Longs and Benburys. There are some Wilkinsons and some Smithwicks, corrupted into Smiddicks.
The readers of the early records of North Carolina find their interest and admiration greatly aroused by the picture given by Governor Glover of a young layreader, whose light shone brightly in the general darkness. In Pasquotank, he says, is an “orderly congregation kept together by the industry of a young gentleman. This gentleman being of an unblemished life, by decent behavior in that office [of school-master and layreader] and of apt discourses from house to house, according to the capacity of an ignorant people, not only kept those he found, but gained many to the Church, insomuch that the Rev. Richard Marsden, waiting passage for South Carolina, administered the Holy Communion, the first time I can learn of its being administered.” This first celebration of the Holy Communion in the Albemarle section, and presumably in the State, was on Trinity Sunday, 1706. Forty-five infants and adults were baptised.
Rev. Wm. Gordon, who wrote in 1709, says that he was
surprised at the “order, decency, and seriousness with which the congregation performed public worship;” and that the people were more “industrious, careful and cleanly” than elsewhere, all owing to the young layreader and school-teacher, Charles Griffin from the West Indies.
The career of Griffin thus far is like a green spot in the general spiritual desolation. It reminds us of Henry Martyn and Bishop Pattieson. It is exceedingly painful to learn from a subsequent letter of Mr. Gordon, that being removed from Pasquotank to Chowan in consequence of the coming of Rev. Mr. Adams, Griffin then fell into notorious sin and joined the Quakers.
I chronicle the story in order to impress three things, 1st, the wonderful good which can be accomplished by a single earnest lay worker; 2nd, the spiritual famine of the early settlers under the infamous neglect of the Lords Proprietors, and 3rd, that this spiritual famine was caused by want of teachers aud preachers, and not by the abnormal wickedness of the people.
In this terrible condition of sin and apostasy, Dr. Hawks and other historians leave poor Griffin. I am glad to restore his good name. In Bishop Meade's book on the “old Churches and Families of Virginia,” I find that there was, about ten years after the event spoken of by Mr. Gordon, a Rev. Charles Griffin teaching an Indian school at Christina in Virginia, a little north of Chowan Precinct, with skill and zeal closely similar to that shown by the lay-reader of Pasquotank Parish, and that he afterwards was a Professor at William and Mary College. I am constrained to believe that the backslider abandoned his sin and returned to his former virtue and godliness of living.
The name of Mr. Richard Sanderson, the elder, should likewise be recorded, as he attempted to make to the Church its first important benefaction, the gift of his plantation and slaves, after the death of himself and his wife. The donation was set aside by the Court for alleged incapacity
in the donor, but it none the less shows attachment to the Church which is further proved by faithful service as warden. In a letter to the Bishop of London, signed by the vestry, he being first named, after thanking his Lordship for sending to them Rev. Mr. James Adams, whose pious character and good works are earnestly praised, it is stated with pardonable pride that though Mr. Adams was the first to administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, they had more communicants than most of the neighboring Parishes of Virginia, who had the advantages of a settled ministry for many years.
John Lawson, who was captured and tortured to death by the Tuscaroras Indians in 1711, and whose book on North Carolina shows much literary talent and a very observant eye, was one of the most eminent men of those early days. As he styled himself “gentleman” he must have belonged to the ancient family of Lawsons in Yorkshire and Northumberland. He was Surveyor General of the Province, and an energetic and most active and enlightened officer. The peculiar enmity of the savages was caused by their regarding him as the cause of the encroachment of the whites on their lands. De Graffenreid shows that in presence of his captors he behaved with conspicuous and defiant courage.
Among the most prominent early churchmen was Samuel Swann, the older, a man of weight of character and of large earthly possessions, of great energy and usefulness.
There is an ancient family of Swanns, who have owned landed property in the county of Derby in England, ever since the conquest. A Samuel Swann was founder of one of its branches. I conjecture that the founder of the North Carolina family was a scion of that in Derby. Samuel Swann settled in Perquimans county in the year 1694. His grandfather, Wm. Swann was an alderman of Jamestown, in Virginia, and bought the land called Swann's Point, opposite,
on the South side of James river in 1635. His father, Thomas Swann, five times married, was a member of the Governor's Council in Virginia. Samuel Swann, son of his second wife, Sarah Cod, born in 1653, was twice married, first to Sarah, daughter of Governor Wm. Drummond, and secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter of acting Governor Alexander Lillington. He held several important offices, was often Associate Justice of the General Court, and sometimes acted as Chief Justice. He was for many years a member of the Council. He held the responsible post of Collector of the Customs for Roanoke. He was the leading supporter of the Church in Perquimans.
Rev. Mr. Gordon after praising the neatness of the unfinished Church, states that “its completion was hindered by the death in 1707, of one Major Swann, who zealously promoted the interests of religion in general, and forwarded by his continual pain and expense the building of that church in particular.”
There is a family record written by him, a copy of which was furnished me by one of his ablest and most useful descendants, Samuel A. Ashe, of Raleigh, which breathes throughout the spirit of piety and affection. One or two of the entries I will read for the edification of parents who have need to make occasional memoranda of a similar character.
“Samuel, born the 31st of October, 1704, being Tuesday, at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, the moon being full at 12 o'clock, was baptised Thursday the 23rd of August, 1705.
He had a son, Samuel, by his Drummond wife, concerning whom we find this tragic entry: “My dearly beloved son Samuel Swann, was drowned at Roanoke Inlet, his boat oversetting on Friday, the 1st of May, 1702, in the dusk of the evening, who, if he had lived until the next morning, six o'clock, would have been 21 years of age.”
This brings to our minds the like fate by drowning of
two noble young sons of the Church in our day, who bore promise of future greatness in Church and State, both University boys, Frank G. Hines and Charles N. Hill.
The descendants of Samuel Swann have been in all generations, and are now, as a rule churchmen, and influential in public or private stations, and many or them distinguished. His sons, William and Thomas, by his Drummond wife were both Speakers of the Assembly, and Thomas was likewise a member of the Council. The last of the descendants of this wife was Thomas Swann, a member of Congress of the Confederacy in 1787, a man of unusual cultivation, who married a daughter of Governor Samuel Johnston and died young without issue. Samuel Swann, the son of the Lillington wife, was a very eminent lawyer and legislator. He was selected as one of the Commissioners to compile the laws of the Province, and as he finished the work, it is called Swann's Revisal. He was for twenty years speaker of the Assembly and opposed with ability and firmness the exertion of arbitrary power on the part of the Governor.
He was one of the Surveyors to run the boundary line between North Carolina and Virginia and the first white man to cross the great Dismal Swamp. Through his daughter, Elizabeth, wife of John Baptista Ashe, and another daughter, Sarah, wife of Thomas Jones, a prominent lawyer of the Cape Fear section, are descended in addition to the Swanns, such staunch church families as the Ashes, Lords, Cutlars, Davises, De Rossets, Wrights, Halls, of Georgia, and others.
Perhaps the most conspicuous figure in the Colonial period was Col. Edward Mosely, who was an inhabitant of the Albemarle country in Chowan until about 1735, when he removed to the Cape Fear. We first read of him as a member of the Council in 1705, and as he was not a vestryman prior to this, he probably emigrated from England during that year. From the practice of the Lords
Proprietors, heretofore mentioned, appointing as their deputies on the Council Board scions of the nobility and gentry, and from Mosely's having had evidently good educational advantages, I think it likely that he was related to the ancient noble family of Mosely (or Mosley) in Lancaster county, England, of which Edward was the favorite name. One of them, Sir Edward Mosely, was Attorney General of the Duchy of Lancaster, the latter part of the 17th Century, and we may reasonably conjecture that the Edward Mosely, found as a member of the Council, and an able lawyer, shortly after the death of the Attorney General, was indebted to him for his legal bent, if not education. He at once became a leader in Church and State. We find him a member of the vestry of Chowan Parish, and with Nicholas Leuten entrusted with the duty of building a Chapel. He was a regular attendant at the vestry meetings. He was by far more liberal in his gifts to the Church than any other layman. I have already stated that he and Pollock headed the first subscription paper for the Church in the Province.
Later, in 1720, he set the noble example of providing the members of his Parish with Common Prayer and other books, viz: twelve books of Common Prayer; twelve copies of the Whole duty of Man, twelve copies of Dr. Nichol's Paraphrase on the Common Prayer, twelve copies of Horneck's Great Law of Consideration, and Bishop Beveridge's sermons, to be delivered to the twelve vestrymen for the use of themselves and their neighbors.* He went further. He made a large donation of standard books on Church History and Theology to the S. P. G. “towards a Provincial Library to be kept in Edenton, the Metropolis of North Carolina,” the names of which showing twenty-three folio volumes, fifteen quartos, and thirty-seven
*NOTE.—It is doubtful whether Mosely's good intentions took effect. He sent a bill of exchange to London to purchase these books, but we have no record of their having been received in Chowan.octavos, in all seventy-six volumes, are filed as an appendix to this paper. The character of these works show that he must have been a man of solid reading and literary instinct. He was a member and the speaker of the lower House of the General Assembly for many years. During the first administration of Burrington, that of Everard and most of Johnston's administration, he was a member of the Upper House, and for a few months prior to the coming of Everard acted as Governor. He held the high office of Surveyor General of the Province, and was the principal representative of the State in running the boundary line between Virginia on the North, and South Carolina on the South, as well as that bounding Granville's territory on the South. In a dispute with the Virginia Commissioners as to a scientific question connected with the location of the boundary line, it has been proved that his knowledge and skill were superior to theirs. He was the ablest lawyer in the Province in his day, and held the office of Associate Justice, of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, and near the close of his life was Chief Justice. He was also Public Treasurer, and when he died he was the Associate of Swann in the first revisal of the laws.
In a public life extending from 1705 to his death in 1747, the services of Edward Mosely to the Colony were of prime importance. He early espoused the cause of the people in their claims of vested rights as against arbitrary power. He resisted the attempt to exclude dissenters from office and thus become a champion of religious liberty. He was Speaker in 1708 of the Assembly which decided in favor of Cary against Glover, but did not follow Cary in his factious and futile armed contest with Hyde. Eden's prosecution of him and procuring the imposition of a heavy fine and temporary disqualification for office so far from injuring his character, emphasized his fearless assertion of his rights as a freeman.
As early as 1716, the Assembly, under his guidance,
determined to put a stop to the arbitrary spirit which had grown up during the early troubles and Indian war by passing a resolution, probably phrased by him, which reminds us of Magna Charta, “that impressing of the inhabitants or their property under pretence of its being for the public service without authority from the Assembly was unwarrantable and a great infringement of the liberty of the subject.”
From Mosely's union with the daughter of Governor Lillington, the widow of Governor Walker, was Sampson Mosely, who was prominent in the Revolutionary struggles. There are descendants of his still living, but none bearing his name. The removal of Edward Mosely and his family to the Cape Fear was doubtless caused by the relationship between his children and those of Maurice Moore, his brother-in-law.
Col. Maurice Moore was a churchman, at one time sharing with Mosely the distinction of being the strongest man in the Province. He was son of the first Governor James Moore, of South Carolina, whose ancestors belonged to one of the oldest and most influential families of Ireland, of which the Marquis of Drougheda is the present head. His grand-father, Roger Moore, is mentioned by Hume, as a man of great ability and capacity, who was forced to fly from his country in consequence of an unsuccessful rebellion in 1641 against the English. The mother of Maurice Moore was daughter of Governor Yeamans. He first came to North Carolina as an officer under his older brother, Col. James Moore, who with signal ability finished Col. Barnwell's work by crushing the Tuscaroras rebellion, and was afterwards one of the best of South Carolina's Governors. Col. Maurice Moore married the widow of Samuel Swann, the elder, Governor Lillington's daughter, and for several years resided in Perquimans county. While a citizen of Albemarle he led, under order of Governor Eden, a company to defend the people of South Carolina against
Yemassee Indians, for which the Assembly of that State voted him most cordial thanks and a bounty of £100.
About 1723, he, with his brothers, Nathaniel and Roger, commonly called “King Roger Moore,” and other relatives and friends, such as the Porters, Howes, Daniels and the children of John Moore, concluded to migrate to Cape Fear, and procuring large tracts of land on the waters of Town Creek below Wilmington, laid out and settled the town of Brunswick. This town for many years was inhabited by distinguished and refined people. The Assemblies were sometimes held there. In it resided some of the Colonial Governors. In the course of time Wilmington absorbed the population of Brunswick.
As the settlement of his ancestor, Sir John Yeamans, had failed, Col. Maurice Moore is entitled to the distinction of being the pioneer of Cape Fear. Owning large estates and possessed of great weight of character, he and his brothers dispensed a generous hospitality, and exerted commanding influence on their community. His sons, Maurice and James, one in civil, the other in military life, were among our most distinguished men. Maurice was an Associate Judge of the General Court under Tryon, along with Richard Henderson. He was an able lawyer and a staunch advocate of the rights of the people. His pamphlets, one against the Stamp Act and the other signed “Atticus.” criticising the acts and character of Tryon, show much literary power. In him alone of the three Judges did the Regulators appear to trust. He was a member of the Congress which formed our State Constitution and aided to start the machinery of free government.
James Moore had high reputation as a military man and was elected in 1775 Colonel of the First Regiment, and in 1776, as General, was placed by Congress in charge of the southern department. He lived long enough to show promise of a brilliant career. In the same house and in the same hour in 1777, the struggling patriots lost two of
their strongest men, Maurice Moore, the jurist, and James Moore, the soldier.
Alfred, a son of Judge Maurice Moore, after some efficient service in the war, became Attorney General of free North Carolina, and at the close of the century a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The Ashe family gave to the Province and to the Church in the 18th century some of its most brilliant lights.
There are several Ashe stocks among the landed gentry of England. The North Carolina family is from the Ashes of Heightsbury, an old borrough in Wiltshire. The name was originally D'Esse, and the pedigree runs back to the Conqueror. The members have been prominent in English political life, in parliament and in official station. St. George Ashe was Bishop of Cloygher and Derry, and is said to have married Swift to Stella in the Bishop's own garden. Another, Edward, was on the Board of Trade at the time of the purchase of Carolina by the Crown. We find John Ashe sent to England in 1703, by the dissenters of the county of Colleton in South Carolina, for the purpose of thwarting the efforts of Governor Nathaniel Johnston to disfranchise all not belonging to the Church of England. While engaged in his mission he died in London, and his family, of which John Baptista Ashe was the head, emigrated to the Albemarle section about 1727. He at once became prominent in the Province, identifying himself with the people by marrying a daughter of Samuel Swann, the elder, and thus being connected with Edward Mosely, Samuel Swann, the speaker, the Porters, and the Lillingtons. He was at one time a member of the Council and at another Speaker of the Assembly, and had the nerve to resist with spirit the arbitrary encroachment of Burrington, thus incurring his mortal hatred and the abusive outgivings of his venomous tongue. His oldest son, John Ashe, as speaker of the Assembly and as Colonel of the militia of Brunswick, was foremost in resisting the attacks
on the rights of the Colonies which led to the war of Independence. He was styled by Jones, the historian, “the most chivalrous hero of the Revolution.” Eight years before the tea was thrown into Boston harbor by men disguised as Indians, Gens. Ashe and Waddell, in open day, with six hundred men from the Cape Fear region, had the daring to march to Brunswick and force the British men of war to surrender two merchant vessels, seized because their papers were not stamped, and surrounding Governor Tryon's house, took therefrom the Stamp-master who was then made to swear not to execute the duties of his office.
He was a leader in all the measures looking to resistance and a gallant, though unfortunate, General of the Revolutionary army. His younger brother, Samuel Ashe, was educated at Harvard and was a lawyer of ability. He likewise was an active patriot, a member of the State Congress of 1775 and 1776, and one of the Council of thirteen, which, during the provisional period preceding the adoption of the constitution, was the supreme authority of the State.
He was for years one of the first Judges under the constitution, and then was transferred to the executive chair. He was a man of great force and influence and acknowledged integrity, and has had the extraordinary honor of giving names to a county and two towns of our State.
Mr. George Davis, in his admirable address before the Alumni of his Alma Mater, the University of North Carolina, quotes from Jones’ History, “the Ashe family contributed more than any other to the success of the Revolution in this State. Gen. John Ashe's son, Capt. Samuel Ashe, served two campaigns in the Northern States with the rank of Captain in the light-horse, and although he resigned his commission, he continued to serve in the militia expeditions of the State. So that there were five officers of that family actively engaged in the war: “Gen. John Ashe and his son, Capt. Samuel Ashe, Governor
Samuel Ashe and his sons, Colonel John Baptista and Samuel Ashe.” Mr. Davis says, “True so far—and he might have added, that Gen. Ashe's son, John—“Mad Jack Ashe,” as he was called, served nearly throughout the war with the rank of Captain, and that the boys, William, Acourt, and Cincinnatus Ashe, though too young to hold commands were old enough to follow the example of their sires, and march against the enemies of their country.” Wm. Shepperd Ashe, member of Congress and President of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad Company, and the late Thomas Samuel Ashe, Confederate States Senator and Judge of our Supreme Court, were lineal descendants of Judge and Governor Samuel Ashe, as is also Samuel Acourt Ashe, the editor, and many other prominent men.
The family of Lillingtons, both through its male and female members, was very influential in the Province from early times. Alexander Lillington was Deputy Governor of Albemarle in 1693—’95, and Gen. Alexander Lillington, his grandson, was one of the most daring spirits who inaugurated the Revolution, sharing with Caswell the distinction of defeating the Tories in the important battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, his son likewise being an ardent soldier. It has been already stated that a daughter of Gov. Lillington was successively the wife of Governor Walker and of Edward Mosely, and another daughter was successively the wife of Samuel Swann, the elder, and of Maurice Moore, the elder. She was the mother of the eminent lawyer and speaker of the Assembly, Samuel Swann, the younger, and of the wife of John Baptista Ashe. Another daughter married John Porter, and one of their daughters became the second wife of Maurice Moore, the elder, and thus the mother of Judge Maurice and Gen. James Moore; so that it appears that most of the Cape Fear worthies had in their veins some of the excellent Lillington blood. I do not find this name among the peerage or
gentry of Great Britain, but the high position held by the first Lillington in North Carolina, and by his father in Barbadoes, makes it probable that they were relations of Admiral Lillingston, who was prominent in the latter half of the 17th century, the dropping of a letter being very common in the history of families.
The members of the Davis family of Cape Fear were staunch churchmen. Four brothers, Jehu, John, William and Roger joined Maurice Moore's Colony at Brunswick. Jehu Davis was the progenitor of an extraordinary array of honored and useful citizens. His descendants intermarrying with the Waddell, Ashe, Eagles, Moore and Hill families, gave to the State such men as Bishop Thomas F. Davis, Dr. Edmund Strudwick, Judge Thomas S. Ashe, and Dr. F. J. Haywood among the dead, and George Davis, Dr. Edmund F. Ashe, Alfred M. Waddell, and Du Brutz Cutlar among the living. He was for years a presiding justice of the County Court of Brunswick. In a well written and vigorous protest made to the Board of Trade in 1735, he and his brother, John, and seven others, are described as the nine principal inhabitants of the Cape Fear, owning 75,000 acres of land and numbering, with their families and slaves, 1,200 persons. The son of Jehu Davis, Thomas, and grandson, Thomas F., father of Bishop Davis and the ex-Attorney General of the Confederate States, were both men of high standing, and held offices of trust in their counties. Nearly all the descendants of Jehu Davis are staunch churchman.
Conspicuous among the churchmen of the old times was Edmund Porter, and I believe John Porter, his father. Like John Ashe, the latter took part with the dissenters and like him was sent to England to oppose their disfranchisement. He was an adherent of Cary in his controversy with Glover, and has been stigmatized by Dr. Hawks and other historians as a traitor and as having stirred up the Tuscaroras war. It is now certain that John
Porter was working for the defence of the chartered rights of the people, and as his family associations were with churchmen, his son and daughter intermarrying with the Lillingtons, and his grand-daughter marrying Col. Maurice Moore, I think it likely that he was not as alleged either a bad man or a Quaker. Nor do I credit the evil charges brought against his son, Edmund Porter. Party feelings was so excessively strong and foul language so common in those days that it is not safe to credit allegations unsupported by facts. Charges of extorting excessive fees were made against nearly all officers. Certainly Edmund Porter's associations were with good men and he showed commendable spirit in resisting arbitrary acts of the executive. He was for some time member of the Council and Judge of the Vice Admiralty Court and the records show that he was a man of independent and intelligent judgement, with courage to maintain his convictions. It was rather to his credit that he was deprived of his seat in the Council by the despotic Burrington.
Christopher Gale was the most imposing figure in the early judiciary. We have his portrait, his noble countenance, surrounded by his flowing wig, showing true judicial dignity. We learn even from his enemy, Urmstone, that he was so much trusted that he was called on to fill every office in the Province except the executive. Under his administration as Chief Justice, the General Court for the first time took shape as a worthy imitation of the Court of King's Bench in England. So far as the records prove, he was the first Judge to deliver a charge to the grand jury instructing them in their duties, and the first to hold Court in a court-house, which was at Edenton. He was equal to Mosely in the universality of his employments, Major in the militia, Councillor, Commissioner to settle the Virginia boundary line, Commissioner to procure aid from South Carolina in the Tuscaroras war, Collector, agent to England to procure the deposition of the terrible
Burrington. Burrington praised him until he refused to allow his Court to be made the instrument of the Governor's despotic conduct, and then the praises were changed into curses and vilifications, followed by attempts at personal violence. The Lords Proprietors sustained Gale. He was Chief Justice, with a short interval when he was absent in England, until 1731.
As a churchman he stands as high as any other of the men of his day. He was a son of Rev. Miles Gale, rector of Kighley, in Yorkshire. More than one of his ancestors were clergymen of the Church, and so was one of his brothers. The vestry with whom he served praised his piety and zeal.
It was his custom to have one of his brothers to read the service of the Church weekly in his own house, for want of a chapel. His letters to his father and the Bishop of London, show an earnest desire to procure missionaries for the people so destitute of religious privileges.
Gale married the widow of Governor Harvey, and Chief Justice Wm. Little married their daughter. Judge Little was a lawyer of ability, at one time Attorney General, and at another, Treasurer of the Province. Charges of extortion and perversion of justice were made against him by the Assembly, but he was vehemently defended by Burrington and his Council; and as there was never any trial we are in no condition to take sides against the ancestor of some of the best people of our State.
In addition to Christopher Gale and Wm. Little there were others who held the high office of Chief Justice whose names should be considered.
There was Wm. Smith, in Governor Gabriel Jonhston's administration, who had his education at one of the English Universities, and was a Barrister of two years standing when deemed worthy by the King, at the suggestion of the Board of Trade, to occupy the highest judicial office in the Province. He was evidently a man of parts, though
not escaping charges of corruption, both by Burrington and members of the Assembly.
Later, in Dobbs’ time, we have Enoch Hall, who, according to Dobbs, had a good character, but knowledge of law in an inverse ratio. And then there were James Harell and Peter Henly, good men, and Charles Berry, a sound and upright judge, who in a paroxysm of insanity committed suicide.
Lastly, there was Martin Howard, a convert from the Baptists, an able lawyer from Rhode Island, whose residence there was burnt because of his advocacy of the Stamp Act. Obloquy has been heaped on his name by the patriot party, but as he was allowed to live on his plantation in Craven until September, 1777, unmolested, where he claimed that he had made two blades of grass grow where one grew before, and was on friendly terms with Judge Iredell, it is likely that his chief offence was in adhering to the Crown. With Howard, were Maurice Moore, already mentioned, and Richard Henderson as Associate Judges, who, like Moore, espoused the cause of the Colonists. He, Henderson, was an able, faithful and efficient officer, and was the father of two very distinguished sons, Chief Justice Leonard Henderson, and Archibald Henderson, an eminent lawyer and member of Congress. The descendants of Richard Henderson, who are churchmen in our day, may be numbered by scores; among them there is none more staunch than one of our representatives in Congress, John S. Henderson.
A most notable churchman, of the period nearest the Revolutionary struggle, was General Hugh Waddell, the founder of the long line of devoted churchmen and useful and honored citizens, one of whom, Alfred Moore Waddell, has recently published an interesting biography of his ancestors, and has delivered an able address on this centennial occasion.
His father, of the same name, belonged to a leading family
of the great people who emigrated from lowland Scotland, to North Ireland, and was a friend of Rowan and of Dobbs. Hugh Waddell, the younger, emigrated to North Carolina in 1754, when about twenty years of age. He won laurels, when barely of age, in the campaign in which Washington gained his first military experience, being promoted from Lieutenant to Captain. As Major, he marched with General Forbes to Fort Du Quesne. In the next year, 1759, we find him protecting the North Carolina frontiers against the Indians by building forts and fighting, when need required. Two years later, in command of North Carolina troops, he assisted in humbling the Cherokees. In 1765, he joined with John Ashe in leading forcible resistance to the execution of the Stamp Act. He took part in the campaign against the Regulators, being in command of the militia of the West. Gen. Waddell was interested in civil as well as military affairs, serving as a member of the Assembly from Rowan and from Bladen. Marrying Mary Haynes he settled on Cape Fear River at Rocky Point, at a plantation then and now called Castle Haynes. Having great military talents and experience, being of indomitable pluck and energy, possessed of large wealth, a big brain, commanding manners and impetuous zeal for liberty, he seemed destined to stand high on the roll of the great generals who justified the confidence reposed in them by Washington. He was cut off by disease two years before blood flowed at Concord and Lexington and before his kinsmen and friends began to arm in preparation for the coming conflict.
It is remarkable that North Carolina should have lost by disease in the opening days of the Revolutionary struggle, two of her most eminent military leaders, James Moore and Waddell, and also her most trusted statesman. John Harvey.
A citizen of Wilmington, conspicuous for attachment to Church principles and for faithfulness in his civil duties
was John Burgwin, a younger son of a good Welch family, who landed in America in 1751, and was a co-partner in business with Waddell. His first wife, one of the heiresses of Castle Haynes, died childless. By his second wife, Miss Bush, of England, he was the father of J. F. Burgwyn, of New Berne, and George B. Burgwin, of Wilmington. The first was grand-father of one of the delegates to the General Convention in 1886 and 1889, from the Diocese of North Carolina, Col. W. H. S. Burgwyn; the latter was father of one of the delegates from the Diocese of Pittsburg, Mr. Hill Burgwin. John Burgwin was clerk of the Council and Public Treasurer under Dobbs and Tryon, and had their full confidence. He was noted for strict business principles and talents as an accountant, his reputation in this regard extending even into the remotest regions where the Regulators nourished their hatred of free bills and taxes.
General Robert Howe, a scion of the noble house of Howe, in England, and a descendant of Gov. James Moore, of South Carolina, and of Job Howe, one of the friends and supporters of Col. Maurice Moore, at Brunswick, was a churchman.
Prior to the Revolution, he acted as Associate Judge on the bench with Chief Justices Berry and Howard. He was a member of the Assembly under Governor Martin and of the Provincial Congress of 1775, and was one of the leaders in the opposition to the Governor. He was foremost in organizing the militia for service in the field. He served throughout the war with varied fortune, and enjoyed the confidence of Washington to a high degree. He died soon after the the close of the war while on his way to take his seat in the General Assembly of the State, whose freedom he aided so largely in securing. Some of the State papers, written on the eve of the Revolution, that are certainly to be attributed to Gen. Howe, are remarkably fine productions,
suffering nothing by comparison with similar papers in any other Colony.
Among the best churchmen of Brunswick must be mentioned Wm. Hill, a native of Boston, who often acted as lay reader, said by Josiah Quincy, who lodged at his house, in his narrative of his Southern tour, to have been a “most sensible, polite gentleman,” and “warmly attached to the cause of American freedom.” His wife was a daughter of Nathaniel Moore; and their son, Wm. H. Hill, became a prominent lawyer and member of Congress. A son of the latter, Joseph A. Hill, considered by many, one of the most able men in the South, was cut off by disease in early manhood.
Among the later Colonial Churchmen may be found conspicuous the name of De Rosset.
On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Captain Louis De Rosset, a man of rank in the South of France gave up his fair home for conscience sake and took refuge in England. His merit being known to the celebrated Schomberg, a commission as Captain in the British Army was given him.
He left one son, Dr. Armand John De Rosset, who took his degree at the University of Basle. Dr. De Rosset removed to Wilmington in North Carolina with two sons, the elder of whom Louis Henry, was speedily made a member of the Council and served in that capacity until the Revolution with great faithfulness. Considering himself bound by the oath of allegiance, which as Councilor he had taken, he returned to England after the evacuation of Charleston and died childless. His brother, Moses John, a physician, served as Captain in the expedition of Col. Innes to Virginia. In 1766, the year before his death, as Mayor of Wilmington, he addressed a spirited reply to Tryon on the subject of the refusal by the people of Wilmington to supply the war sloop, Viper, with provisions, because the vessel was engaged in enforcing the Stamp
Act. He left a daughter, who became the mother of Judge John D. Toomer, and a son, Armand John De Rosset, who for sixty years was one of the most skilful physicians and excellent men of his day in America. This son marrying the niece of Hume, the historian, became the father, among other children, of the venerable Dr. Armand John De Rosset of our day, whom the Diocese of East Carolina delights to honor as its Treasurer, and delegate to the General Convention, as did the Diocese of North Carolina before the division. Among his descendants are two clergymen of our Church.
Col. James Innes deserves to be recorded among the Church worthies of the Colonial period although he was probably a Presbyterian, when in Scotland. He was an officer, according to Governor Dinwiddie, of “unblemished character, of great reputation for his bravery and conduct,” to whom history has not done justice. He was a native of Scotland, of noble family, a tried soldier of approved courage and capacity. He probably came to North Carolina with Governor Johnston. He was for years a member of the Council. He was a Captain in the expedition against Carthagena. In 1754, he was selected to command the first troops raised by any of the Colonies for service outside its own borders. He marched to Virginia for the war with the French, in which Washington acquired his first military experience. He did his full duty, and that his efforts were not successful was due to causes which he could not control. He died in 1759, after showing his devotion to the Church by bequeathing a bell to the Parish Church of Cannisbay in Caithness, and £100 sterling to the poor of the parish. He gave his plantation, considerable personal estate, his library, and £100 sterling to found a free school, of which the parson and vestry of St. James,’ Wilmington, and the Colonel of the New Hanover Regiment were to be trustees. This is the first private bequest for a school in the history of the State. Under it,
by Act of Assembly, was founded Innes Academy.
The Harveys of Perquimans, were prominent among our people for several generations. They probably belonged to an ancient family in England, descended from De Herné, one of the officers of William the Conqueror. I have a book which has the name and coat of arms of John Harvey, and the crest is like that of John Harvey, of Ickwell Bury, of the county of Bedford. It is noticeable that in Burke's Peerage the name “John” is the sole christian name of the head of this family for six generations. In North Carolina, John Harvey was acting Governor, as head of the Council, in 1678. Thomas Harvey, probably his son, was deputy Governor for four years prior to his death in 1699, often acting as Chief Justice of the General Court. Both administrations seem to have been successful in the preservation of law and order.
But the greatest of the name was John Harvey, who, as Speaker of the House, had the responsibility of inaugurating measures which ultimately led to armed resistance.
He was chairman of the Committee of Correspondence with the other Colonies. He had the nerve to issue calls for election of delegates to a Provincial Congress to meet in New Berne, to take the place of the Assembly, in case Governor Martin should dissolve the latter. This Congress met notwithstanding a prohibitory proclamation from the Governor, and Harvey was chosen as its moderator, the first legislative body which met in North Carolina in defiance of royal authority. In this Assembly there were three Harveys from Perquimans, John, Benjamine, and Thomas, and two others, Miles and John, the younger, afterwards appeared in the Revolutionary legislatures. John Harvey, the elder, although enfeebled by disease, with conspicuous courage, energy and intelligent statesmanship, kept North Carolina in line with the other Colonies until his death.
Col. Creecy informs me that in the earlier half of this century there lived at Edenton three elderly sisters, granddaughters
of John Harvey, Misses Peggy and Patsy Harvey and Mrs. Granberry, very prim and precise patterns of old school etiquette; so exceedingly devout and attached to the Church that it was said of them that “they would never die, but would blow away and fly to the church steeple and stick there.” The last of the lineal descendants of the great patriot are three maiden ladies of Hertford, Perquimans county, of the best type of womanhood, the best of christians, and like their ancestors, as far back as tradition goes, members of our Church.
When Harvey died, Samuel Johnston, a churchman of welath, patriotism, cultivation and ability, took his place as Moderator; and soon, as Chairman of the Provincial Council, was the first executive of our State. He was a nephew of Governor Gabriel Johnston, and son of John Johnston, Chief Surveyor of the Province, a man of great influence and high standing. Although his greatest services to the State as legislator, Governor and Judge were not in Colonial times, yet he was a man of much influence for many years prior to the Revolutionary struggle. He was Naval officer of the Crown, and an active member of the Assembly. He was a supporter of Tryon in the suppression of the Regulators, but was soon afterwards in the opposition, promoting the movement for resistance with such activity and intelligence that he was chosen to take the place of Harvey. His further great career I will not trace. As leader of the conservative wing of the Whig party he aided in moderating the violence of the Radical element.
The brother-in-law of Samuel Johnston was James Iredell, the Collector of the Port, a bright young lawyer in Colonial times, who rose to be one of the ablest Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Neighbors or connections of the Johnstons were, besides those I have mentioned, Col. Richard Buncombe of Tyrrell, a man of wealth and generous hospitality, who
equipped a company at his own expense and lost his life at Germantown.
There was Col. John Dawson, a lawyer, husband of Gabriel Johnston's daughter, living at Eden House, noted for his hospitality and refined society, whose son, Wm. Johnston Dawson, became a member of Congress, and was one of the Commissioners to select the site and report the plan of the city of Raleigh, giving his name to one of its streets.
Another was Dr. Cathcart, of great wealth and cultivation, one of whose daughters was the wife of Samuel Johnston and mother of the late James Cathcart Johnston. There was also Thomas Jones, one of the ablest lawyers, who is said to have been the chief author of the Constitution of 1776. And there were Joseph Hewes, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who showed a rare constancy by living a bachelor because of the death of his affianced, Isabella Johnston; and Robert Smith, his partner, an officer in the army and a member of the legislature; and Thomas Barker, the legal instructor of Samuel Johnston, and appointed, though not acting, with Mosely, Swann and Allen to revise the laws of the Province.
Another of the Albemarle churchmen, a very accomplished man, Charles Johnson had an eventful life. His name was originally Johnston, or Johnstone, being like Gabriel Johnston, a member of the great Johnston family of South Scotland, of which the Earl of Annandale was head. When but a youth he followed the unfortunate Charles Edward and after Culloden escaped to the continent, and for policy's sake changed his name to Johnson. He afterwards lived in Scotland and then spent some years in London in the service of the East India Company. Becoming a widower he removed to the Albemarle section, and afterwards married a daughter of Rev. Daniel Earl, by whom he had one son, Charles Earl Johnson, the father of the eminent physician, and grandfather of the Treasurer
of the Diocese of North Carolina, both of the same name. Charles Johnson was a very accomplished man and an ardent patriot, of great influence, serving faithfully in the State legislature and in the National Congress. He was also Vice-President of the Fayetteville Convention of 1789, which adopted the Federal Constitution, Gov. Saml. Johnston being President. There were no more refined communities in the country than the circles of Church people, who resided in and around the old Capital of the State, and in and around Brunswick, Wilmington and New Berne.
One of the most useful churchmen of the later period of the Colonial times was James Davis, a very active man of business, who in 1747, imported from Virginia and set up at New Berne the first printing press. On this press he printed in good style the first book ever published in the State, the Revisal of the Acts of the Assembly, known as Swann's Revisal, and familiarly called, from the color of the binding, the “Yellow Jacket.” Davis was public printer until the removal of the seat of government from New Berne to Wilmington, in 1764. He was likewise the pioneer of periodical literature, publishing the first journal, with the ambitious title of “The North Carolina Magazine, or Universal Intelligence,” issued once a week, a small quarto of eight pages, begining June 1st, 1764, for four pence a number. He was also the first mail contractor, agreeing with the Assembly to “carry the public letters, expresses and dispatches relating to the Province, to any part thereof, and every fifteen days send a messenger to Suffolk, in Virginia, and to Wilmington” for one year at a compensation of £100 6s 8d procln. money. What his charges were for private letters does not appear. That he had the general confidence is proved by his being elected a Burgess of the Assembly while holding the office of Sheriff. He was refused his seat on this account, but we
find him a member afterwards. Probably he gave up the office of Sheriff.
John Haywood, the founder of a family which has given many distinguished churchmen to our State, was a nephew of Sir Henry Haywood, of England. He was born in Barbadoes and settled about 1730 in Halifax county, in North Carolina. He was Treasurer of the Northern counties, about the middle of the 18th century.
His son, Col. Wm. Haywood, removed to Edgecombe county, and was one of its leaders in promoting the Revolution; serving on the Committee of Safety, and in all the various State Congresses and General Assemblies, until his death in 1779. From him and his brothers, Sherwood and Egbert, are descended some of the most distinguished people of our State, notably, Judge John Haywood, a very able lawyer of North Carolina and Tennessee, and author of a history of Tennessee; Treasurer John Haywood, whose name belongs to a county and a town of our State, and Wm. H. Haywood, a Senator of the United States.
Col. Philemon Hawkins, Senr., the founder of a large and exceedingly influential family, emigrated to Warren county, then Bute, about 1737, from Virginia. He was the chief aid to Tryon in the Alamance campaign, and was one of the most sagacious and prudent in his community. His son, Benjamin Hawkins, was selected by Washington as one of his aids; fought at the battle of Monmouth, and was afterwards one of the first Senators of the United States under the Constitution; while one of his grandsons, Wm. Hawkins, was Governor of the State in the beginning of the war of 1812.
One of the most sturdy patriots, one of the most advanced in Republican ideas, one of the most simple in his habits and trusted among his fellow citizens, was John Starkey. He was for years Treasurer of the Southern Province. He had such influence in the Assembly that Dobbs charged that he acquired his power by lending
money to the members. He is said to have been an ordained minister of the Church and to have had regular services in his dwelling house. His son, Edward Starkey, was a legislator in Revolutionary times, and a member of the first Council under the Constitution of 1776.
Richard Caswell, the first Governor, and one of the leaders of the Revolution, in military and civil life, was a prominent churchman in Colonial days. He was an eminent lawyer, was Public Treasurer of the Southern part of the Province; as Colonel of the militia of Dobbs county commanded the right wing of Tryon's army at Alamance, and held the high position of Speaker of the Assembly. So high was he valued by Tryon, that he endeavored unsuccessfully to have him appointed one of the Associate Judges under Chief Justice Howard. Executive blandishments could not swerve him from patriotism, and he devoted his civil and military talents, which were of a high order, to the cause of independence.
Prominent among the Tories were Edmund Fanning,* appointed by Tryon Associate Judge in the place of Maurice Moore removed for opposition to the Stamp Act; Colonel of the militia and Register of Orange, and the object of the vengeance of the Regulators for exacting excessive fees and for taking the lead in enforcing obnoxious laws; afterwards a General in the King's Army and Lieutenant Governor successively of Nova Scotia and of Prince Edward's Island; a good scholar too, a D. C. L. of Oxford University, and an LL. D. of his Alma Mater, Yale College, and of Dartmouth.
And the names at least should be recorded of John Frobock, the land Surveyor of Salisbury, and Henry Eastace McCullock, with his claims as agent, and in his own right,
*In Sabine's “American Loyalists,” Edmund Fanning is said to have been Gov. Tryon's son-in-law. Sabine, however, does not seem to me to be altogether reliable in his statements about North Carolina matters. J. B. C., Jr.of acres broad enough for a principality; and Earl Granville's agents, Francis Corbin, and Thomas Childs, the latter at one time Attorney General.
It would be a labor of love to continue this narrative of the men of our Church in Colonial days, worthy and unworthy, but my paper is already too long. I will give rapid notice of some of them and close my work with regrets for its incompleteness, and possible injustice to those worthy of all honor.
Among these should be mentioned Henry Baker, who settled in what is now Hertford county, in 1720, among whose descendants are Lawrence Baker, prominent in the Committees of Safety, and State Congresses of the Revolution, and that excellent gentleman of the old school, Dr. Simmons J. Baker, and in our day, Wm. Lawrence Saunders, our Secretary of State, who is doing so much for the elucidation of North Carolina history.
And there is Thomas Lenoir, of Edgecombe, a Huguenot, coming by way of Virginia, who bequeathed a Prayer Book to each of his children. He was father of General William Lenoir, of Wilkes, a Kings Mountain hero, a Speaker of the Senate of North Carolina, President of the Board of Trustees of the University, after whom an Eastern county and Western town are named.
And then there was John Norwood, of Bute, now Franklin county, an active churchman, the layreader in his parish, who married Leah, daughter of Thomas Lenoir, and was father of the excellent Judge William Norwood, of post revolutionary times, and progenitor of many families of great influence in our State.
There was also Jonas Johnston, of Edgecombe county, who distinguished himself in civil as well as military life; a member of the Congress of 1776 which adopted our State Constitution, and of the General Assembly of 1777—’78; a Major in the Continental Army, wounded at Stono, and dying in service.
I must include in my chronicle, the ancestor of the Smiths of Scotland Neck, among them one of our most wise and influential members of the legislative Councils of our Church, Diocesan and General, Richard H. Smith.
This was Nicholas Smith, who, with his brothers, settled on the Moratoch (now Roanoke) river, about the year 1718, coming from Virginia, and worshipping in Kehukee Chapel on Chapel Run, which was standing in ruins in 1795. Some of the bricks of the old chapel, by the pious providence of Mr. Richard H. Smith, are now in the north-east corner of the new Trinity Church of Scotland Neck. I must name too, Robert Williams, an emigrant from Wales, about 1730, and living to the advanced age of one hundred and five years, on Tar River. His son, John Williams, of Pitt county, great grand-father of one who was for many years a colleague of Mr. Richard H. Smith, in the General and Diocesan Conventions, Judge William H. Battle, built a Church at his own expense and donated a glebe for its support.
John Williams was an active patriot in civil affairs in Revolutionary times, as was his nephew, Dr. Robert Williams, who served as surgeon throughout the war.
Worthy of mention too is old school-master Tomlinson, of the Newbern Academy, who did excellent work in moulding the characters of the Colonial boys, using chinquapin and hickory switches with such keen severity as to provoke the ire of parents, losing his place by too diligent practice of a precept of King Solomon.
And there was another most worthy John Williams, in Colonial times, a lawyer, for many years an honored Supreme and Superior Court Judge, under the State Constitution of 1776. It was from him that Williamsboro in the county of Granville was named, and it was he who in 1785, moved old St. John's Church, built in 1754, to its present site, and donated the site to the Church, with reversion to the heirs of Chief Justice Leonard Henderson,
in case it shall cease to be used for religious purposes. He passed, with little preparation, from the carpenter's bench to that of a Judge. He is not to be comfounded, tradition says, with a lawyer of the same name, called “British John,” who was scourged by the Regulators for taking cases against them.
In this list should be included the names of Dr. John Leigh and William Clements, both of Tarboro, the only lay members of the first Convention of the Diocese, on June 5th, 1790. And it should be recorded that very many of the old families of Edgecombe county, such as the Johnstons, Haywoods, Tooles, Suggs, Irwins, Penders, Knights, were Church people, worshipping in St. Mary's church and several chapels in the country districts.
I must not omit Major John Daves, of New Berne, of an ancient Virginia family, coming to North Carolina in 1770, who fought under General Nash at Germantown, was in the battle of Brandywine and was wounded at Stony Point, and fought again at Eutaw Springs.
A prominent churchman too, was Abner Nash, the lawyer and war Governor, father of the late Chief Justice Nash, and so were his brothers, General Francis Nash who was clerk of the General Court of Orange, and fell gallantly fighting at Germantown; and Thomas Nash, Senior Warden of the Church at Edenton, whose daughter married the rector of the old Banford Church in Petershburg, and was the mother of Judge Duncan Cameron.
There were likewise Thomas Person, the wealthy Regulator, a General of militia during the war, afterwards a trusted legislator and benefactor of the University; and Joel Lane, too, who removed from the Albemarle country to the county of Wake, was a true patriot and legislator in the State Revolutionary Congresses, now chiefly remembered by his prominence in selecting the site of the University, and by the fact that his plantation at Wake Court House became the site of the city of Raleigh. Serving
with Lane's ancestors on the vestries of Albemarle, was Wm. Badham, a church-warden of St. Paul's Church of Edenton; selected with Edward Mosely and Edmund Gale, by the legislature in 1722, for the sale of lots in Edenton. He was also Clerk of the General Court in the stormy days of Everard and Burrington, and often represented the county of Chowan and the Burough of Edenton in the General Assembly.
There was too, Samuel Strudwick, a member of the Council, one of the pioneer owners of the beautiful grasslands of the Haw, the ancestor of many churchmen; and Wm. Herritage, of Lenoir county, Clerk of the Assembly and an eminent lawyer; and John Wright Stanly, the enterprising merchant of New Berne, who lost most of a large fortune in the patriot cause.
We must add Wm. Hooper, the bright young lawyer from Boston, a member of the Continental Congress, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Archibald Maclaine, an ardent patriot and scholarly lawyer; and Peter Mallett, who did great work as Commissary in feeding our troops, once strangely suspected of Toryism, but afterwards known to be a true Whig*: and many others who did noble service for their country in the hour of need.
* Rev. Dr. J. B. Cheshire, Junior, furnishes me with the following explanation in regard to the cause of the odium against Mallett, obtained from his grandson, the late Dr. Johnston B. Jones, of Charlotte:— In the Act of Pardon, and oblivion passed by our Assembly 1783, C 6; Peter Mallet, David Fanning, and Samuel Andrews are by name exempted from its benefit. No man stood higher for character in North Carolina, than Peter Mallett: no man was more deservedly infamous than David Fanning. A word of explanation is demanded to vindicate the fame of the former. At the time of Cornwallis’ retreat down the Deep River and Cape Fear valley, after his disastrous victory of Guilford Court House, Peter Mallett, acting in the service of North Carolina as Commissary for the Patriot Army, had gathered large quantities of supplies in the very line of the British march. Their unexpected advance to Wilmington threw these welcome supplies into their hands. Mr. Mallett applied to the State for payment for these captured stores, but was refused, the authorities taking the ground that, as he had not formally turned them over, they were his private property, and he must bear the loss. Finding himself utterly without redress, Mr. Mallett secured formal evidence that the State had denied all interest in the Property, and procuring a safe-conduct within the British lines, laid his papers before Cornwallis, and claimed payment for his private property taken for the use of the British Army. Whether it was the justice of his cause, Cornwallis having publicly promised to pay for all private property taken for public use, or whether it was that Mr. Mallett had friends to second him, may be doubted. At any rate, Cornwallis paid his claim. The excited state of public feeling resented this Act of Mr. Mallett, but there never was any ground to doubt his patriotism.There is extant a petition forwarded to Governor Josiah Martin, in 1771, in favor of an Episcopal clergyman, Rev. Mr. McCartney. That the subscribers were, nominally at least, members of our Church, or supporters, is evident from the character of the paper, and from the fact that all whose proclivities are known, were certainly churchmen, also from the further fact, that none of the signers are from the Presbyterian sections of the State. The list shows the status of the religious complexion of our public men at a time when our State was about to enter on the struggle for independence, and is given to prove the stronghold the Church had among the leaders of the people.
The names are as follows: John Simpson, Aquila Sugg, William Gray, Richard Ward, Sam. Johnston, Robert Howe, Fr. Mackilwean, Ben. Hardy. Thos. Hines, Richard Evans, Edward Hall, William McKinnon, Thos. Gray, Jams. Green, Junr., Joseph Leech, Jos. Montfort, Jas. Blount, Wm. Davis, Philemon Hawkins, Jno. Campbell, A. Nash, Hu. Waddell, Andr. Knox, Wm. Thompson, Joseph Hewes, Jacob Shepherd, Jacob Blount, Jas. Bonner, Wm. Haywood, Moses Hall, Jas. Hasell, Jno. Rutherford, Lewis De Rosset, John Sampson, Alexr. McCullock, Wm. Dry, Saml. Cornue, Marmaduke Jones, Nat. Duckenfield, M. Moore, John Ashe, I. Moore, Corns. Harnett, Rd. Caswell, John Harvey.
It appears that from the beginning of our history, the leaders of both parties, the aristocratic party sympathizing
with the representatives of the Lords Proprietors and of the King, and the popular party, keenly active to their inherited rights as Englishmen, and their vested rights under their charters and subsequent grants, were at least nominally members of the Church of England and desirous of its prosperity.
The fact that starting with this great advantage, the people not only wandered from the Church, but regarded it with suspicion, and even hatred, suggests some mistake in the conduct of its affairs, so monstrous as to reach the grade of a crime. Viewing things from our standpoint, in the year 1890, we can see that the policy of refusing a Bishop to the Colonies, and thus rendering it impossible to have a clergy native born, of sending, as the only pastors to the suffering flock, a few missionaries, some weak, and others vicious, nearly all profoundly ignorant of the ways and modes of thought of those under their charge; the policy of endeavoring to force the people to sustain such unknown and unrespected clergy, of attempting to create a union of Church and State against the convictions of very large classes of the people, was a fatal policy. GOD grant that we may not make similar blunders in solving the great problems with which we must cope.
APPENDIX.
“Catalogue of Books humbly presented by Edward Mosely, Esq., to the Honb'le and most august society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign parts towards a Provincial Library to be kept in Edenton, the metropolis of North Carolina.”
This list differs from that given in the MS., and printed in the first volume of the Colonial Documents, which has been wonderfully corrupted by the carelessness and ignorance of copyists, and in some places is unintelligible.
The corrections are due to the industry of Rev. Dr. Joseph Blount Cheshire, Junior, who acknowledges his indebtedness for assistance to the former scholarly Librarian of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., now a Professor in the Berkeley Divinity School, at Middletown, in the same State.
FOLIOS—
1. Pool. Matthew. Synopsis Criticorum, 5 vols.
2. Augustinus, (S.) Opera: Col. Agrip, 1616, 10 vols.
3. Sanchez (or Sanctius), Caspar. In quartuor libros Regum: Lugd, 1623.
4. —— In Jeremiam: Lugd. 1618.
5. —— In Ezechielem: Lugd. 1619.
6. [Polanus, Amandus?] Syntagma theoligiæ Christianæ: [Hanoviaœ 1615,?]
7. Leigh, Edward, Body of Divinity, in 10 books: 1654 or 1662.
8. Deodatus, Giovanni. Anotations on the Holy Bible: Lond 1648.
9. Eusebias, Socrates, Evagrius; Ecclesiastical Histories of: [Camb. 1683 or 1692?]
10 Simson, Patrick. History of the Church: [3d edition London, 1634?]
11. Cartwright, Thomas. Harmonia Evangelica: [about 1630.]
12. Notationes in totam Scripturam Sacram
13. [Fuller, Thos.?] Church History of Britain: [Lond 1655.]
26 Folio volumes.
QUARTOS—
14. Bilson, Bp. Thomas. True difference between Christian Subjection and unchristian rebellion: Oxon. 1585.
15. Ball, John. Answer to two treatises of Mr. John Carr, the first . . . . . Necesity or seperation [sic] from the Church of England . . . . the other, a stay against straying; . . . . . unlawfulness of hearing the ministers of the Church of England: Lond. 1642.
16. Birkbeck, Simon. Protestant's Evidence: Lond. 1634.
17. Rainolds, John. De Romanæ Ecclesiæ Idolatria: Oxon. 1596.
18. Pierce, Thomas. The Sinner impleaded in his own Court. Lond. 1679.
19. Heinsius, Daniel. Exeroitationes sacræ ad Novum Testamentum: Lugd. Bat. 1639; Camb. 1640.
20. Cartwright, Thomas. Commentarii in Proverbia Solomonis: Amst. 1638.
21. Usher, Achbp. James. Britanicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates: Dubl. 1639.
22. —— Answer to a Challenge made by a Jesuite: Dublin.
23. Buridan, John. Quæstiones super viii libros Politicarum Aristotelis: Oxon. 1640.
24. Prideaux, John. Faciculus controversiarum Theologicarum: Oxon. 1652.
25. Ball, John. Friendly Trial of the grounds tending to Seperation [sic]: Camb. 1640.
12 Quarto volumes.
OCTAVOS—
26. Francisco Le Rees; Cursus Philosophicus 2 p.
27. Tertia Pars Sum. Philos. & quarta.
28. Piccolominæus; Universa Philos. de Moribus.
29. Davidis Parei Exercitationes Philosophicæ.
30. Buxtorf's Lexicon.
31. Dialogue in answer to a Popish Catechism.
32. Augustinus (S.); De Civitate Dei 2 vols.
38. —— Greek Grammar.
32. Hunnius; De Scripto Dei Verbo, &c.
33. —— Comment in Evang. secundum S. Matt.
34. Eustachii a Sancto Paulo Summa Philosophiæ quadripartita.
35. Scheibleri Liber Comment. Topicorum.
36. Schiekard's Horologium Hebraicum.
37. Melancthonis Chronicon Carionis.
38. Calvin's Institutions Christianæ Religionis.
39. Davidis Parei Corpus Doctrinæ Christianæ.
40. Aristotelis Organon.
41. Heckerman's Systema S. S. Theologica.
42. —— Systema Logica.
43. Leusden's Clavis Graeca Novi Testamenti.
44. Baronii Metaphysica Generalis.
45. Dounam's Comment. in Jet. Rami Dialect [?]..
46. Joh. Regii Commentarii ac Disputationes Logacæ.
47. Sallii Ethica.
48. Buxtorf's Epitome Gramatices Hebrææ.
49. Heyselbein's Theoria Logica.
50. Amesius de Divina Predestinatione.
51. Baronis; Annales Ecclesiasticæ.
52. Hugo Grotius; Defensio Fidei Catholicæ.
53. Augustini (S.) Confessiones.
54. Amesii Medulla Theologica.
55. —— Rescriptio Scolastica ad Grevinchovium de Redemptione Generali.
56. —— Technometria.
57. Wendelini Christiana Theologia.
58. Lactantii Divinæ Institutiones.
59. Petri Cunæi de Republica Herbræorum.
60. Hebrew Psalter.
36 Octavo volumes.
In all seventy-four volumes.
V.
COLONIAL PARISHES AND CHURCH SCHOOLS.
BY THE REV. ROBERT B. DRANE.
When the Lords Proprietors in England acquired possession of this fair land of Carolina, and considered the problem how to make the most out of their extensive domain, they wisely concluded that their Colonists, in order to be at peace among themselves, and to be profitable tenants to their Proprietors, must be under the government of the civil magistrate and in the enjoyment of religion, public and private.
Looking to these ends, they employed the wisdom of the philosopher, John Locke, and adopted his design that the whole Province should be divided into eight counties, (to be named after the Proprietors) and every county into four precincts, and that for the promotion of religion every one of these precincts should be a parish.
But this design was never fully carried out. It included the territory of South Carolina, as well as that of North Carolina. In the course of human events, these became two Provinces, and two quite different systems of religious regulation prevailed in the two.
Our concern is with North Carolina, where the regulations for religion were milder; the Church of England was by law established, but liberty of conscience was guaranteed to the individual, and conformity to the Church was not enforced
Now as to evidences of the execution of the above plan:—as early as 1669, there is reference to “the Fower Precincts of Albemarle” (C. R. vol. I. 181.)
The Rev. Mr. Blair in 1703, states that there are five
Precincts in the Colony, and he seems to use the terms “Precinct” and “Parish” interchangeably. (C. R., I. 602.) And these were probably erected by Act of Assembly of the Province of November 12th, 1701, when we know that twelve Vestrymen were appointed for St. Paul's Parish, Chowan Precinct.
In 1705, the Colony consisted of two counties, Albemarle and Bath, and these were divided into four precincts for Albemarle, Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans and Chowan, each of which was also a Parish since 1701, and Bath county divided into three precincts, Pamptecough, Wickham and Archdale, but in the act erecting these, there is no mention of making three Parishes, so that I suppose that out of the three we can get but the one Parish of St. Thomas, Pamplico. (C. R., I. 629.)
The Vestry Act of 1701, has not come down to us, but out of available sources of information, I conclude that the original Colonial Parishes of the Province of North Carolina were:—
Currituck; Pasquotank, St. John's; Purquimans, Berkeley Parish; Chowan, St. Paul's; and Bath (Pamplico,) St. Thomas’, all in 1701.
Urmstone in 1714 speaks of seven vestries (C. R. II. 126.), may we therefore add to the foregoing list Wickham, 1705; Archdale, 1705(?)
By Act of Assembly of 1715, (C. R. II. 207) new Parishes were made as follows:—
Chowan, South West Parish; Pasquotank, North East Parish, (St. Peters?) Wickham became Hyde Parish, and Archdale became Craven Parish, all in 1715; and to this last all the Southern settlements of the Province were assigned “until further divisions be made.” And the list was increased in the following order, sometimes by the erection of a new Precinct and Parish, sometimes by the division of a large Parish:—
S. Bertie, Society Parish; and S. Chowan, South Shore
Parish, in 1722; N. W. Bertie, North West Parish, 1727; Tyrrel, St. Andrews, (same as S. Chowan) 1729; New Hanover, St. James, about 1729; Onslow, St. John's, and Bladen, St. Martin's, 1734; Edgecombe, Edgecombe Parish, 1741; New Hanover, St. Philip's Brunswick, 1745; Johnston, St. Patrick's, and Granville, St. John's, 1746; Duplin, St. Gabriel's, and Anson, St. George's, 1749; Orange, St. Matthew's, 1752; Rowan, St. Luke's, 1753; Cumberland, St. David's, 1754; Johnston, St. Stephen's; Pasquotank, St. John's, (St. Peters and St. Johns, consolidated); Edgecombe, St. Mary's, 1756; Granville, Granville Parish, and Northampton, St. George's, 1758; Hertford county, St. Barnabas’, 1759; Pitt, St. Michael's, 1760; Mecklenburg, St. Martin's, and Tryon, St. Thomas’, 1768; Wake, St. Margaret's; Guilford, Unity Parish; Chatham, St. Bartholomew's; and Surry, St. Jude's, 1770.
To complete the list of Parishes may be added the Parish of Dobbs, erected on petition of the “Unitas Fratrum,” in that part of Rowan county called Wachovia, in 1755. This was not a Church of England Parish, but was organized by the Moravians.
Originally, Edgecombe county was Edgecombe Parish. Then the southern part was set off into St. Mary's Parish. Then the northern part was set off into a county, Halifax. The name of the Parish unchanged, so that at this period Edgecombe Parish was in Halifax county.
CHURCH SHOOLS IN THE PROVINCE OF NORTH CAROLINA.Under the fostering aid of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, school work was undertaken on distinctively religious grounds, as the “instructions for school-masters” show, (Anderson, History of the Colonial Church III. 69.).
The slight account we have of the first Colonial Church school shows how closely allied was (and ever ought to be) Church school work and missionary work. It appears on
the first page of Colonial Church School History, that it was the good work of Mr. Charles Griffin, a Church of England school-teacher in Pasquotank Precinct, which made ready a people prepared for the LORD, for the reception of the Holy Communion, on Trinity Sunday, 1706, from the Rev. Richard Marsden; the first time of its celebration in these parts, as Gov. Glover some time after wrote. He was lay reader as well as school-teacher, and tended the good seed sown by the Rev. Mr. Blair's Mission of a few years before.
The Rev. Wm. Gordon writes in 1709 of these people, “above all, I was surprised to see with what order, decency, and seriousness they performed the public worship, considering how ignorant people are in the other parishes. This they owe to the care of one, Mr. Griffin, who came here from some part of the West Indies, and has for three years past lived amongst them, being appointed reader by their vestry, whose diligent and devout example has improved them so far beyond their neighbors, and by his discreet behavior has gained such a good character and esteem that the Quakers themselves send their children to his school, though he had prayers twice a day at least, and obliged them to their responses and all the decencies of behavior as well as others.” (C. R., I. 714.)
A sad day it was when that school was stopped by the removal of Mr. Griffin to the neighboring Precinct and Parish of Chowan; the Rev. Mr. Adams, a missionary, having come to Pasquotank.
The Chowan vestry minutes show that in 1708, Mr. Griffin was engaged by the Vestry of St. Paul's Parish as lay-reader, hut no mention is made of his teaching school.
But beyond question, there was a good Church school in Chowan in 1712, taught by Mr. Masburn, and the results of his labours, at the time of the Rev. Mr. Rainsford's visit, indicate that it must have been in operation for some time already.
This Missionary had proposed to instruct a son of the Chief of the Chowanook tribe of Indians, but it was decided to send him to Mr. Masburn's school, to Sarum, to have him taught to read and write by way of foundation, in order to a further proficiency for the reception of Christianity. (C. R., I. 859.)
This place “Sarum,” is described as on “the frontiers of Virginia, and neighboring upon two Indian towns.” One of these was the seat of that Chief of the Chowan Indians.
Now, any one who has ever seen the vast deposit of muscle shells, mixed with human bones, pottery, and ashes, on the north bank of Chowan river, near Bandon, or Holley's Wharf, cannot doubt the truth of Dr. Winborne's conjecture, that here was the location of an important town of the Indians. This is about three miles from Ballard's Bridge, where, in after years, stood one of the Colonial Chapels of St. Paul's Parish, which was, I am confident, the “Sarum Chapel” of the Vestry Book.
Mr. Rainsford. the Missionary, visited Mr. Masburn's school, at Sarum, and found the teacher highly deserving of encouragement. He asked the S. P. G. to allow him a salary and sought to secure the continuance of the work. Mr. Rainsford reports “what children he has under his care can both write and read very distinctly, and gave before me such an account of the grounds and principles of the Christian Religion, that strangely surprised me to hear it.” Evidently, the Bible was in that school! “The man upon a small income would teach the Indian children gratis (whose parents are willing to send them could they but pay for their schooling) as he would those of our English families, had he but a fixed dependency for so doing. (C. R., I. 859.) This is all that we know of Sarum school.
At this period, and later, we find scattered through the letters of the Missionaries, statements of the need for schoolmasters, and requests that they be sent out in the interests of Religion and Learning.
Humphreys, who brought his History of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel down to 1728, in summing up what that Society had done for this Colony, states that it had “at several times (1701—1728), by their Missionaries, dispersed here above 300 volumes of bound books, besides about £100 worth of small tracts of devotion and instruction. A little later than this, in the Rev. Alexander Stewart's time, is given a suggestion as to the sort of “books of instruction;” some of them were school books.
And now we leap from Chowan to New Hanover, and find this same sort of work going on. The Rev. James Moir, the Society's Missionary at Brunswick in 1745, lodged in his garret and used down stairs for a chapel and school room. (C. R., IV. 755.)
In 1754, Col Innes, of Cape Fear, made his will providing for what seems to have been the first bequest to public school education in North Carolina. It was not to be a “church school,” but “a free school for the benefit of the youth of North Carolina,” and he named as trustees “The Colonel of the New Honover regiment, the parson of Wilmington Church, and the Vestry for the time being, or the majority of them,” this design was not carried out. As this was the first bequest to public education in North Carolina, so the last intention of the Century, which is gone, may be seen in the will of the Rev. John Alexander, recorded in Bertie. He was a Church of England Missionary, licensed by the Bishop of London to Georgia, in 1766, and wrote his will in Bertie county, North Carolina, in 1795:—
“Should both (my daughters) decease before the laws capacitate to will, then my remaining property is to be wholly converted to educating the poor children within the counties of Hertford and Bertie, under such regulations as my executors shall think fit.” This from a clergyman who goes on to bewail that “the manly, masculine voice of orthodoxy is no longer heard in our land. Far
therefore from my grave be the senseless Rant of whining Fanaticism, her hated and successful rival,” shows what sort of education he would have preferred. But we turn now with pleasure to the plain signs of the Colonial Church school, which was established in 1763, in Hyde county.
It was then that the Rev. Mr. Alexander Stewart, the S. P. G's Missionary at Bath, being in feeble health, visited Atamuskeet in Hyde, for the benefit of sea air. (C. R., VI. 995.) He instructed and baptized (besides the whites) some Indians and negroes, was deeply moved for their welfare and took action, as he described to the Society, (which, principally, supported him in his good work). Such a man deserves to be listened to. He writes, “The remains of the Attamusket, Roanoke, and Hatteras Indians live mostly along that coast, mixed with the white inhabitants. Many of these attended at the places of public worship, while I was there, and behaved with dencency, seemed desirious of instruction and offered themselves and their children to me for baptism. And after examining some of the adults, I accordingly baptized 6 adult Indians, 6 boys, 4 girls, and five infants, and for their further instruction (at the expense of a society called Dr. Bray's Associates, who have done me the honor of making me the Superintendant of their schools in this Province,) have fixed a school-mistress among them, to teach 4 Indians and 2 negro boys and 4 Indian girls to read and to work, and have supplied them with books for that purpose, and hope that GOD will open the eyes of the whites everywhere, that they may no longer keep the ignorant in distress, but assist the charitable design of this pious society and do their best endeavours to increase the kingdom of our LORD JESUS CHRIST.”
The Dr. Bray here mentioned was the Bishop of London's Commissary in Maryland, and very active in all good works. While impressed with a sense of the duty of this
Catholic and Apostolic Church to all men, he felt keenly the reproach which was aimed at the Clergy by the question “Who made you ministers of the Gospel to the Whites only and not to the Tawneys and Blacks also?” (Anderson Hist. Col. Ch. II. 418—19.)
In Holland he became acquainted with a Mr. D'Allone, with whom he frequently conversed upon the degraded state of the slave population in the English Colonies, and from whom he received a bequest of £900 with a view of forming a fund to be applied to their instruction. Dr. Bray having undertaken the trust, and having been attacked in 1723 with an illness which threatened to terminate his life, nominated certain persons to carry on the work. Their authority was confirmed by a decree in Chancery, in 1731, the year after his death, and the title of “Dr. Bray's Associates” which they received in 1733 has ever since been retained by them.
At first, the interest of the Fund committed to their hands was applied to the support of a catechist for the negroes in Georgia. It has since been devoted, with other benefactions for the same object, to the maintenance of schools for the education of negro children in Nova Scotia, Philadelphia and the Bahamas.”
Anderson might have added North Carolina, and possibly others, to the field of its benefactions. I cannot trace that school further, but that it or other Church educational work lingered in the minds of the people is evident from the traditions of that part of Hyde county.
For the higher education of youth, there was a private school maintained in Chowan county at this time, or a few years later, by the Rev. Daniel Earl, at Bandon, his home on the north shore of Chowan river, about fifteen miles above Edenton.
He was assisted in this work by his daughter, Miss Nancy, who was never married. The course of instruction included Mathematics, Latin and Greek, besides the
usual English branches. Mr. Earl was at the same time Rector of St. Paul's Parish, Chowan. The school was instrumental in inculcating Church principles, which were fruitful in the activities of such men as Mr. Collins, in the first quarter of this century.
In 1757, Governor Dobbs recommended to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, that it should establish a school for the benefit of the Catawba Indians, somewhere in the region of Salisbury or Charlotte, and offered a donation to that object. The Society thereupon resolved to establish such a school so soon as a competent teacher could be procured. Nothing seems to have come of this. (Annual Report of S. P. G. 1758.)
The first mention we find of a school enterprise in New Berne, which afterward became quite prominent, is in Act of Assembly of 1764, for erecting a school house on part of the Church property. The house was to be built by private subscription.
In June, 1764, the Rev. James Reed, writing from New Berne, to the S. P. G. says, “we have now a prospect of a very flourishing school in the town of New Berne. In December last, Mr. Tomlinson came here . . . and, on the first of January, he opened a school in this town and immediately got as many scholars as he could instruct, and many more have lately offered than he can possibly take, to do them justice. He has therefore wrote to his friends in England to send him an assistant.” A subscription for a school house was started. Doubtless this was for a larger house than the one previously mentioned, required by the increase of the school. The subscription was made payable to the Missionary who was evidently deeply interested in the scheme. (C. R. VI. 1048.)
In 1765, the citizens of New Berne petitioned Governor Tryon that he would move the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to allow Mr. Tomlinson a stipend to teach the children useful learning and the principles of the
Christian religion as professed in the Church of England. This the Society did, granting him £10 for that year, and for 1766 £15, which seems to have become a settled annual stipend to the teacher.
(At this point I must acknowledge my indebtedness to the Rev. Joseph Blount Cheshire, for abstracts of documents inaccessible to me. The publication of vols. VII and VIII of Colonial Records will facilitate the further study of this and kindred subjects.)
About this time, Mr. Reed wrote that the school house was building and Mr. Tomlinson doing well. It must have been completed in 1766, for in November of that year, the preamble to Act of Assembly makes the following statemeuts: “Whereas, a number of well disposed persons, taking into consideration the great necessity of having a proper school, or seminary of learning established, whereby the rising generation may be brought up and instructed in the principles of the Christian Religion and fitted for the several offices and purposes of life, have at a great expense erected and built, in the town of New Berne, a convenient house for the purpose aforesaid, and being desirious that the same may be established by law on a permanent footing, so as to answer the good purposes by the said persons intended, therefore Trustees were to be elected to whom a charter was given. This is really a sort of reincorporation of the trustees, and it provides for a tax on rum imported, to raise a salary of £20 per annum for the School-Master, to enable him to employ an assistant. In consideration of this salary, he was required to admit ten poor scholors, tuition free, upon nomination of the Trustees.
The Teacher must be a member of the Church of England and licensed by the Governor.
Now, from all this it is evident that the New Berne Academy was begun as a private enterprise, on Churchly lines: that, desiring a charter the Trustees of the Academy
agreed to receive the income of a penny a gallon on imported rum, and to give an equivalent to the State in the education of ten poor scholars: that all along, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (a voluntary organization among churchmen in the Mother Country) paid a portion of the teachers salary.
The New Berne Academy is to be regarded as conducted on as equitable a plan, considering the rights of all citizens, as that age was anywhere capable of showing.
The churchmen of Edenton were not far behind those of whom we have just been speaking, although they did not undertake the responsibility of State aid.
By the year 1770, they had bought two lots of land, built a school house thereon, and petitioned for a charter securing, among other things, that a Church of England man should be the teacher.
The old Academy building is still standing, but the records of the Proceedings of the Trustees do not antedate 1800.
Now, to sum up, the earlier of the Colonial schools were very much like what we have to-day among the Indians, and wherever the policy is to rear up the rising generation in the knowledge and love of GOD, and in obedience to His Kingdom. The later were like some of our Parochial schools, in well settled communities, in which the spirit of the instruction is secured to loyalty to CHRIST and His Church, while most attention is given to human learning.
We do not desire the State's aid in such, nor court the State's interference, but if, in any case, the State should bargain fairly for educational facilities, it might be accepted by us without bitter denunciation.
And when we think of mens civil and religious ideas one hundred and fifty years ago in North Carolina and in New England, there is nothing strange in the arrangement
which was made, and which was doubtless faithfully performed by both parties.
NOTE BY THE EDITOR.THE ACADEMIES AT NEW BERNE AND EDENTON.
The interest and importance of the subject seem to justify the Editor in adding some particulars in regard to these institutions, which could not so well be introduced in the preceding address.
The Trustees appointed for the New Berne Academy by the Act of 1764, C. XX., were the Rev. James Reed, Rector of the Parish, and John Williams, Joseph Leech, Thomas Clifford Howe, Thomas Haslen, Richard Cogdell, and Richard Fenner, Esqs.
The property appropriated for the purposes of the school was taken from the Churchyard. The title to this property had been confirmed to the Vestry of Craven Parish by the Act of 1740, C. II. A careful examination reveals the fact that this property was in fact given to the Church by Col. Thomas Pollock, one of the original vestrymen of Chowan parish, or by his heirs. New Berne was built upon the land of Col. Pollock. We learn from a letter of Col. Pollock to his agent at New Berne, that he gave a lot for the parish Church. The title to this lot was confirmed to the Vestry by the Act of 1723, C. XIII. When the Church came to be built however, as we learn from the Act of 1740, C. II.; the Vestry were allowed to take up, in lieu of the piece of ground originally appropriated for that purpose, another more suitable property, consisting of four town lots, which were substituted in the place of Col. Pollock's original donation. Part of these lots, viz: half of lots Nos. 59 and 60 on the corner of Pollock and Craven Streets, were by the Act of 1764, C. XX., appropriated to the use of the Trustees of the Academy as a site for the proposed building. The language of the Act may be interpreted as meaning that two buildings were to be erected, one for the Academy and another for the residence of the teacher; but it probably intended only one building to serve both purposes.
In the meantime, Mr. Thomas Tomlinson, who had lately come from England, induced thereto by the influence of his brother, who resided near New Berne, had opened a school in January, 1764, apparently under the active patronage of the Rev. Mr. Reed. It was the opportunity afforded by the presence of this excellent teacher which stirred Mr. Reed up to the effort to establish a permanent institution for the benefit of the town and the people of the country generally. In May, 1765, a petition, signed by Mr. Reed and thirty-nine of the principal inhabitants of New Berne and its vicinity, was sent to Gov. Tryon, requesting him to represent to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the earnest desire of the petitioners that the Society would assist them by granting Mr. Tomlinson an annual stipend, in order that he might be able to continue in New Berne and instruct their children “in such branches of useful
learning as are necessary in several of the offices and stations in life, and imprint on their tender minds the principles of the Christian religion agreeable to the establishment of the Church of England.” The Memorial is signed by the following persons:—
| James Reed, Missionary, | John Franck, |
| Thomas Clifford Howe, | Tho. Pollock, |
| Samuel Cornell, | Bernard Parkinson, |
| John Williams, | Wm. Wilton, |
| Richard Cogdell, | Christ. Neale, |
| James Davis, | Thos. Sitgreaves, |
| Peter Conway. | Corn. Grosnendeyk, |
| John Clitherall, | Jno. Green, |
| Jacob Blount, | John Fonville, |
| Richd. Ellis, | Longfield Cox, |
| Francis Macilwean, | Jno. Smith, |
| Alexdr. Gaston, | Cullen Pollock, |
| Phil. Ambrose. | Richd. Fenner, |
| Jacob Sheppard, | Amb. Cox Bayley, |
| Jos. Jones, | Andr. Scott; |
| John Daly, | Andr. Stewart, |
| Will. Euen, | Elin Cotting, |
| Timo. Clear, | Jno. Moore, |
| Jno. Pindar, | Alex. Eagles. |
| Pat. Gordon, |
Gov. Tryon forwarded this Petition or Memorial to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, with his hearty approval, giving Mr. Tomlinson a high character; and the Society granted him a yearly stipend, £10 sterling the first year and £15 thereafter.
That this scheme for the establishment of an Academy was projected and carried through by the Rev. Mr. Reed, is, I think, beyond reasonable doubt. This is suggested by his name standing at the head of the list of incorporators and of the memorialists of the Society, and it is confirmed by his correspondence, and such other scanty evidence as has come down to us. He obtained the original subscriptions, took the notes of the subscribers for the several sums promised, collected the funds, managed the finances, and gave a laborious and intelligent oversight to all its affairs. He had many discouragements and many disappointments. He found great difficulty in collecting the money which had been subscribed, and he had to resort to various ways of meeting the cost of the work. In January, 1766, he writes to the Secretary of the Society that the building is going on slowly: in July he writes that the house has been closed in, but the subscription is completely exhausted, and he has preached and begged for it until the “the suppliant is weary and charity cold.” The floors were still to be laid and the chimneys to be built. That the work might not stop at this stage he drew upon the Treasurer of the Society for his salary for the preceding half year, and sent the
draft to New York to buy brick for the chimneys. In the letter conveying this intelligence, he expresses the hope that by bringing the matter forward during the approaching session of the Assembly, which was to meet in New Berne in November, 1766, he might be able to raise additional subscriptions to complete the building.
The school-house when completed was a framed structure forty-five feet long and thirty feet wide. It cannot be ascertained when Mr. Tomlinson began to use it. Probably it was occupied before the end of the year 1766, or early in 1767. He carried on the work of the school with general acceptance and with the best results for a number of years. Gov. Tryon says that he was “the only person of repute of that profession in the country,” and Mr. Reed says that he was the only teacher who had kept a school in New Berne who had no trouble in collecting his bills for the tuition of his pupils. In July 1765, he had thirty scholars from whom he received twenty shillings by the quarter in proclamation money, equivalent for the whole to about sixty pound sterling per annum. This was presently augmented by the grant from the Society, and in 1766, the Vestry of the Parish gave him twelve pounds in the local currency for acting as lay-reader in the absence of Mr. Reed, who had a number of chapels in Craven and the adjoining counties.
It seems that after all the school-house was not erected upon the lot cut off from the church-yard, as was contemplated by the Act of 1764, C. XX. The Board was re-organized by the Act of 1766, C. XIX. By this act it appears that the Trustees had bought a piece of ground from one William Bastin Whitford, and had built the house upon that lot; nevertheless, the Act confirms to the Trustees the title to the lots taken from the church-yard. The Act further directs that the subscribers to the Academy fund should hold a meeting on the first Tuesday in April, 1767, and choose eleven of their number to form the Board of Trustees. These Trustees, when thus elected, were to constitute a close corporation to hold the property of the school and to manage its affairs, under the name and style of the “Incorporated Society for Promoting and Establishing the Public School in New Berne.”
It is declared in the preamble of this Act that the purpose of those who had established this school was that “the rising generation may be brought up and instructed in the principles of the Christain religion, and fitted for the several offices and purposes of life.” The second section therefore provides that the Master shall be a member of the Episcopal Church, chosen by the Trustees and licensed by the Governor.
The Act further provided for the tax on distilled spirits imported into Neuse river, as mentioned by Mr. Drane, for the benefit of the school, and in order to pay Mr. Tomlinson twenty pounds yearly towards the salary of an assistant teacher. This Act was to continue in force seven years. In consideration of the revenue thus granted to the school, ten poor children, whose parents were unable to pay their tuition, should be nominated by the Trustees, and these children were to receive the
benefits of the school free of charge. This is the only public provision ever made for the school. In May, 1768, Mr. Reed estimated that this duty upon spiritus would yield an annual revenue of sixty pounds, which would be sufficient to pay Mr. Tomlinson twenty pounds towards the salary of his assistant, and also to supply during the seven years of its continuance a fund which would pay off all the indebtedness of the Trustees, and enable them to complete the building. In March, 1772, to anticipate a little, Mr. Reed sent the following account of the income and expenses of the school for the preceding three years:
| Cr., | ||||||
| By net proceeds of duty on spirituous liquors | £247 | 11 | 4 | |||
| Rent of school house chamber by the Assembly of 1769 | 20 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Rent of school house chamber for 1770 and 1771, £40 each | 80 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Ground rents, first payment June 16th, 1771 | 19 | 10 | 0 | |||
| 367 | 1 | 4 | ||||
| Annual income average | £122 | 7 | 1 | |||
| Dr., | ||||||
| To Assistant Master | £20 | 0 | 0 | |||
| To poor scholars, supposing 10 at £4 | 40 | 0 | 0 | |||
| To books, paper, fire-wood, &c., for same | 10 | 0 | 0 | |||
| £70 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| To balance for repairs, &c. | 52 | 7 | 1 | |||
| £122 | 7 | 1 |
The income from this tax seems therefore to have been much greater than was anticipated. The additional benefit however was incidental, and should have been held to bind the Trustees to a more general extension of the benefits of the school. How this was we are not informed; but it is evident that the legislative grant, though necessarily uncertain in amount, was not a mere gratuity to the school, but was granted, as a favor indeed, to a useful institution, but a favor for which the Assembly properly required a return of valuable service to the public.
Mr. Reed's purpose and hope with regard to the school was that its benefits should be as freely and as widely extended as possible. With this hope he had given and labored unsparingly for its success. And under the first organization he seems to have controlled the policy of the school, standing at the head of the Board of Trustees, and having to assist him six of the leading laymen of his parish. But the Act of 1766, in providing for the election of trustees by the subscribers to the fund of the school, had to a certain extent impaired Mr. Reed's control of the school, as a Church institution, and had put it more in the hands of the parents of the pupils. The first effect of this was seen in the dismissal by the new Trustees, apparently about the end of 1771, of five poor scholars, much to the distress of Mr. Reed, and a plain violation of their obligation to the
public. Other troubles also arose from this selfish management, as we shall presently see.
There is another small source of income available for the purposes of the school, mentioned in the preceeding account of receipts. The two half-lots cut off from the church-yard, were leased out by the trustees upon leases of twenty-one years, and constituted the beginning of a fund intended for the permanent endownment of the Academy.
Soon after the passage of the Act of 1766, we find Mr. Tomlinson employing an assistant in the person of Mr. James Macartney. He was probably employed near the beginning of 1767, and continued in the school until May, 1768, when he became a candidate for Holy Orders. He was ordained in England and licensed by the Bishop of London for North Carolina, July 25th. He returned and served Granville parish faithfully for several years.
It may be mentioned in passing that the Assembly of 1768, as well as those of 1769, 1770 and 1771, was held in the New Berne Academy. The sum of twenty pounds was paid to the Trustees for the use of the room in which the Assembly sat in 1768. Afterwards, as we have seen, the amount paid was increased to £40.
Mr. Tomlinson continued his useful career as teacher in the Academy until some time early in the year 1772. He then had a disagreement with the trustees, and they dismissed him. This was much about the same time that they had turned off the five poor scholars. There are several letters from Mr. Reed to the Society in regard to this trouble, in which Mr. Reed takes Mr. Tomlinson's part most zealously. He had been an admirable teacher and master of the school, Mr. Reed thinks, in every respect. He says that Mr. Tomlinson's impartial discipline had offended the parents of some of his pupils, and under the new Act of incorporation, the subscribers to the fund governed the school. Gov. Martin wrote to the Society that the Trustees were angry with Mr. Tomlinson because he corrected their contumaceous children. Mr. Tomlinson himself writes in a very moderate strain, and, so far as we can judge, he was not unworthy of the good opinion which the others seem to have had of him. Mr. Reed says that Mr. Parrott, who had been appointed to succeed Mr. Tomlinson, refuse to accept the place after learning how Mr. Tomlinson had been treated, and so Mr. Tomlinson kept the school until he voluntarily retired. During the year 1772, he left New Berne and removed to Rhode Island. Gov. Martin goes so far in his condemnation of the action of the Trustees as to express a desire that the Act incorporating them should be repealed; but Gov. Martin, we know, was not an eminently judicious man. And we should remember that, after all, we have only one side of this controversy presented to us. The Society, however, showed their regard for Mr. Tomlinson by granting him a gratuity of fifteen pounds, equivalent to a year's stipend.
Mr. Tomlinson must be placed at the head of the line of professional teachers whose work has gone into the history of North Carolina. There
had been ministers before his day, or contemporary with him, who, acting also as school-teacher, had done, and were doing, an incalculable work for the State, which was to be, in training men to guide and to govern it in its development to wealth and power, but so far as the writer is informed, Mr. Tomlinson was the first professional teacher who had under his training a large element of the youth of the Colony. New Berne and the district about it were fruitful of men of eminence and of influence in the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Many of these must have laid the foundation of their intellectual and moral training in the New Berne Academy between the years 1764 and 1772, while Mr. Tomlinson presided as master. It would be an interesting study for some local annalist to inquire what men of mark in the State took their first rise from this institution.
One misconception in regard to this Academy needs to be noticed. Mr. Caruthers, who wrote at a period when prejudices against the Church were peculiarly strong, and whose investigations were almost exclusively carried on in that part of the State most remote in feeling as in locality, from the New Berne districts, says in his Life of Dr. Caldwell, that there was a popular prejudice in the East against the New Berne Academy because of the requirement that the master should be a churchman. Other writers taking the word from his mouth, have repeated the statement in one form or another; and it has recently been incorporated upon this authority in the History of Education in North Carolina, published by the National Bureau of Education.
It is a mistake to suppose that the people of that time had the same sensitiveness to such regulations as we have to-day. The Episcopalians and the Presbyterians were the two great and controlling religious bodies in North Carolina, one representing the English element in our population, the other the Scotch-Irish. Both these were committed to the principle of a religious establishment, by their whole history and traditions, though in the new life of America they had both gone a good way towards learning something better. So far from this requirement in question being offensive to the people of New Berne or of that district, a glance at the list of names, given on a preceding page, will show that the very best and most influential class of people in and about New Berne had petitioned the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to grant a stipend to their school-master in order that he might by precept and by example, that is their phrase, instruct their children in the principles of the Christian religion, as it was held in the Church of England. In those days it was thought most essential that schools should exert a distinctly religious influence, and certainly if any form of religion was to be taught, it must be the religion of the people of that section. Not only was the requirement of the Charter, that the master of the school should be a churchman, in accordance with the feelings of the persons most interested at the time, but for fifty years after the breaking up of the ante-Revolutionary ecclesiastical status, when there was no longer any such
requirements of law, the master of the New Berne Academy continued to be an Episcopalian and a clergyman, with scarce an intermission in the succession.
And secondly, it is perfectly apparent that the New Berne Academy was by its founders intended to be a Church school, under the control and management of the Church, and exerting a distinct Church influence upon its pupils. The father of the enterprise was the Rev. James Reed. He took the subscriptions in the first instance; by private solicitation and by public appeals, and by unceasing application of all kinds, he raised the scanty funds from a people impoverished by the ruinous fiscal system of the Colony. When other resources failed his own stipend from the Society, the only part of his scanty salary which was payable in sterling money or its equivalent, went to buy brick for the chimneys. And it was clearly understood on all hands that the school was intended to give religious as well as secular instruction. It was set forth in the Memorial to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and it was recited in the preamble of the Act of Incorporation. Part of the Church-yard was designated as the proper place for the school, and when another site was purchased, this property of the Church was let out upon leases to form an endownment for the institution. And finally, part of the salary of the master was paid by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the vestry of the parish also contributed its aid by giving him a small salary to act as reader in the Church.
In view of all these facts, which, it is but fair to state, have not heretofore been generally known, it is believed that no one can justly say that it was unreasonable or intolerant to require that the head of the school should be a churchman. Unless it is wrong for the Church to have schools at all, it cannot be wrong to take all reasonable precautions to make and to keep the teaching and the influences such as the founders desire. And so far as the writer has seen there is no evidence to support Mr. Caruthers's assertion.* This criticism was probably first made upon the idea that the New Berne Academy was an institution built and maintained at the public expense. This we know was not the case.
There is less to be said of the Edenton Academy, because less is known of its early history. The Act of 1770, C. XXIII., after reciting that the inhabitants of the town of Edenton had “by voluntary subscription purchased two lots, and erected a convenient school-house thereon, in an agreeable and healthy situation in the said town,” goes on to enact “for the rendering more useful and effectual so laudable an undertaking,”
* In his life of Dr. Caldwell, as well as in his two volumes entitled “The Old North State,” Mr. Caruthers has done most valuble work for the history of the Middle and Western sections of our State. But though he writes with an evident intention of fairness he cannot see any matter affecting the Church except through a distorted medium. His references to the religious affairs of the Province are entirely unreliable. He seem to have been under the influence of a strong and inveterate prejudice, and he totally misrepresents both the condition of ecciesiastical affairs in North Carolina before the Revolution and the feeling of the people in reference thereto.that Joseph Blount, Joseph Hewes, Robert Hardy, Thomas Jones, George Blair, Richard Brownrigg, and Samuel Johnston, Esqs., shall be Trustees of said school, and a sort of close corporation for its management and government. The master, as in the case of the school at New Berne is required to be a churchman, he must be recommended by a majority of the Trustees and licensed by the Governor. The Trustees above named, who must be presumed to have been the persons chiefly concerned in building the school-house, were all prominent churchmen in St. Paul's parish. And long after the Revolution the Trustees of the Academy and the vestry of the parish seem to have been composed of very much the same persons. The duties of teacher of the Academy and minister or reader in the Church were also frequently united in one person, as was likewise the case in New Berne. The Edenton Academy therefore seems to have been like the New Berne Academy, what we would call a church school, so far as it was practicable under the circumstances of those times. There is no reason to believe that the requirements that the master should be an Episcopalian was any ways offensive to the founders or to the patrons of the school.
It may be said however, that neither before nor after the Revolution do the Trustees seem to have been very rigid in inquiring into the religious views of the persons whom they employed. Mr. Pettigrew came to Edenton to take charge of the Academy while he was a Presbyterian in 1773; in 1808 the Rev. Jonathan Otis Freeman, a Presbyterian minister, was in charge of the school; and about 1814, Mr. John Avery, a Congregationalist, was made master of the Academy. Mr. Pettigrew and Mr. Avery became members of the Church, and rose to be distinguished and useful ministers. Probably any reverent conformity to the worship of the Church, such, for example, as a consistent Presbyterian might be able to practice when he had no minister or service of his own to attend, may have been thought by the Trustees sufficient to justify them in electing such a teacher before the Revolution; and of course after that time the restriction of the Act might be disregarded.
Too little attention seems to have been paid to the work and influence of these two institutions in New Berne and Edenton upon the early history of the State of North Carolina. We hear but little of them in the history of the State compared with what is told of the usefulness of the private schools of Mr. Pattillo, Dr. Caldwell, Dr. McCorkle, and others in the up-country. But it is a fact that up to 1835, the history and development of North Carolina were almost exclusively controlled by the men of the East, and Edenton, New Berne and the lower Cape Fear country dominated their respective sections of the East. If the roll of the pupils of these two Academies could be recovered, and if the story of their influence upon the public men of North Carolina from 1790 to 1835, could be fully told, it would probably be found that only the University of the State has had a greater effect in our history than these two Colonial schools.
VI.
THE CONVENTIONS OF 1790,—93 AND ’94, AND
THE BISHOP-ELECT.
BY THE REV. WILLIAM S. PETTIGREW.
As far as tradition has informed us, the Episcopal clergy of North Carolina were, with few exceptions, zealous supporters of the Colonies in the war of the Revolution. Among whom are the names of Blount, Capples and Pettigrew. And there were others, doubtless, who were no less patriotic for their country and its independence. Among the laymen of the Church in North Carolina, were Johnston, Iredell, Hewes, McLaine, the Nashes, Hooper, the Ashes, the Joneses, the Moores, Caswell, Harvey, Buncombe, Harnett, who were leaders of the Revolution; many of whom would have been great men in any age or country. Many of the leaders in the great event, in other Colonies, as well as North Carolina, were among its laymen. Among whom may be numbered the great name of Washington, of the neighboring Colony of Virginia—that beacon-light that shines high above the heroes and conquerors, who have been influenced only by ambition—that bright star that leads and guides the wanderer away from the desert of human selfishness, and would stimulate him to patriotism and virtue.
At the close of the Revolution, the Church was in a most depressed condition in all the colonies, and certainly it was so in North Carolina. It was without an Episcopate, without revenues, without influence, without an united organization, with but few clergy, and its members
and friends were in Parishes comparatively inaccessible to one another.
The Rt. Rev. Dr. William White made the first movement towards the re-organization of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, after the Revolution.
Bishop White was, of all the eminent men who figured in the re-organization of the Episcopal Church after the Revolution, the great leader. He was a leader for his piety and zeal, as well as for his administrative ability; in all which qualities he was singularly gifted, and has left a name that will ever be honored.
In the autumn of 1789, probably in the month of October, he addressed a letter to Gov. Samuel Johnston, who was at that time, the chief executive officer of North Carolina, having succeeded Gov. Caswell, who had been the first Republican Governor of the State after the Revolution. Gov. Johnston made the purport of this letter known to the Rev. Charles Pettigrew. Gov. Johnston's residence was at Hayes near Edenton, where his son, the late James C. Johnston afterwards resided. He had long been, and intimately, acquainted with the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, who had for some years been his pastor and friend, as rector of St. Paul's Church, and when not its rector nor residing in Edenton, he resided in one or another of the neighboring counties, and preached in different Churches or Chapels in the Albemarle country, and in the county of Bertie, where he resided for several years at Scotch Hall.
The object of Bishop White's letter to Gov. Johnston, was to express a wish that the clergy of the Episcopal Church, in the State of North Carolina, would meet at some convenient place, and consult among themselves as to what steps should be adopted to revive the Church from the depressed condition into which it had fallen, as was conceded by all. The Governor filling a political office as he did, could not take part in the resuscitation of an ecclesiastical body, notwithstanding the desire he might have
for its welfare. He therefore, placed the matter in the hands of Mr. Pettigrew, being assured that he would gladly take the steps necessary to gather his clerical bretheren, that they might consult as to what measures should be adopted.
Whereupon, Mr. Pettigrew addressed letters to the Rev. Dr. Cutting, of New Berne. the Rev. Mr. Wilson, of Martin, the Rev. Mr. Blount, of Tar River, and to others of the clergy; requesting them to convey word to those to whom he had not written (among whom he mentions the name of the Rev. Dr. Micklejohn, of Granville county) as to the purport of his letter. He asks them to meet at Tarborough, on the 2d Thursday in the month of May next (1790) of which he speaks as being a central and convenient place for their assembling.
The intercourse and acquaintance among the clergy seems to have been so slight, and the intercommunication between the different parts of the State so difficult, that Mr. Pettigrew in his letter to Dr. Cutting says: “These are all the clergy of the Episcopal order that I have heard of in the State. Should you know or hear of any to the Southward of New Berne, I must request the favor of you to acquaint them with the matter.”
He also says: “I presume I need not inform you, that there has been a Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Clergy from the United States, at Philadelphia, from the 8th of July to the 8th of August last, and that they have appointed in one of their Canons such a meeting again on the first Tuesday in August, 1792, and successively on that day in every third year afterwards.”
Dr. Cutting in his reply to Mr. Pettigrew, expresses his great gratification at receiving his letter, and at the prospect of their having a Convention; and speaks of his having received from Bishop White a similar letter to that, written by him to Gov. Johnston; also of his having
received a letter from the Committee of Correspondence in Philadelphia, to be communicated to his Brethren.
Dr. Cutting proposes that each clergyman should bring one lay-delegate, which suggestion was approved of by Mr. Pettigrew and requested of the clergy.
Dr. Cutting says, that since he had been in North Carolina, he had not known with certainty where any of the clergy dwelt, except the Rev. Mr. Blount. He then mentions something of the condition of the Church in New Berne. He says: “How it may be in other Parishes or Congregations in this State, I know not; but here we have no Church-wardens, vestrymen, nor any officer to take any charge or care of the Church. Whatever meetings therefore we may hold in the Church will be spontaneous, unbacked by proper authority.” He also speaks of his having received a private letter, in which the writer urges the Church in North Carolina to join the General Convention. Dr. Cutting also says, that he would “diligently enquire whether there are any of their Episcopal brethren to the Southward of New Berne.”
PROCEEDINGS OF THE FIRST CONVENTION.The first Convention of the Clergy and Laity of the Episcopal Church in North Carolina, met at Tarborough on the 5th June, 1790, in obedience to an arrangement made among the clergy of the State. The chief mover in which, was the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew; whom Gov. Johnston had conferred with on the subject, after having received a letter from Bishop White, expressive of his desire for the assembling of such a Convention. To this they had also been prompted by the letter addressed to them by the Committee of Correspondence at Philadelphia, that had been sent to the Rev. Dr. Cutting; the object of which was to bring about, at as early a day as practicable, a union of the Church in all the States in a General Convention. The Convention in Tarborough was to be attended by the
Clergy, and also by a Lay-Delegation; so that the Church might be considered in all its interests; and its growth and permanent welfare promoted in the New National Life, upon which the American States had so recently entered. But, in a letter written by the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, bearing date the 6th of June, 1790, addressed to Bishop White, he laments that the only persons in attendance were a clergyman besides himself, (who was probably the Rev. Jas. L. Wilson), and Dr. John Leigh and Mr. William Clements, (both residents of Tarborough), of whom he speaks as being gentlemen of distinguished merit and reputation.
The writer of this paper regrets to say, that the lapse of a century has so dimmed the history of the past, as to leave but little to be collected with regard to this Clergyman and these two laymen; who seem to have been such zealous friends of the Church, at a time when its friends were few, and when its waning fortunes needed them. This centennial meeting of the Church in North Carolina, will be reviewed with gratitude by historians in time to come, as having rescued from oblivion the names and actions of some of the worthies of that remote period, to whom the growth and prosperity of the Church were as dear as they are to us in this brighter day. At this Convention of June 5th, 1890, the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew was Chairman, and Mr. William Clements was Secretary.
(The proceedings of this Convention have been given in full elsewhere.)
The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew's letter to Bishop White:
Tarborough, June 6th, 1790.
Right Reverend Sir:
I recollect to have had the pleasure of an introduction to you by the then deservedly famous, but since, unfortunate Mr. Duché, near fourteen years ago: but the remoteness of that period, the vicissitudes of Providence, and the numerous occurrences of life, must long since have eraced from your mind the memory of that short interview.
However, permit me now sir, to congratulate you and the Churches on your present station in the scale of ecclesiastical preferment. This I
must cordially do, and I reflect with pleasure, that an address so concilitory as that with which nature has distinguished you, none extends its happy influence from so elevated a sphere, to abash the unreasonable oppositions of bigotry and party spirit.
Pardon this seeming freedom, which results from a persuasion that your mind is superior to any undue influence, from the just attributes of those gifts, for which you are indebted to the peculiar indulgence of Heaven. As a Convention could not be called by the Gov'nor, consistently with the principles of our free Republican Government, which his Excellency was pleased to communicate to me, I entered into a correspondence with my clerical brethren, in which I proposed a meeting at this village on the 5th instant. My proposition met with general approbation, so that I expected our small Body to have been present, which would have consisted of only six individuals; But to my great mortification, I have been met by only one of them. Yet as my own situation was the most remote (I believe) of any, and the pressing necessity of our Church urged us to do something, we proceeded to business, by way of beginning, with the joint aid of two lay-gentlemen, of distinguished merit and reputation; and hope our proceedings will meet with at least the indulgence of your Committee.
The Clergy of this State find it neccessary to engage in the business of farming, for the support of their families, as contribution has ever been found so precarious a dependence; and this is perhaps the most busy season of the year, which I did not consider when I made the appointment. This is perhaps a principal reason why our Convention has been so small.
I have the honor to be with every sentiment of respect, and the highest esteem,
Right Reverend Sir,
Your most humble and devoted servant in the Gospel,
CHARLES PETTIGREW.
The Right Reverend—
Dr. White, of Philadelphia
Bishop White's reply to Mr. Pettigrew:
PHILA., August 1st, 1791.
Rev. Sir:
I should sooner have acknowledged your favor of June last year, but that, as it came to hand about the time when your next Convention was to be held, I thought it would be soon followed by a communication of your further Proceedings, which I might have acknowledged by the same opportunity.
I now learn from your late Governor Johnston, that the intended Convention has been held, and that they have appointed deputies to the next General Convention to be held in New York next Year. I communicated to the Committee your enclosed Resolutions; and they are happy to find, that the Church in North Carolina so readily acceded to the Association
of the General Body. Accept, Sir, of my thanks, for your congratulations and good wishes. I am not sure that I recollect the occasion you allude to, at my friend Mr. Duché’s; but it will probab'y recur to me whenever I shall have the pleasure of a personal interview with you. We were here well aware of the circumstance, that the Church in your State was almost destitute of Clergy; and we expected that this would occasion your being later than some others, in getting into an organized State. But, as our Communion generally throughout the country seems recovering from the condition in which the war had left us, we hope, that this is, in some measure, the case with you.
Wishing you health and happiness with success in your Ministry, I am Revd. Sir,
Your affectionate brother,
WM. WHITE.
Rev. Charles Pettigrew,
,
Forwarded by your obedient servant,
Sam. Johnston.
In a letter from the Rev. Mr. Wilson, to the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, bearing date December 30th, 1790, he speaks of the Convention of the 12th and 13th of November, 1790, as having had a small attendance; and as having proposed more business than could be accomplished, much of which had been deferred to the next Convention, which was to meet in Tarborough in October, 1791. He also says, that the Western members came near carrying the next meeting of the Convention to Hillsboro, in which event he apprehended that something would have been proposed, which it would have required much wisdom and prudence to effect. In a letter from Dr. Leigh to Mr. Pettigrew, dated 29th of March, 1791, in speaking of the election of a Bishop, he says: “I think it is something which may be deferred for sometime yet: but should it become necessary, I see no reason why we cannot appoint or recommend one of those now in the State. If the appointment of a Bishop will tend in any degree to raise once more the fallen state of our Church, I am clearly convinced that it should be done.”
“This is the object to which the attention of the Clergy, as well as the Laity, should be directed. Every exertion
is now called for aloud. The enemies of our Church, who are many, wish its destruction. Religion of whatever kind can only be sustained by the zealous exertions of its supporters. I fear that the mode adopted by our last Convention will be productive of no good. No subscriptions or donations have yet reached me, nor have I heard of any one forwarding, although I had reason to expect some.”
The Convention which was to have met in Tarborough, in October, 1791, in obedience to the appointment made by the Convention of the 12th and 13th of November, 1790, as we learn from a letter from Mr. Pettigrew to Bishop White, did not convene. There were not in attendance members sufficient to proceed to business. Mr. Pettigrew, himself, was unable to attend in consequence of sickness, as he states in a letter to Bishop White.
Letter from the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew to Bishop White:
Edenton, 12th March 1792.
Right Reverend Sir:
At this length of time, permit me to return you my grateful acknowledgement of your favor of last August (1790.) I am indeed ashamed that so much time has elapsed, and beg here to offer something in excuse for my seeming negligence. I had determined to be at our next Episcopal Convention, which was to meet in October, 1791, and not far off when I received your letter: I therefore, defered answering it, in hopes that would furnish some new communication, which might render my letter more acceptable.
But being seized with a certain ague, two or three days before I was to have set out, I found it out of my power to give my attendance, as the distance was about a hundred miles. I soon after wrote to one of my brethren, to know what was done on that occasion, that I might transmit you the particulars. But his letter having fallen into the hands of some careless person, I received it but a few days ago. It informs me, that there did not convene members sufficient to proceed to business.
Agreeably to your information by our late worthy Governor, (Samuel Johnston,) deputies have been appointed for the General Convention, to be held in New York in August, (1792). I wish they may attend. Of some I am doubtful, as the distance is great, and the journey must be attended with both fatigue and expense. Besides, it is at this time very
difficult to get money from its great scarcity in circulation, and the clergy are generally indigent.
I have a great desire to attend; but am also importuned to be at Hillsboro at that very juncture, at the meeting of the Board of Trustees for the University of the State. The business that claims my presence there is, particularly, the fixing on the place where said University shall be situated; and unless the Eastern members generally attend, it will probably be carried too far Westward. This is an object in which I feel myself also a good deal interested. So that I am at present in a kind of dilemma. As to the trouble and expense that may accrue, I would as soon attend at one place as the other, and rather at New York provided an agreeable passage by water should offer. Our Church in this State is indeed at a very low ebb; and could I see how my attendance at the General Convention would be productive of its interest in any degree, I am sure no consideration of a temporal nature should predominate. I am, however, at present unable to determine whether I will be at New York or Hillsborough. Added to our almost total want of Episcopal clergy in this State, the indefatigable industry of those who are hostile to it, is constantly employed against it.
Accept Revd. Sir, my sincere thanks for your kind wishes in respect to my health, happiness, and the success of my ministry—and believe me to be with sentiments of the truest esteem and regard.
Your most obedient and most humble servant,
CHARLES PETTIGREW.
Right Rev. Dr. William White, Philadelphia.
With regard to the third Convention which met at Tarborough, November 21st, 1793, we learn from the Rev. Robert Johnston Miller's letter to the Rev. Dr. Hawks, that the Rev. James L. Wilson was its President, and William Clements, Esq., its Secretary. Also, that the Convention appointed a Standing Committee; and published a circular calling another Convention to meet at Tarborough, in the month of May, 1794. The Rev. Dr. Halling seems to have been the leading spirit in this Convention, and in the effort to have the next Convention called, which assembled in Tarborough on the last Wednesday in May, 1794. His letter to Mr. Pettigrew, written from New Berne on the 16th of December, 1793, gives the fullest account that we have of the Proceedings of the Convention of the 21st of November, 1793.
This Convention consisted of only six persons, viz: The
Revs. Messrs. Halling, of New Berne. Gurley, of Murfreesborough, and Wilson, of Williamston, and three laymen:—Mr. William Clements, of Tarborough, Mr. F. Green, of Craven county, and Dr. John Leigh, of Tarborough. The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew was unavoidably prevented from attending—probably by sickness.
Letter of the Rev. Dr. Halling to the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew:
New Berne, 16th December 1793.
Rev and Dear Sir:
Yours by Dr. Leigh came to hand when I arrived at Tarborough, and I have also to acknowledge the receipt of your last by Mr. Shepard. It was to me the greatest disappointment, that you could not meet with us in Convention, and I am sincerely sorry for the cause of your non-attendance. It would exceed the bounds of a letter to acquaint you with all the business we went through; but I hope the following short abstract of our proceedings, will afford you some idea of our transactions. I am sorry to inform you that only six persons formed the meeting. Three of the clergy, viz; Mr. Gurley, of Murfreesborough, Mr. Wilson, of Williamston, and myself. On the part of the Laity, Mr. Clements and Dr. Leigh of Tarborough—the former of the Presbyterian Church, and who was our Secretary—and Mr. F. Green, whom I desire the vestry of New Berne to appoint as a Deputy from Craven county. You may readily suppose, that it would have been unavoidable in us to appoint a Bishopelect.
The smallness of our number would have subjected him, to reproach, and our Church also, if anything possibly can, after it has evidenced such want of zeal; for the professors of our religion have not on this occasion even showed themselves to be lukewarm. I propose that we send another advertisement, accompanied with a circular letter to one or more respectable and popular characters in every county. In this circular, we recommend in the most earnest manner a Convention of the people, who profess the Protestant Episcopal Religion of the American Church. We also recommend to them to choose immediately a Vestry; and to appoint Layreaders, where a regularly ordained Clergyman cannot be procured. We also resolved that this Vestry, the leaders, and whom ever they might elect in addition, as Deputies, should meet in Tarborough the last Wednesday in May, 1794, to form a Constitution, and elect one of the Clergy to be conseerated as Bishop of this State. This is the sum of our proceedings. When this advertisement and letter are printed, you will, I am sure my dear sir, be furnished with them, and perhaps with some copies in addition, to dispose of. I have preached and read these to one congregation, and have declared myself a volunteer in this sacred cause,
and purpose to do the same in every part of the country, where I can collect the people together. May our merciful GOD restore you to perfect health, and prolong your life to be useful in this dark land. I believe it will be the general wish, that you should be elected to the Episcopacy of North Carolina. My exertions shall not be spared on this occasion—and you must not refuse. Consider it a call from Heaven, and reflect on your former vows. Excuse me if I speak freely. My whole soul is engaged in this important business. May GOD in mercy for our country preserve you to overlook and bless his little flock,
This is the ardent wish and prayer of my dear and Rev. Sir, your unworthy brother in our LORD JESUS,
SOLOMON HALLING.
Rev. Charles Pettigrew, near Edenton.
The efforts of the Rev. Dr. Halling to arouse the Episcopalians in the State, to the importance of awakening their slumbering spiritual life, seems not to have been without its influence.
It induced a respectable number of the clergy and laity of the Church to assemble together on the 28th of May, 1794—impressed with the thought that the Church was theirs, and that they had an interest in its welfare; and still more, that each one owes a duty to the Great Head of that Church, whose Kingdom on earth he should seek to promote to the utmost of his ability.
In order not to judge the friends of the Church too harshly in those dark days, we should imagine ourselves as placed in their situation, and not in our own as we now find ourselves. The Church of England, as it existed before the Revolution in the Province of North Carolina, had been wrecked; and it required time, and circumstances which the lapse of years only could mould, to ripen the elements for the new Church organization. This new organization was to be built with the scattered timbers of the old which had been wrecked
It was to be built by new men, who had sprung up since the past had vanished; whose thoughts were adapted to the new order of things by which they were surrounded—things as new in population and society, as in Government
and Laws. The efforts made to re-organize the Church were a remnant of the past.
The first efforts that were made to re-organize the Church in North Carolina, which the writer of this Paper has endeavored to delineate, were a remnant of the past rather than a commencement of the future. They were as the flickering flames, that rise from the smouldering ashes of the past, and not as the steady blaze that increases in permanence and power. They were not the throes of a new birth, which is the precursor of a new life.
That new life for the Church in North Carolina, began many years after the Conventions of 1790, 1793, and 1794. It began when the Convention met in New Berne, on the 24th day of April, 1817. And it shined still more brightly when placed under the leadership of that justly distinguished man and great preacher—Bishop Ravenscroft—in the May of 1823; who toiled faithfully for its building up until the year 1830, when he was taken from the labors of earth, as we trust to the rewards of Heaven. The writer of this Paper remembers when a little boy, probably about the year 1825, to have heard of a visit he made to Mrs. Mary Pettigrew, the relict of the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, who had been his predecessor-elect, in the office that he now so highly adorned. I think, while there, he preached in Pettigrew's Chapel, which was built in 1803, and not far from the residence of its founder—about a quarter of a mile distant. Mrs. Pettigrew resided at “Belgrade” Plantation, in the lower part of the county of Washington, which in olden times was embraced in the county of Tyrrell, where she died in August of 1833, in the 85th year of her age. She was born at “Scotch Hall,” in the county of Bertie; and was a daughter of Mr. James Lockhart, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, and Mrs. Elizabeth Lockhart, who was a sister of General Alexander Lillington of the Revolution. General Lillington's residence was the far-famed Lillington Hall, situated in what is now
the county of “Pender,” near the banks of the North-East River, a distance of fifty miles from Wilmington. In this immediate region of the Cape Fear country, were the plantations of the Lillingtons, the Moseleys, the Ashes, the Moores, the Swanns, the Haynes—names distinguished in the annals of North Carolina—with their hospitable mansions, and refined and elegant society. In the May of 1795, after Mr. Pettigrew had been elected to the Episcopal office in the May of 1794, he received a very cordial letter from that most excellent man, Parson Miller, who, although at that time a Lutheran minister and not ordained to the Deaconate and Priesthood in the Episcopal Church until 1821, yet felt the deepest interest in the welfare of the Church. He was very anxious for the election of a Bishop, and had a hope that the Bishop-elect, when consecrated, would have it in his power to induce a large portion of the Lutheran people in his own section of the country to connect themselves with the Episcopal Church. He expressed a hope that it would not be long before the Bishop-elect would visit him and his people in his official capacity.
The cordial reception of Mr. Pettigrew, in the position to which he was elected, seems to have been an universal sentiment among both Clergy and Laity. They regarded the Church and themselves, as having been fortunate in the Clergyman whom they had selected, to lead them in the building up of the Redeemer's Kingdom in the State; and they esteemed him as possessing, in an eminent degree, the qualities of head and heart, and of Christian life and character, that were calculated to fit him for the task they had assigned him.
THE DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF THE CONSECRATION OFTHE BISHOP-ELECT.
The first step taken by Mr. Pettigrew after his election to the Bishopric of North Carolina, was to address a letter
to Bishop White, the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, informing him of the particulars with regard to the State Convention that had met in May, 1794. This letter was written on the 9th of June, 1795. In which he informed him, of the various provisions of the Constitution that was drawn up and adopted at the Convention; of the approval of, and acceptance of the union of the Church in North Carolina with the General Convention of the Church in the United States; of the Article in the Constitution that there should be a Bishop, that he should be elected by ballot, and that two-thirds of the members present should constitute a majority for that purpose; and of his own election to the office of Bishop.
He also encloses a copy of the recommendation given him by the Convention, and says, that, if required, he could add a testimonal or certificate of the good people of the Edenton District, where he had lived and preached for the last twenty years. He requests him to inform him, as to the nature of the examination he would be required to undergo; and apologizes for not having written earlier from the fact that it was the wish of the State Convention, as well as his own wish, that he would attend the next meeting of the General Convention, which was to take place in Philadelphia in September, 1795.
He also called Bishop White's attention to the fact, that the recommendation given him by the Convention in North Carolina as Bishop-elect, was drawn up by a committee appointed for that purpose by the Convention; and was such as they could conscientiously and with propriety subscribe. He adds, that “the distance at which the Clergy and Laity who composed the Convention live from each other, being so remote as to deny them such a personal acquaintance as would justify their adopting that form of recommendation prescribed, and enjoined by the General Convention, they laid it aside,” and adopted one of their own in its stead. He expressed an apprehension, that
Bishop White might not be willing to admit such a deviation from the General Canon; and that the General Convention, which was to meet in Philadelphia in September next (1795), “may refuse to rescind or alter the form already prescribed for that purpose.” He requested Bishop White's opinion and advice on the subject.
Bishop White, in reply to Mr. Pettigrew's letter, which reply was written on the 6th of July, 1795, said that he had consulted some of his brethren in the city of Philadelphia, with regard to his (Mr. Pettigrew's) certificate, and the following was the conclusion he had arrived at. It occured to him, that the members of the Convention in North Carolina had not seen the 6th additional Canon passed in New York in September, 1792. “On comparing the certificate of the Convention in North Carolina with the 2d Canon of 1789, taken in connection with the 6th additional Canon passed in New York in September, 1792, it appeared to him, that the Testimony amounted as to sense, to the Testimony required; and that the Testimony only varied in form.” He then went on to say: “If I am right in this supposition, it will be well for you to state the circumstance to the General Convention, which, it is expected, will be assembled in this city (Philadelphia), on the second Tuesday in next September. It would be rash in me to undertake to say, what will be the determination of that Body on the point; any further, than that we may presume on their entertaining an inclination to do whatever is in their power for the increasing of the respectability, and the providing for the further increase of our Church.”
From the above extracts taken from letters that passed between Mr. Pettigrew and Bishop White, it is manifest, that the Bishop-elect could not be consecrated until after the meeting of another General Convention; which Body alone was clothed with authority to decide, as to whether they would be willing to accept the Recommendation by
the Convention in North Carolina, notwithstanding its irregularity. Bishop White, himself said in his letter to Mr. Pettigrew—That it would be rash in him to say, what would be the decision of that Body on the point. He also said—That that decision would be essential, before the consecration of the Bishop-elect could take place. The first General Convention that was to have met, after Mr. Pettigrew's election to the Bishopric of North Carolina by the State Convention of May, 1794, was to have been held in Philadelphia on the 2d Tuesday in September, 1795. This General Convention, however, did not assemble in Philadelphia or elsewhere, in consequeece of the prevalence of Yellow Fever at that time.
In Mr. Pettigrew's letter of the 5th of September, 1795, to Bishop White, he informs him, that he had set out on his journey to Philadelphia about five days before then, on his way to Norfolk, thence by Packet to Baltimore, and thus onward to Philadelphia. But that he met with such reports, at Norfolk, of the prevalence of Yellow Fever and the mortality that attended it, as to cause him to return home. Had he proceeded, he thought it probable the Packet from Norfolk to Baltimore would have been stopped. But had the Packet continued to run, it would have been hazardous to have gone on board in company with passengers escaping the infection, some of whom may already have contracted it. And the danger would have been no less, had he taken a passage on board a vessel sailing to Philadelphia or New York; besides having to be quarantined after arriving at either of these cities, which would have defeated his object of attending the General Convention. The journey by land would have been not less than five hundred miles, and to be made in the sickly season of the year, which might have caused hinderances that would have delayed him on the way until after the Convention had adjourned. Thus we have the first reason why Mr. Pettigrew did not apply for consecration, viz: The necessity
of an assemblage of the General Convention, which alone could decide whether that Body would be satisfied with the Recommendation given him by the Convention in North Carolina, thus disregarding the form prescribed by the General Convention.
Then the General Convention, which was to have met on the 2d Tuesday in September, 1795, did not assemble in consequence of Yellow Fever. This he left home to attend: But, after having proceeded some distance on the way, deemed it prudent to return in consequence of the prevalence and mortality of Yellow Fever.
The second General Convention that was to have met after Mr. Pettigrew's election, was to have assembled in Philadelphia in the September of 1798: But it did not assemble in Philadelphia or elsewhere, in consequence of Yellow Fever, which lingering as it did in the country for many years, seems to have filled it with trepidation.
In consequence of this dangerous malady, Mr. Pettigrew received a letter, bearing date August 8th, 1798, signed by Bishops Wm. White, and Wm. Smith, and certified to by the Rev. James Abercrombie, Secretary of the Convention. The Bishops in this letter, expressed their regret to inform him, that the Yellow Fever had made its appearance within the preceeding week, with the probability of spreading through the city of Philadelphia: And unless abated by special Providence of GOD, that it would continue beyond the time appointed for the meeting of the approaching General Convention, which would be in September, 1798.
In consequence of this, the Chairman of the Standing Committee, with some of the members of the said Committee having held a conference with Bishop White, on the subject, deemed it right to circulate this notice to our brethren in each State, to prevent their attempting to attend the Convention. But a special General Convention was called after this to assemble in the month of
June, 1799, “to discuss the various important matters, which were left unfinished at the last General Convention.” This special Convention met in Philadelphia at the appointed time. After which, the next regular meeting of the General Convention was held in 1801, in Trenton, New Jersey.
Thus we have the second reason, why it was impracticable for Mr. Pettigrew to be consecrated after his election to the Episcopate. The General Convention of September, 1798, like that of 1795, did not assemble in consequence of Yellow Fever, of which he was notified by Bishops White and Smith. There is no ground for thinking, that it was not his intention to attend the General Convention, which was to have met in the September of 1798, had it assembled—then and there, to have received consecration to the office of Bishop of North Carolina, if Convention should decide to accept as valid the Recommendation given him, though informal, by the Convention of North Carolina. We thus see, that it was out of Mr. Pettigrew's power to have accomplished his consecration, between the May of 1794, when he was elected, and the June of 1799 when the first meeting of the General Convention was held after his election, in consequence of Yellow Fever in the country.
The question then presents itself, why did he not attend the General Convention which met in the June of 1799, or that which met in 1801, or that which met in 1804, in as much as he lived until the 8th of April, 1807. This question can be easily answered by the inference that may be legitimately drawn from his own writings and those of his friends. In a letter of his containing a description of a beautiful lake—(Lake Scuppernong) in Eastern Carolina, situated in what are now the counties of Tyrrell and Washington, addressed to his friend Dr. John Leigh, of Tarborough, he says: “I write you from Bonaroa—a name I have given my situation on the Lake. I sit under the shade of three beautiful Hollys. The surrounding scene
is truly romantic. On the one side, the prospect towards the water is very beautiful and extensive, while the gentle breezes play over the surface of the crystal fluid, and render the air grateful for respiration, now when the sun sheds his warmest influence upon the earth—it being the meridian hour. In three angles of the improvement, the woods are luxuriantly tall, and dressed in a foliage of the deepest verdure, while the cultivated field exhibits the utmost power of vegetative nature, and arrests my eye from every other object. Let me then, pursuant to the suggestion of gratitude, lift my eyes, and my heart, in a devout aspiration of thanksgiving and praise to the indulgent Author of my existence and of these blessings of which I am an unworthy partaker in common with my species. But am I not growing too serious for you? I hope not. We have our troubles. This never was designed to be a heaven for us. We are therefore crossed, that we may extend our views to a brighter world, where there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and unfading, in reserve for him that overcometh—What? The world, the Flesh and the Devil. Two heavy crosses I have, are a poor crazy constitution, and a miserable clump of an overseer whom I am obliged to oversee.”
We see from this that his health was poor at that time, although as far back as June, 1790. In a letter of the Rev. Dr. Halling, of New Berne, dated December 16th, 1793—he says: “May our merciful GOD restore you to perfect health, and prolong your life to be useful in this dark land. I believe it will be the general wish, that you shall be elected to the Episcopacy of North Carolina.”
In a letter of Mr. Pettigrew to the Rev. Dr. Halling, dated February 2d, 1794, he says: “The sympathy which you generously express in respect to my indisposition, and your kind wish for the restoration of my health, together with the prolongation of my life, have not failed to awaken a grateful sensibility.” In the same letter he
says: “I had thought of publishing three sermons, on the subject of Baptism: But my health has been so poor, that I could not transcribe them, and fit them for the public eye.” In a letter of the Rev. Nathaniel Blount, of the county of Beaufort, to Mr. Pettigrew, dated January 17th, 1799, he says: “Your reasons for not applying for consecration certainly are weighty; and I make no doubt but you were right in declining. You certainly were the best judge in the matter. Perhaps it would have been better if you had endeavored to get a Convention, and had made a formal resignation: But I don't know whether it would have been best or not; or whether the Convention could have been gotten.” In a letter of the Rev. Nathaniel Blount to Mr. Pettigrew, dated May 21st, 1801, he says: “I am sincerely glad that your health is so far continued to you, as that you are able not only to communicate your thoughts to me in writing, but also sometimes to act your part in the duties of your Ministerial Functions.” In the same letter he says: “Glad should I be to enjoy the pleasure of your company and conversation, which I cannot expect in your afflicted state, at my own house. But I still hope, should my life and health be spared, to find it convenient to visit you, and also to make a satisfactory stay with you.”
In a letter of the Rev. Nathaniel Blount to Mr. Pettigrew, dated May 4th, 1802, he says: “I observe you have an intention of Crossing the sound (Albemarle,) soon after writing, though not then recovered of your cold before caught. I hope you may have accomplished your intended voyage without injury. I suppose March to be the most searching and piercing month to weak and enfeebled constitutions, and presume your business must have been very urgent, otherwise you would have not attempted it.”
It was doubtless Mr. Pettigrew's wish and purpose to attend the General Convention, either one or both of them, had they met in 1795, or in 1798; and, after his Recommendation
by the Convention in North Carolina should have been acted upon, which there was every reason to think would have been favorable, to have received consecration to the office of Bishop. But as years rolled away, his health which from the foregoing extracts, was poor as far back as 1790—became still more so; and the disease—consumption—which terminated his life in 1807, progressed with more and more rapidity to its end. Thus we have the third reason why the Bishop-elect was not consecrated.
It was in consequence of a combination of circumstances that were unavoidable, which prevented the carrying out of his own cherished wishes, and those of the Clergy and Laity who had elected him to the Episcopate. It was not the result of any unwillingless to there being a Bishop over the Episcopal Church in North Carolina; nor was it the result of a want of zeal in the service of his Lord and Master, or in the service of his Church which he loved.
MR. PETTIGREW'S FAITHFULNESS AND TOIL.In a letter of Mr. Pettigrew to the Rev. Dr. Halling, dated February 2d, 1794, he says: “I think the Episcopal Ordination has descended, in that succession which CHRIST evidently established in His Church, to continue,” till the final consumation. (Matt. XXVIII: 18, 19, 20,) In the same letter, he says: “It appears to me in the clearest light of demonstration, that our Church wants a Head. Don't misunderstand me—I believe CHRIST to be the Great Head of his Church. But for the sake of regularity and respectibility, one ought to preside primus inter pares, with an authority to call to account disorderly or inattentive, and consequently unfaithful ministers. Yet I would not wish the power of ordination, censure, and degradation, vested in him alone; but only to be exercised by him, with the concurrence of a certain number of his brethren of the Clergy in convocation.” In a letter of Mr. Petrigrew to
his friend, the Rev. Mr. Blount, dated August the 23d, 1803, he says: “I am building a Chapel on my own land close by me; and am in expectation of having it so forward in about six months that we can convene in it with conveniency to ourselves. We have also a Chapel nearly finished about 12 miles above, where I attend two Sundays in the month, unless prevented by sickness or bad weather.”
In a letter of Mr. Pettigrew, to the Rev. Mr. Blount, dated February 22d, 1804, he says: “Since I have gotten our new Chapels in such a state as to meet comfortably in them, I feel myself quite happy in the exercise of my Ministerial Functions, from a variety of favorable circumstances, one of which is, the people attend much better. Indeed my own Chapel is generally crowded; while they hear with great seriousness and attention; and now I begin to hope, that through the concurrent blessings of GOD, my feeble labors may be useful among the people.”
In the same letter he says: “I am in hopes they now begin to think me in earnest, after having preached for them about 7 years, and built them a decent and commodious Chapel at my own expense, except a few days work, besides attending at their funerals to the neglect of my own business, and taking nothing from them for any service I render them as Clergyman and Physician.” In the same letter he says: “I am happy in the thought, that they cannot attribute my faithfulness to an expectation of being paid for it. I have long ago relinquished all expectation of receiving anything during my life; and have positively declared I would receive nothing from them.”
“My reasons are, I thank GOD, I can live without it. Also the people are poor; and when people are not under the influence of religious principles, they have little or no gratitude, and contribute grudgingly what may be wrung from their hands, which would hurt me quite as much as
giving would them. Before the Dissolution of the Establishment, I absolutely forbid anything to be collected from the Quakers for me, as I would not receive it. Neither have I taken anything for either visiting the sick, or baptizing, during the course of my Ministry.”
MR. PETTIGREW'S HUMILITY.It is manifest that Mr. Pettigrew's humility not only prevented him from aspiring to the office of Bishop, but it prompted him to use his influence with his friend, Rev. Dr. Halling, against his thinking of him in connection with that exalted position
The language he used in his letter to Dr. Halling of the 2d of February, 1794, which was four months before the meeting of the State Convention, which resulted in his election to the Episcopate, illustrates so beautifully the true spirit of the Minister of CHRIST, that it will not be out of place to record it in this Reminiscence of the past.
“Your zeal for the declining interests of religion,” says Mr. Pettigrew, “I wish rather to emulate than praise. But as my abilities are circumscribed within such narrow limits, and my strength so far short of my inclination, I dispair of it ever being in my power to be the useful minister of JESUS I would long to be. What you write me, in reference to myself respecting the choice of a person for consecration to the office of Bishop, is so far from flattering, that to me, it is truly mortifying. It turns my thoughts inward upon myself, and awakens a painful consciousness of my being far—very far from adequate to the due and proper discharge of the duties of that humbler office. And much more, alas, how much more! Unfit for the discharge of a more awful trust, with the additional duties of a Spiritual Overseer in the Church and Household of GOD.”
“Believe me my friend, although there is nothing earthly I so ardently wish, as to be useful to the world in
the exercise of the Sacred Ministry; yet my great inferiority, in every view, to the idea which I conceive of what a Bishop ought to be, with its sacred and awful trusts. You must, therefore never expect me to be a candidate. Let me requst your prayers in unison with mine, that unerring wisdom may direct and overrule the choice, whensoever made, in such manner that it may terminate in the glory of GOD, and in the advancement of his Church.” In addition to the foregoing, Mr. Pettigrew's letter to Bishop White of the 5th of September, 1795, contains the following: “I most sincerely wish, that some Episcopal Clergyman of eminence would come into this State. I would very cheerfully resign my appointment in his favor. We are but few, and the vacancies are numerious.” What a contrast there is between this, and what is so frequently seen in the Christian Church, in all its branches; where ambition for distinction and high position, are not so much as hidden from public view, and certainly not hidden from that all-seeing eye that looks into the heart of man, and beholds its most secret impulses. Mr. Pettigrew accepted the appointment of Bishop solely from a sense of duty, and was sincerely desirious of discharging its sacred functions, had unavoidable circumstances not rendered it impossible.
WHAT MR. PETTIGREW DID AS BISHOP-ELECT.In Mr. Pettigrew's letter to Bishop White of the 5th September, 1795, in which he informs him of his unavailing effort to get to the Convention which had been appointed to meet in that month, but could not, in consequence of Yellow Fever—he tells him what he purposed doing as Bishop-elect. Said he, “I must make use of the small influence I have, to have Vestrys chosen in the different counties, where they have not yet been chosen; and to have new elections, where that regulation has taken place, and their year has expired.” He then states
the names of the clergy and their respective counties, at the time of his election to the Episcopate in 1794, as they are elsewhere given in this volume.
On the 2d of November, 1795, Mr. Pettigrew addressed a letter to Charles Moore, Esq., of Mount Tirza, Person county, with the hope of getting his aid and that of his family, who were persons of means and influence, in the work of organizing the Church among them, and in that section of country.
This family was related to Bishop Moore, of Virginia, and came to North Carolina from the State of New York. General Stephen Moore, was an uncle of Bishop Richard Channing Moore, and was the owner of the site of West Point; which the United States Government purchased of him, the Military Academy, which has furnished so many men of renown since that day.
He then emigrated to Mount Tirza, in the county of Person, in North Carolina, where he purchased lands, and spent the remainder of his life.
In Mr. Pettigrew's letter to Mr. Charles Moore, he says: “At our State Episcopal Convention, when choice was made of one of the Clergy for consecration to the office of Bishop, we also passed a constitution for the regulation and government of the Church in this State. The 7th Article of which constitution is as follows:
“That as speedily as possible after it is known in each county, what members are desirious of becoming members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, they be convened, and elect a Vestry, consisting of twelve persons, to form the people into a regular society; and to procure a clergyman, who has been regularly ordained according to the rites and ceremonies of the said Church; and who is to officiate among them as frequently as may in his power, and duly to administer the Holy Ordinances; and the Vestry shall be chosen annually.”
Mr. Pettigrew also says: “Permit me now sir, to
request you in behalf of our declining Church, to have a Vestry chosen in your county, of such as profess themselves churchmen, agreeably to the above Article. You will also I hope recommend it to those of the next counties, as opportunity may serve. By this means you will fall into an organized state; also place lay-readers in your Chapels, whereby you will be known from those of different persuasions by solemnly joining together on Sundays, in the worship of Almighty GOD; than which nothing can render society more truly respectable.” In reply to the above, Mr. Charles Moore wrote Mr. Pettigrew on the 21st of April, 1796, as follows: “According to a recommendation from the State Convention, held at Tarborough on the 21st of November, 1793, an invitation was given to the inhabitants of this county, professing themselves to be of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, to meet at the Court House on the 26th of July, 1794, in order to elect a Vestry for said county, and to endeavor by all Christian means to promote said Church, General Stephen Moore being chosen chairman, the following resolutions were agreed to, viz: Vestrymen to the number of twelve persons were to be chosen by residents in the county of Person, professing themselves adhearents of the Protestant Episcopal Church, to serve three years.
“When thus chosen, they shall nominate two of their number to serve as Church-wardens. The presence of any one of whom, together with a majority of the Vestry, shall be necessary for the transaction of any business of the Church. The Vestry thus convened, shall be called a Board of Wardens and Vestry. One of the Wardens shall act as Treasurer for a year in alternate succession.
“This Board shall have power to nominate a clerk to keep its Proceedings. To nominate fit persons to represent the Society in State Convention. To make regulations and orders for their own government. To receive subscriptions and donations. The general election for Vestrymen
to be held on Easter Monday every third year. The foregoing rules having been considered and agreed on, the meeting then proceeded to the nomination and election of Vestrymen, twelve in number, which was done. One of whom was Mr. Charles Moore, the writer of this letter.
“On the 1st of September, 1794, the Vestry are to be chosen, only once in three years. The reason for which is, the difficulty of convening the inhabitants except on more public occasions; and the present mode coincident with the time of electing the Wardens of the poor, when the inhabitants convene for that purpose.
“As I was from my childhood brought up in the Church of England; and since I have arrived at mans estate, have had some opportunity of examining the tenets and practices of other denominations, the more I know of my sisters, the closer I am attached to my mother Church. The prosperity of the Protestant Episcopal Church is something very near my heart. But I have to lament, that the few of us who are in this and the neighboring counties are almost as sheep without a shepherd: And many who formerly were of that Church, have, from a motive of piety, been drawn aside to other denominations, not having an opportunity of worshiping GOD in the way in which they had been brought up. Should we be so happy as to have a worthy, pious Pastor of the Church fixed among us, I do not doubt but many would return to the bosom of our mother, and the rising generation would be nourished under her wings. Perhaps should you write to the following gentlemen, who profess themselves Episcopalians, and I believe of influence in their counties, it might stimulate them to exert themselves in behalf of our depressed Church: General Thomas Person, Col. Joseph Taylor, Col. Robert Burton, Capt. Henry Lyne, of Granville; Edward Jones, Esq., John Macon, Esq., John Falcon, Esq., of Warren.”
This correspondence between the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew
and Mr. Charles Moore, gives one some idea of the efforts of the Bishop-elect to promote the interests of the Church, as far as in his power lay. Not a large amount of good could be done; but he did all that it was in his power to accomplish. Instructions, similar to those given to Mr. Moore, were sent to the Rev. Dr. Halling at New Berne, and to the Rev. Mr. Blount, as is seen from various letters; and the same was doubtless done whenever there seemed to be a prospect of accomplishing good, and the building up of the life and health of the Church The names of a few of the lay-readers of those times, have lingered down even to this remote day, whose appointments may have been through the exertions of Mr. Pettigrew.
“GLEBE LANDS”In an old Record of the past, there is the following letter of Governor Tryon, bearing date June 20th, 1767, addressed to Earl Shelburne; in which he says: “The clergy had never any regular and certain establishment ’till the Act of Assembly in May, 1765; which entitled the ministers to receive one hundred and thirty-three pounds, six shillings and eight pence per annum; and obliged the Vestry to supply them with a Glebe of two hundred acres of good land, and to build on it a mansion-house and convenient out houses, for the residence of the minister; or for want thereof to pay him twenty pounds annually in lieu of them.”
This act was not repealed; but continued in force up to the Revolution.* And in 1776, Congress passed an ordinance granting title to all Church and Glebe lands. Also, an Act of Assembly of 1777, confirmed title. Also the Legislature of 1796, confirmed the title. (See Martin's Revisal of Iredell. Chapt, II, Sec 4—Acts of 1796.)
* But it must be observed that this Act did not provide Glebes; it only directed the vestrymen of each parish to buy a Glebe: and as a matter of fact very few of the parishes ever had any Glebe.But this Glebe Property, which in all fairness belonged to the Episcopal Church, was in some instances sold, and the money arising from said sales appropriated to county purposes; which was not only a desecration, but an act of violence and wrong. Mr. Pettigrew contended earnestly, for years in his own section of country, against this manifest disregard of common justice. He insisted that the proceeds from the sales of the Glebe lands should be delivered to the Episcopal Church—the rightful owner—to be appropriated to the repairing and building of Chapels; to which he added, “that not a stiver of it should come into his pocket.” Through his exertions, a petition was sent to the Legislature, praying that the Glebe lands might be restored to the Church in the county of Tyrrell, to be laid out in houses of worship: But his efforts were of no avail. The first Glebe-house finished in North Carolina was that of St. Thomas’ Church, Bath.
TRADITIONS OF SOME OF THE OLD CHURCHES AND CHAPELS.ST. THOMAS’ CHURCH, BATH.
St. Thomas’ Church, in the town of Bath is the oldest in the State. It was built in the year 1734, of brick, said to have been brought from England, and is yet well preserved. The Rev. George Whitfield, the great Pulpit Orator and Evangelist, is said once to have preached in this venerable building. The old town of Bath dates back as far as 1706, which renders it the oldest town in North Carolina.
ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, Edenton.St. Paul's Church, in the town, of Edenton, was commenced in the year 1736; and on the 1st day of July, 1738, money was placed in the hands of Thomas Luton for its completion. It is built of brick, said to have been brought from England.
The Court House, within whose walls has been heard
the voice of so many eminent men, was built about the same time, of brick said to be brought from England.
ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, WILLIAMSBORO.The Parish of St. John's was probably established in the year 1746—St. John's Church, in the village of Williamsboro, was built in the year 1757, and first stood at a place about a half mile distant from its present site, near what was then known as Church Spring.
About fifteen years ago, the writer of this paper walked one Sunday afternoon, in company with the venerable Dr. William F. Henderson, (a son of the late Chief Justice Leonard Henderson,) who then resided at Williamsboro, to the place on which the old Church first stood, and where the old spring once was. It was the first, and probably the only time that my footsteps will ever tread that spot, which is to some degree hallowed to one, who has preached the Blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ within the sacred walls of old St. John's, now for more than twenty years. Williamsboro and the country around it, in times long since past, were noted for wealth, intelligence, culture and refinement. There were few parts of North Carolina that have had more natural advantages, which in those days were highly improved; and the sacred precinct of St. John's was the nucleus around which the glory of the past seemed to rally. Among the names that tradition has handed down to us, there are two that especially attract our attention—Chief Justice Henderson and Bishop Ravenscroft. The former was one of the great Jurists of North Carolina, the latter was the great Preacher of his day. It is the memory of the great and good men of the past, that transmits the glory of a former generation.
The following is a copy of a paper given me years ago, which is not without its value; the names of the writers of which are affixed to it:
TRADITIONARY HISTORY OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCH.“This Church was framed and partially built, and placed about half a mile north-east of its present location in 1757, by a family of the name of Lewis in its vicinity.
It was transferred to Judge John Williams; and by him it was removed to the village of Williamsboro in 1772. Vide inscription on a pillar supporting the center aisle.
In Judge Williams’ Will, written in 1790, he gave it to the vestry so long as it was used as a Protestant Episcopal Church. It was to be the property of the heirs of Leonard Henderson, when it was no longer used as a Prostestant Episcopal Church. It ceased to so be used for many years. It is within the recollection of one of the recorders of this traditionary outline, to have seen ropedancing, and punch and judy acted and performed within its sacred walls. It was used by all denominations as a Church, and was used by the citizens as a public theatre until 1819.
The timbers are massive and ‘true lightwood,’ and are put together shiplike with iron bolts and taps. Its bricks were like the Church—moulded in our Father-land, glorious old England. The first minister who had charge of the Church was the Rev. George Micklejohn; a man of eccentric character. He preached in the closing years of the last century and the early years of this.* One of the recorders of this traditionary history, has heard from its pulpit the wayward Lorenzo Dow, at about the year 1820.
The Rev. and pure Willian M. Green, now the octogenarian and honored Bishop of Mississippi, preached in it. During his ministry, the Church was consecrated by the Rt. Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft, then the Bishop of the Diocese. Stephen Sneed, William Hunt, Sr., and Col.
* This must be an error, Mr. Micklejohn did not reside in Granville county until about the close of the Revolution. In 1770 there was a minister resident in Granville county: the Rev. Edward Jones, if there was none earlier.William Robards constituted the then Vestry of the Church. In 1824 the Convention of the Diocese was held within its walls. Bishop Otey, of Tennessee, was confirmed by Bishop Ravenscroft in this Church.
We, the writers, here record the names of the ministers who have had charge of this Church, in their line of succession as far as our recollection serves us, viz: Rev. Geo. Micklejohn, Rev. William M. Green, Rev. Mr. Brainard, (Mr. Brainard succeeded Mr. Green in 1826); Rev. Mr. Steel; Rt. Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft, (Bishop Ravenscroft had charge of the Parish, and resided at Williamsboro,) Bishop Ravenscroft's successors were Rev. Joseph Saunders, Rev. Mr. Shaw, Rev. William Norwood, Rev. Mr. Groves, Rev. Mr. Thurston, Rev. Louis Taylor, Rev. Mr. McLeod; Rev. Joseph Ridley, Rev. Sterling Y. McMasters, Rev. Edwin Geer, Rev. Thomas Davis, (Mr. Davis was son of Bishop Davis of South Carolina,) Rev. Richard Hines, Rev. Henry H. Prout, Rev. Maurice H. Vaughan, Rev. William S. Pettigrew, the present pastor; Mr. Pettigrew's pastorate commenced on the 27th of February, 1870—4th Sunday.
During the Rectorship of the Rev. Mr. Hines, the interior of the Church was remodeled, and a Rectory was purchased and fitted up. In the year 1864, in the time of the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Prout, a Convention of the Diocese was held in St. John's Church.
WILLIAM F. HENDERSON, M. D.,
HENRY J. ROBARDS, M. D.
P. S.—I gave to the late Dr. Curtis of Hillsboro, documents that would have thrown much light on our early Church—St. John's.
WILLIAM F. HENDERSON.”
BLOUNTS’ CHAPEL.Parson Blount's Chapel, now known as Trinity Church, Chocowinity, Beaufort county, was probably built before
the Revolution. It was built by the Rev. Nathaniel Blount, who was its first pastor—a native of, and all his life a resident of the county of Beaufort. Chocowinity was the residence of his father Reading Blount, and probably Parson Blount was born and brought up there, which was to some degree the scene of his ministerial labors in subsequent life. The Chapel was about two miles from the town of Washington, and on the other side of the Pamlico River. The date of its building is not known with certainty; but is supposed to be about the year 1773. Parson Blount died in the county of Pitt in the year 1816 or 1817; and his remains were carried to Chocowinity, and interred in the family burial ground near his old residence. He was the last survivor of the Colonial Clergy in the State, having lived beyond Parson Pettigrew, his old friend and co-laborer in the ministry, about ten years. He was ordained in St. Paul's Church, London, in September 1773. The relations that existed between these good men, judging from their letters, many of which are now in the possession of the writer of this, were not only cordial, but very affectionate, and beam forth a spirit of sincere and humble piety, which is indeed beautiful and should stimulate us to emulate their example.
ST. THOMAS’ CHAPEL, BERTIE COUNTY.St. Thomas’ Chapel of Colonial times was situated in the county of Bertie, about five miles from Avoca, and one mile from the village of Merry Hill. It was destroyed by fire about the year 1840, and was an old building at the begining of this century.
The venerable Lorenzo Webb, of Windsor, who is now 84 years of age, informs me that, at the request of his father, the Rev. Mr. Avery, who was for many years the Rector of St. Pauls Church, Edenton, would occasionally come to Bertie and preach at St. Thomas’, Mr. Lorenzo Webb has in his possession the old English Prayer Book
that was used in the Chapel by Parson Pettigrew when preaching there in his day, Mr. Webb, himself, was baptized in the Chapel by the Rev. Wm. Hardy, a Methodist Preacher: and his father was baptized by Parson Pettigrew, within its old walls.
It seems that no regular services were held for some years before the Chapel was burnt. The more modern building of St. Thomas’ Church, at Windsor, is its successor and name-sake.
THE OLD CHAPEL ON THE SITE OF LEWISTON, BERTIE CO.The venerable Mr. Webb also informs me of an old Colonial Chapel, the name of which I have never heard. It was on the site of what is now the village of Lewiston, in the county of Bertie, and was built long before his day. It was here that the Rev. William Norwood, D. D., commenced his ministry about the year 1831. In addition to which, he also had charge of the Churches at Scotland Neck and Windsor. The Chapel was very old at that time, and was taken down between the years 1840—’50, and the property went into private hands.
SKINNERSVILLE CHAPEL, TYRELL COUNTY,—(NOWWASHINGTON.)
At a place once known as Skinnersville, about fifteen miles east of Plymouth, in the present county of Washington, but in the county of Tyrrell before the formation of the county of Washington, there was an old Colonial Chapel. Its date must have gone back many years anterior to the Revolution. There has been a Tradition in that region, which the writer of this has heard from persons who have long since passed away, that Mr. Wesley, the great founder of Methodism, once preached in its pulpit, which is not beyond the limit of probability, in as much as his fellow-evangelist, Mr. Whitefield, has a similar tradition in regard to his having preached in the old Colonial Church at Bath.
Early in Mr. Pettigrew's ministry, he preached in this old Chapel, when in the discharge of his duties as a missionary and evangelist, his headquarters being Edenton. It was about the year 1780, at one of his appointments at this old Chapel, that he met with a Mr. Anderson, who lived not far from Lake Scuppenong, who told him of the great fertility of the lands there. After this Mr. Pettigrew visited the lake; and was so much pleased with the fertility of its lands and the beauty of its water, that he invested there. He made a purchase of lands, from the finder of the lake—Josiah Phelps; who made the discovery of the lake about the year 1755, which has since been so noted. Mr. Pettigrew gave his place the name of Bonarva (Rich Fields.)
This old Chapel was situated on the northern side of the public highway. It had become quite dilapidated by time and neglect; so much so, that it was taken down, and another built through the exertions of Mr. Pettigrew in the year 1803, situated opposite the Colonial Chapel, on the southern side of the highway: Mr. Pettigrew had his appointments there every other Sunday, his residence, since the beginning of the year 1797, having been at his plantation Belgrade, where it continued until his death in 1807. In an old manuscript of Mr. Pettigrew's written in 1803, he speaks of preaching occasionally at the Cour House of Washington, at Lee's Mills, a distance of twenty miles from Belgrade, his home. In the same manuscript, he speaks of the old Chapel (Colonial) at Skinnersville, as having been the only Chapel in the county, until his two new ones were built. He speaks of this old building as having been in so dangerous a condition as to be unsafe for a congregation to be in.
PETTIGREW'S CHAPEL.Although “Pettigrew's Chapel” does not date farther back than early in the present century; yet it may not be
out of place in this Record of the past, in which Mr. Pettigrew's name occupies so prominent a place, to say something of the Parish of which he was the founder. This Parish is now known as St. David's, Scuppernong, Washington county.
For many years perhaps as far as the commencement of Mr. Pettigrew's ministerial life in the year 1775, it was his habit to preach as a Missionary in different parts of the county of Tyrrell, which in that day, embraced what is now known as the counties of Tyrrell and Washington.
In February, 1797, when he became a resident of the neighborhood known as Scuppernong, which is situated in what is now the upper part of Tyrrell and the lower part of Washington, the extent of which is about ten miles square, and on his plantation (Belgrade), he preached in a school-house in the neighborhood.
This was the property of Joseph Phelps, Esq., who was a Justice of the Peace, and a prominent man in his county affairs, as well as a School-master.
The school-house was about a mile distant from the Parson's residence, and was small, and inconvenient to himself as well as to the congregation. In the year 1803, he built a Chapel at his own expense, with the exception of a few days work that was contributed. It was built in the same year with the Chapel at Skinnersville. The erection of this Chapel seems to afforded him great gratification; of which he speaks with no little pleasure in a letter to Parson Blount, who seems to have been a friend with whom he communicated his thoughts unreservedly, and from whom he received a similar manifestation of confidence and affection. The Chapel was situated about a quarter of a mile from his residence, and was thirty feet by twenty in size.
He survived this work but little over four years, during which time his health gradually declined; until death closed his earthly labors, and his spirit returned to the
GOD who gave it. Seeing the manifest indication that his end was drawing near and feeling a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of the people, among whom he had preached for so many years, he naturally was interested on the subject of whom he would encourage in preaching the words of Salvation from his pulpit, when he would be no more to sound that good news himself.
There was no Episcopal minister in Edenton, nor any where else in that region of country. His eyes naturally turned to the Methodist Preachers, with whom he had ever been on friendly terms, and who seemed to cherish toward him a filial feeling—the chief object of whose preaching seemed to be, to persuade men to lead holier and better lives, and the aiding them in the attainment of eternal Salvation. The good old Parson, soon after the completion of his Chapel, invited them also to have appointments there, which they gladly accepted; and their regular appointments, in what was known as the Columbia Circuit; were kept up there until the year 1839, when the Methodists built a Chapel of their own about two miles distant—called Bethel.
The writer of this was told about fifteen years ago by the Rev. Dr. Closs (an old Methodist Preacher about seventy five years of age at that time), that when he was a young man, he knew an old Methodist Preacher who was young in the time of Parson Pettigrew. Said he, on one occasion I was standing by when a person offered Mr. Pettigrew a pecuniary compensation for his ministerial services; for which he thanked him, but declined accepting it; but pointing to me, requested the person to hand it to me, saying that I was poor and needed it; which he did.
Mr. Pettigrew invited the Methodist Preachers to his house, and entertained them, as Mrs. Pettigrew his widow who survived him until August, 1833, also did. A Methodist Preacher, who rode that circuit in the year 1828, and who frequently was the recipient of the hospitality of the
good old lady, once said to the writer of this, that he had been told by her—that Mr. Pettigrew, before his death, had said to her, that he wished her house ever to be the home of the Methodist preachers.
The first Episcopal Minister who took charge of Pettigrew's Chapel, after the death of Mr. Pettigrew, was the Rev. David Griffith, who went there in the month of May, 1834. Since then, there has been a constant succession of Episcopal Ministers up to this time.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE REV. CHARLES PETTIGREW.Among the papers of the late General J. Johnston Pettigrew, there is a sketch of his grand-father, the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, in manuscript; a copy of which is contained in the appendix to the 2nd vol. of the life and correspondence of Judge Iredell. It was written in the September of 1856, at the request of the late Griffith J. McRee, Esq., the accomplished author of the Life of Iredell. I do not know that I can do better than to insert this sketch here emanating as it does from the pen of my lamented brother, which will now, after the lapse of a third of a century, adorn his own memory no less than that of his venerated ancestor.
GENERAL PETTIGREW'S MANUSCRIPT.“The Rev. Charles Pettigrew was descended from a gentleman's family, originally from, and still resident in, Scotland, a branch of which removed, very many years ago, to county Tyrone, Ireland—extinct at present, except in the persons of two ladies. He was of this branch. His father seems to have fallen out bitterly with his people—why, was never known, but probably on account of difference in religion, for he came to this country a dissenter of the dissenters, and so strict was he that his doors were always religiously closed on Sunday. On one occasion the Indians, on Sunday, having made an irruption into the settlement, passed by his house as uninhabited, while the
neighbors met the usual fate—an occurence which, doubtless, did no little to steady the faith of his family. He followed the usual course of the Irish emigrants—landing in Pennsylvania, and halting finally in South Carolina. In North Carolina, his father left him.
“The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew was indebted for his education to the Rev. Mr. Patillo, and the Rev. Mr. Waddel, Wirt's famous blind orator, who seemed to have taken a great fancy to him in his youth, as appears from their correspondence, wherein allusion is made to presents of Greek books, received at Grammar School. Having but little besides his intellect, he became a teacher. The date of his appointment to the public school in Edenton is June, 1773, and under the seal of Governor Martin. Uniting to his inheritance of piety a lively intellect, and a considerable degree of literary culture, and having, moreover, returned to the path of his forefathers, he was persuaded to enter the ministry; and accordingly, in the Winter of 1774-’75, made a voyage to London, where he was ordained by the Bishop of London, his Diocesan, and the Bishop of Rochester. He immediately entered upon his functions with zeal on his return to America, for which there was much room during the war of the Revolution. He succeeded the Rev. Mr. Earl, as Rector of St. Paul's Church, Edenton, and there was cast upon him the spiritual care of all that section of country.
“By his marriage with Miss Mary Blount, daughter of Col. John Blount, he became allied with the old Provincial Aristocracy, and thus had his sphere of usefulness enlarged.
“In a letter, dated in 1789, he alludes to his former habit of preaching to great crowds, and states that he was constrained to give it up, because of its almost invariably producing a fever. During all this period he seems to have been not so much at the head of the Episcopal Church, as of religion in general, for there are various letters
to him from Edward Dromgoole, and other Methodists, who either resided in, or traveled through that region, and also from Lutherans, giving him an account of their movements, and requesting his attendance at their meetings. Indeed the Church Establishment having been dissolved, and all religious organization broken down, the enemies of the Evil-one seemed to have fought together, with no other bond of union than that of a common foe. After the Revolution and the restoration of Peace, he received various invitations from the neighboring parts of Virginia, which were declined with one exception—and that one never acted on.
“In politics he was a whig in the Revolution. In 1789, Bishop White suggested to Gov. Johnston the propriety of organizing the Church in North Carolina: But he deeming any ecclesiastical interference inconsistent with his position, referred the whole matter to Mr. Pettigrew, who requested the Clergy to meet at Tarboro’, in June, 1790. The apathy on the subject seems to have been great, for it was not until a flood of letters had been written, and various small conventions held, that one could be assembled sufficiently universal to organize the Church.
“In May, 1794, such a Convention was held at Tarborough, at which a Constitution was framed and adopted, and Mr. Pettigrew was selected as Bishop—with regard to this honor he sincerely said, ‘Nolo Episcopari.’
“The state of his health seemed absolutely to forbid it; but in the depressed state of the Church, and the scattered situation of its ministers, the acceptance of this post was deemed by his fellow-christians a duty, and he yielded. The various alarms of Yellow Fever at Philadelphia and Norfolk, with the accompanying quarantine, cutting off all communication during certain seasons of the year, prevented him from meeting the General Convention for some years; and, in the latter part of his life, declining health rendered him unequal to the exertion. Though he was
thus unable to put the finishing stroke to the foundation, yet his labours in rescuing the Ministers and their Parishes from the disconnected state in which they were disposed to continue, and in increasing and diffusing a zeal for religion, were of great service, not only to the cause of the Church, but to christianity in general.
About the same time another matter of general interest agitated the state, in which Mr. Pettigrew took great interest, and acted a leading part. The establishment of a University. Such was his conviction of the importance of the measure, and his zeal for its success, that once, being compelled to choose between the General Convention and a meeting of the friends of the University, he preferred the latter. On this subject there is a very good communication from him in the Archives of the University. His literary attainments, though considerable for the time, were probably not very deep; but he had quite a classical taste. His favorite Latin Author in youth was (to judge from his quotations) Horace, and subsequently Virgil. His written style seems easy, and his oratory from all accounts eloquent, but at the same time chaste, for he had a horror of physical religion. One gift I think he had by nature to a considerable extent,—that of poetry, for I find scraps, rough drafts of odes, and poems on all sorts of subjects and in all kinds of metres, either quite lively or the reverse. His turn for variety of metre probably produced or was produced by his partiality for Horace.
“As a Christian, I believe he was as nearly without serious fault as is possible; for though he lived in an age when the clergy were rarely popular, and always subjected to hard criticism, I have heard of but few who have said aught to his discredit. The manner in which he discharged the very onerous duties of his calling in a sickly country was exemplary; and in that day, a clergyman who had three or four counties under his charge, and was expected to preach a funeral sermon over every respectable
parishoner, was far from having a sinecure. In the year 1797, he began to reside at the plantations of Belgrade and Bonarva, now the property of his grandsons, near and on Lake Scuppernong; and in 1803, built Pettigrew's Chapel, which he afterwards presented to the Church. From the above date (1797) to the time of his death in 1807, he refused to receive any compensation for his services. Indeed he had always, even under the Establishment, prohibited the collection of any thing from the Quakers. An enlightened, cheerful, and consistent christianity pervaded his whole life, and particularly characterized him in his domestic relations, and I know not where the duty of a christian gentleman is more elegantly set forth than in his letter of advice to his sons at college in 1797, when he believed himself approaching dissolution. As a curious instance of the opinion then entertained, it may be mentioned, that he therein advised them to make arrangements for procuring white labor, as a change may take place sooner than is expected.
“His health was always delicate; but his cheerfulness never forsook him, so much so that it was impossible to be with him without catching his sprightliness. His marriage placed him in comparative afluent circumstances; but, as might have been expected, he was an indifferent manager of worldly concerns, though his own opinion of his skill was probably different. He died in 1807, leaving his widow of the second marriage, formerly Miss Mary Lockhart, and one son by his first marriage. His remains repose in the family sepulchre at Bonarva. To this Mr. McRee adds the following: ‘The Bishop's only son; the Hon. Ebenezer Pettigrew, represented the Third Congressional District in 1835—’7, in which was included the county of Tyrrell, in which he resided. He was distinguished for his intelligence, his purity, and his refined manners.” General Pettigrew concludes with this: “I copy below an obituary taken from an old file of the ‘Edenton
Gazette.’ It accords substantially, with what I have always heard. ‘During the interruption in this publication we have to lament the death of many loved and valuable characters. Among them we would particularly notice the death of that zealous and venerable disciple of the blessed JESUS, the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State, who died at his home in Tyrrell county, on the 8th day of April last (1807.) To do justice to the character of this pious and excellent man would require talents we have not the happiness to possess, and far exceeding the narrow limits of this Paper. His public ministrations in this place for many years render eulogy unnecessary. His chaste and classical discourses, his fervid and animated devotion, his irreproachable and evangelical life will long, very long be remembered with melancholy regret by those, who enjoyed the advantage of his public and private admonitions and instructions. In him were exemplified that simplicity and Godly sincerity, which are the perfection of the Christian character. Oppressed by the infirmities of a feeble constitution and frequent disease, his cheerfulness did not desert him. As the world and its fleeting joys receded from his view, his faith in CHRIST and hopes of immortal glory acquired additional strength and vigor. He was at all times blessed with that serene and placid temper, that meek and patient spirit of resignation, which are the strongest proofs of piety and virtue, and a rational well-grounded hope in the gospel of the blessed JESUS. Having fought the good fight on earth, having finished his course, having kept the faith, we trust he has now ascended to the bosom of his GOD, to reap a rich reward in the regions of eternal rest, peace and joy. Mark the perfect and behold the upright man, for the end of that man is peace.’
J. JOHNSTON PETTIGREW.”
REV. MR. PETTIGREW'S ANCESTRY. HIS YOUTH. HIS
EDUCATION. HIS EARLY MANHOOD.
James Pettigrew, the great grand-father of the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, was a native of France; but left his native country in consequence of religious persecution in the reign of Louis XIV. From France he went to Scotland, which became his residence. Perhaps his home was Glasgow. He had two sons—John and James. Of John nothing has been handed down to posterity. He probably spent his life in Scotland, his native country. James Pettigrew, the grand-father of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew married Miss Martha Moore, a Scotch lady of wealth. He was an officer in the army of William of Orange at the Battle of “the Boyne,” which was fought in the year 1690 between the troops of William of Orange and James II., resulting in the success of William and the subjugation of Ireland. After the restoration of peace, King William conferred on him, for gallant military service in the Battle of “the Boyne,” 300 acres of land not far from the town of Aughnaeloy, county of Tyrone, in the North of Ireland. To this place he removed his family from Scotland, and gave his residence the name of “Crilly House,” where he spent the remainder of his life; which is yet in possession of his descendants. William, the oldest son of the officer in the Battle of “the Boyne,” resided at “Crilly House” after his father's death. He married Miss Margaret Ker, by whom he had three sons, viz: James, Robert and William. James, who was a first cousin of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, at an early age received a commission in the British Army, and commanded what is called the forlorn hope at the Battle of Brandywine, in the American Revolution. His company was almost cut off, and himself badly wounded. He was a Captain in the 10th Regiment of British Troops. After the Battle of Brandywine, he returned to Ireland, and received Knighthood from George
III, and was promoted to the rank of Major and Paymaster of the Troops. He died in Jamaica, where a tomb was erected over his remains by his brother officers. James, a younger son of the officer in the Battle of “the Boyne,” and brother of William who inherited Crilly House after the death of his father, was the father of Rev. Charles Pettigrew. He was born in April, 1713, and received a classical education. At 19 years of age he married Miss Mary Cochran, about the year 1732. He remained in Ireland about eight years after his marriage; when he emigrated with his wife and four children to America, and landed in November, 1740, at the town of New Castle. Not long after his arrival in America, he became acquainted with Dr. Franklin, who afterwards became so distinguished as a Philosopher and Patriot, whose residence was Philadelphia which was not more than 32 miles from New Castle. They seemed to have been on terms of some intimacy—so much so, that the Doctor insisted on his studying medicine, for which he seems to have had a natural gift, and which he had to some extent already studied: But the emigrant did not follow his friends advice, which might have been wise. Not long after his arrival in America, he purchased 300 acres of land, at what is now known as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he settled and remained until the year 1755. His son Charles Pettigrew, the subject of this sketch, was born at this place on the 20th of March, 1743. The relatives whom James Pettigrew, the emigrant, had left behind him in Ireland were Church of England people. But about the time of his arrival, that great pulpit luminary, Mr. Whitefield, was preaching in America; on one occasion he attended his meeting, and was so wrought upon by the power and eloquence of the Preacher, as to make a profession of religion. He joined the Presbyterian Church; and contined a faithful and zealous member of it until his death, which took place in Abbeville District, South Carolina,
on the 24th of December, 1784, at the age of seventy-one. In the year 1755, he sold his property at Chambersburg, and removed with his family to the county of Lunenburg, Virginia, and rented a place near the county-seat. At this place his youngest child, William Pettigrew, was born on the 26th of February, 1758, who was the father of the late James L. Pettigrew, the very distinguished lawyer of Charleston, who for so many years ranked at the head of the South Carolina bar, in which there was so much ability. It was probably while the emigrant lived in Lunenburg, that his son Charles was sent to school to those noted teachers and divines—the Rev. James Waddel, Mr. Wirts famous blind Preacher, the Rev. Henry Patillo, whose piety no less than learning made its impress, doubtless on the mind of their young pupil. About the year 1760, James Pettigrew, the emigrant, removed from Lunenburg, Virginia, to the county of Granville, North Carolina. He there purchased 300 acres of land of Hornel Lewis, and settled in a neighborhood that was noted, for many years afterwards, as the head quarters of the Presbyterian Church and known as “Grapy Creek;” which is said to be the oldest church building now standing of that denomination in North Carolina. He gave to the Church the ground on which the building was erected. Probably it was built about the year 1761. For some years it had a succession of learned and distinguished Pastors, among whom were the Rev. Samuel Davies, afterwards President of Princeton College, New Jersey, and the Rev. Shepherd Kollock. James Pettigrew was chosen one of the Elders. Probably his residence was three or four miles from the Minister's school, to which his son Charles went until his education was completed. It is not likely this was accomplished before he was 22 years of age, subjected as he must have been to so many hindrances and delays in the pursuit of learning, on the accomplishment of which his mind seems to have been steadily fixed.
MR. PETTIGREW AS AN INSTRUCTOR OF YOUTH.In the October of 1768, Mr. James Pettigrew, the emigrant, with all his family except his son Charles, removed to Abbeville District, South Carolina. The county of Bute, consisting of what now constitutes the counties of Warren and Franklin, was formed about the year 1764, and its Court House was about eight miles from the present town of Warrenton, and equi-distant from Ridgeway. It was probably here that Mr. Pettigrew, the subject of this sketch, commenced teaching school about the year 1766, and continued to do so, after his father and family had left for South Carolina, until he received from the Colonial Governor, Josiah Martin, the appointment of Master of the Public School at Edenton, in June, 1773. It is probable that he taught six or seven years in the county of Bute, sufficiently long to have acquired some reputation as an instructor of youth; otherwise the Governor of the Province would scarcely have appointed him to so important a place as that of Master of the school at Edenton, one of the chief towns in the Province. The distinguished Nathaniel Macon was a pupil of Mr. Pettigrew's at his school in Bute, and very likely was prepared by him for Princeton College. His biographer states, that he was born in 1757, and that he was a student at Princeton in 1776. From which it may be inferred that he was about 16 years of age when Mr. Pettigrew's school ceased in Bute, and when he, Mr. Pettigrew, left for Edenton. In 1776, at which time Nathaniel Macon left Princeton to take part in the Revolution, his biographer tell us he had not graduated.
Among the old letters of Mr. Pettigrew, there is the following, part of which may be interesting. It is written to Benjamin Hawkins, who was a pupil of his at the same time with Nathaniel Macon.
WASHINGTON COUNTY, Decr., 1802.
Dear Sir:
So much time have elapsed since we have had the pleasure of an interview, from the remoteness of our situation from each other, that it is
not improbable, that the name at the bottom of the concluding page may give you surprise. Think not however that I write you from any other sphere, for although we have seen many of our friends and acquaintances consigned to the grave in the run of our near 30 years absence from each other, through Divine influence I am still alive—still confined to this state of mutability and imperfection.
My brother, from whose hand I expect you will receive this, and whom I take the liberty to introduce to you, has mentioned your name as standing high in the estimation of the Georgians. I confess I heard it with singular pleasure, and could not but recognize my early acquaintance with you, which I believe was mutually happy; and, at the same time, I could not help recollecting the sentiments I was then induced to entertain of you, from that opening of mind and freedom of thonght which appeared so natural to you, and which I expected would influence your future conduct through life. In this I am happy to think from the result, that I was not mistaken in my conjectures. Believe me Sir, the prosperity and respectability of any of my old pupils gives me the sincerest pleasure, and I am peculiarly happy to find that your old schoolmate Macon makes so respectable a figure in Congress. My brother is a resident at this time of South Carolina; but having been unfortunate from the death and insolvency of a Sheriff, for whom he was security, he now wishes to try to repair his losses as an adventurer in the Western Frontier of Georgia, particularly by procuring a good spot of that land lately purchased from the Indians. With this view he thinks of trying to get a surveyor's place. His honor and integrity I have not a doubt may be relied on. Whatever services therefore you may find it convenient to render him, shall be considered as obligations on your old friend, who spent so many happy days and nights of his youth together with you under the same roof. I would be happy that my brother William Pettigrew and family were living beside me; but our country is very low, and the lands that are good hard to reclaim, and then uncertain. He therefore cannot get over his partiality for the State of Georgia. As it is natural for friends to wish to be informed of the particular circumstances of one another, especially in cases of long absence, I beg leave to refer you to my brother for mine. Suffice it for me to say, my desires with regard to the world have been sufficiently gratified, and we have great cause for gratitude to the liberal Author of our lives, and the easy competency with which he has blest us. I shall be happy to correspond with you by post. With sentiments of esteem and the sincerest regard, I have the honor to be my worthy friend,
Your obedient servant
CHARLES PETTIGREW.
Benjamin Hawkins, Esq., Georgia—
Favored by Mr. William Pettigrew.
The parents of Nathaniel Macon lived on the Southern side of the Public Highway, about two miles from Bute
Court House, which property now belongs to the estate of the late John Watson. The house is not now standing; but was taken down some years ago. It is said by old people to have been the first house in the county of Warren in which there were glass windows. It was here that Nathaniel Macon was born. The parents of Benjamin Hawkins lived on the Northern side of the Public Highway nearly three miles from the Court House, which property now belongs to the widow of the late Mr. Thomas Plummer. Benjamin Hawkins’ father was the first Col. Philemon Hawkins, the earliest of his name who came to North Carolina, and was an old man at the time that Mr. Pettigrew taught school in that neighborhood. As Mr. Pettigrew speaks of spending days and nights under the same roof with his pupil, young Hawkins, it is not improbable that he boarded at old Col. Hawkins’ while teaching. The walk could easily have been made morning and evening by himself and the young Hawkinses who were among his pupils. In June, 1773, Mr. Pettigrew left the upper country of North Carolina, and ever after was identified with the Albemarle region. He first became the head of the public school in Edenton, where he continued 18 months, until the close of 1774. During this time he was the lay-reader in St. Paul's Church whenever the Rev. Mr. Earl, the Rector, might be absent; also he was a student of Divinity. The writer of this has heard his father, who was the son of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, speak of the extraordinary talent for control in the schoolroom which his father possessed, merely from his presence and manner without the exercise of personal severity.
MR. PETTIGEW COMMENCES HIS MINISTRY. HIS MARRIAGE.HIS CHILDREN.
Mr. Pettigrew went to London in the Winter of 1774-’5, and was ordained Deacon and Priest by the Bishop of London and Rochester. After which he returned to
America in one of the last ships that sailed before the commencement of hostilities between the mother country and the Colonies. He immediately began his labors as a Preacher of the Gospel; extending them, as he continued to do to a large degree during his life, over the region of country on the two side of Albemarle Sound and the county of Bertie. But Edenton seems to have been his headquarters during most of his ministerial life; from which he diverged, from time to time, in different directions as circumstances would seem to render necessary. This was eminently the case, previously to his becoming a resident of what was then the county of Tyrrell in the year 1797. He was married to Miss Mary Blount, a daughter of Col. John Blount, on the 29th of October, 1778. She died on the 16th of March, 1786, in Harvey's Neck, in the county of Perquimans. By this marriage he had two sons, viz: John Pettigrew, who was born at Edenton, August 2d, 1779, and died at Belgrade Plantation, Scuppernong, Tyrrell county, September 23, 1799. Ebenezer Pettigrew, who was born at Edenton, March 10th, 1783, and died at Magnolia Plantation, Tyrrell county, July 8, 1848.
ENGAGEMENTS MADE FOR MR. PETTIGREW TO PREACH ATST. PAUL'S CHURCH, EDENTON.
FIRST SUBSCRIPTION LIST.
The first information that we have of Mr. Pettigrew's preaching in St. Paul's Church, Edenton, is an old subscription list, in which the subscribers, members of the congregation, engage the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew to preach for them every third Sunday, in the absence of the Rev. Mr. Earl. Commencing with the date of the paper, July 22d, 1775, and to continue one year. The salary to be paid £79. 15. 2d.
SECOND SUBSCRIPTION LIST.She second subscription list that we find, bears date May 1st, 1778, in which the Rev. Mr. Earl's name is not
mentioned, from which we infer that Mr. Pettigrew had become Rector of the Church. It engages Mr. Pettigrew to preach every other Sunday in the town or Edenton, commencing with May 1st, 1778; and promises him one hundred pounds annually.
THIRD SUBSCRIPTION LIST.The third subscription list that we find, bears date November 1st, 1781. It says: “We have applied to the Rev. Charles Pettigrew to perform public religious worship, and to preach on every Sunday in the Church in this town; and we promise to pay him the sum affixed to our respective names, which in all amounts to £184. 12.
FOURTH SUBSCRIPTION LIST.The fourth subscription list, that we find, says: “We have applied to the Rev. Charles Pettigrew to perform religious service and to preach every Sunday in the Church in this town; and we promise to pay him the sum affixed to our names for his services in one year—half to be paid at the time of signing, and the other half to be paid at the end of the year. Signed January 1st. 1783.”
In the Historical Collections in the State Library at Raleigh, there is the following: “In the year 1777, the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew writes—that he preaches at five places, and depends on voluntary salary. In the year 1779, the Rev. Daniel Earl, writes—that he knows of no Clergyman officiating in the Province except the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, and he speaks of leaving in the Spring.”
Mr. Pettigrew, however, did not leave; but continued in North Carolina from the commencement to the close of his ministerial life—from 1775 to 1807. Mr. Pettigrew resigns the Rectorship of St. Paul's Church, Edenton. Moves to Harvey's Neck in the county of Perquimans.
DEATH OF MR. PETTIGREW.It is probable that about the year 1777, Mr. Pettigrew
became the Rector of St. Paul's Church, Edenton; which he retained up to the close of the year 1784, at which time he resigned his charge. Early in the month of January, 1785, he left Edenton on a visit to the West Indies, hoping that the sea-voyage and a month or two spent in that mild climate would be beneficial to his health. He arrived at the British Island of St. Eustatia after a voyage of two months from Edenton. In a letter to Mrs. Pettigrew, written while there, he says: “I have preached, since I have been here, at the request of the Governor and the principal gentlemen of the Island. I am treated very politely by them, being invited to dine among them almost every day.” Remained on the Island about a month; and returned to Edenton early in the month of May, much benefited by the sea-voyage and balmy climate. In March, 1786, he removed from Edenton to a plantation he had purchased in Harvey's Neck, in the county of Perquimans, situated in an angle between the Perquimans River and the Albemarle Sound; which plantation in more recent years, was the property of the Rev. Thomas H. Skinner, Jr., now of Raleigh, who in early life resided there. This place was about 20 miles from Edenton. The support he received from the Church in Edenton was so meagre as to constrain him to rely on his own resources as a means of living for himself and family. The exposure encountered in their removal in the changeable month of March, and the open and uncomfortable house into which they went in Harvey's Neck, were such as to cause the death of Mrs. Pettigrew. She breathed her last on the 16th of March, 1786; and her mortal remains were carried to “Mulberry Hill,” the old residence of her father, Col. John Blount, at which she was born and brought up, seven miles from Edenton, and there deposited in the family sepulchre.
Mr. Pettigrew probably remained at his abode in Harvey's Neck, with his two motherless sons, about three years. The oldest of the Skinner family, whose name was
Joshua, (father of the late Joseph Skinner and his brothers), and the Harveys, were among his neighbors while a resident there—names that have been distinguished in North Carolina.
MR. PETTIGREW COMMENCES HIS BONARVA PLANTATION.On the 9th of March, 1788, Mr. Pettigrew commenced his Bonarva Plantation on Lake Scuppernong, and probably in the month of June, 1789, left his abode at Harvey's Neck, with his two sons and what he could remove, and landed on the Tyrrell shore, at the mouth of Scuppernong River, which was then the county seat of Tyrrell. The furniture and other articles he had bought, were deposited in the Court House. They landed at the mouth of the river probably on Saturday, and left on Sunday for their new home.
The articles that had been deposited in the Court House were permitted to remain for the present. The new abode to which they were going was not Bonarva for the present. It was a small place on the Southern shore of the Albemarle, in a section known as the sound-side, bordering on and to the East of what bears the name of Shadberry Lane, which is about a quarter of a mile in length, as it runs from the main road to the sound. Between the years 1840-’50, the place was owned and occupied by the late Edward Riggs, a brother of the late Mrs. Josiah Collins, of Somerset place, Lake Scuppernong. Mr. Riggs was a native of Newark, New Jersey, and a highly cultivated gentleman. This place was nearly opposite “Mulberry Hill,” and convenient by water to Edenton, which two considerations had their influence in inducing Mr. Pettigrew to select it as a temporary residence. Withal it was remarkable for its health. As Mr. Pettigrew and his two sons John and Ebenezer, the former of whom was ten and the latter six years of age, were on their way to this new residence, as they were almost wanderers without an abiding
place, in a country but little cultivated and sparsely peopled, there came up a thunder storm as the desolate travellers approached an uninhabited and dilapidated building. In this they sought shelter from the wind and rain. The house was without windows or shutters, and destitute of every comfort. It was in an old field that lay uncultivated, and was used as a common by the neighborhood cattle. It was on the South side of the Public Highway as it now runs, and was in front of the present stone house, which has for many years been part of a property known as “Sunny Side.” In this desolate house, Parson Pettigrew and his two sons remained during the afternoon and night. The writer of this, who is a son of Ebenezer, the younger of those boys, has frequently heard his father, in years now long past, speak of that desolate evening and the cow bells in the old field as he heard them amid rain, lightning, and gloom, and the melancholy impression made on his young mind. The new place to which they were going on the sound-side was comparatively convenient to the Lake, being distant about 18 miles only, and without the waters of the Albemarle to encounter. Mr. Pettigrew's object was to be within reach of Bonarva, that he might clear it, and render it valuable and one means of support. The lands were set with immense cypresses which were difficult to clear, and subject to water as it overflowed from the Lake, which was 9 miles by 7, and 14 feet in depth; but the soil possessed extreme fertility. Ebenezer Pettigrew, the youth spoken of above, became the manager of this property in September, 1803, when 20 years of age. He found an overflowing Lake, and a clearing of only 50 acres of imperfectly drained land, which, consequently, did not produce in accordance with its fertility. As years rolled away, he made this wilderness, by his capacity and energy, to blossom as the rose. Bonarva became a large and productive plantation: and in 1843, the writer of this heard his uncle, the late Hon. William B.
Shepard, who had travelled much in the Sonthern country as well as at the North, say that it was the most beautiful plantation he had ever seen. While living at the place on the sound-side, Mr. Pettigrew led the same missionary life that he had heretofore done, and, doubtless, preached occasionally at Edenton. It had been now two years that himself and his two sons had experienced the friendship of neighbors, which has been transmitted in their descendants as well as in his to this remote period, when he was again called to Edenton as Rector of St. Paul's Church. While on the sound-side, he probably preached at the old Colonial Chapel at Skinnersville, which was only two miles distant. He also sometimes preached below Scuppernong River, as there were some friends of his residing in that part of the country of Tyrrell.
MR. PETTIGREW IS AGAIN CALLED TO ST. PAUL'S CHURCH,EDENTON.
FIFTH SUBSCRIPTION LIST.
At the head of this list we find the following; “The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew agrees to reside in the town of Edenton, and to preach two Sundays out of three, and perform the respective duties of his function. The first year to commence from the 12th day of June, 1791.” The sum to be paid is not stipulated. Nor the duration of his services, which probably continued some years. He was a resident at Edenton, from the time of this call up to his marriage to Miss Mary Lockhart, and Pastor of the Church. After his marriage he removed to Scotch Hall, where he remained two years and a half. It is also probable that he retained the Pastorate at St. Paul's Church during his residence at Scotch Hall, and until his removal to Belgrade Plantation, in the county of Tyrrell, in February, 1797. As far as any papers of his would throw light on that period, he was the only minister of the Episcopal Church who preached in Edenton, from the Pastorate of Mr. Earl up to Mr. Pettigrew's death in 1807.
Mr. Pettigrew was married to Miss Mary Lockhart on the 12th of June, 1794. Her residence was Scotch Hall, Bertie county, a name given it by her father, Mr. James Lockhart, who died at his residence on the 7th of December, 1753, at the age of 54 years. Mrs. Elizabeth Lockhart, his wife, survived him until her death on the 3d of January, 1796, in the 87th year of her age. After Mr. Pettigrew's marriage, himself and his two sons made Scotch Hall their home, except when his sons were at the University, at Chapel Hill.
MR. PETTIGREW SETTLED AT BELGRADE PLANTATION,SCUPPERNONG, TYRRELL CO.
In the year 1796, Mr. Pettigrew purchased this property of James Dillon. In February, 1797, he moved to it from Scotch Hall with his wife and two sons, making it his residence until his death. It was seven miles from the Lake where his Bonarva property was, which added to its desirableness. He gave it the name of Belgrade, which name seems to have been a favorite with him, as he had given the same name to his place in Harvey's Neck. When first going to Belgrade, they occupied the house in which the former owner had dwelt, and he commenced the erection of a new and more pretentious mansion. It was first framed at Bonarva, probably in 1796; but afterwards was moved to Belgrade probably in 1797, and placed about 300 yards nearer Scuppernong River than it now stands. It was completed, and Mr. Pettigrew and family moved into it in March, 1798, being greatly gratified at having a residence so comfortable, after all his wanderings. It was moved where it now stands in the Spring of 1834, by his son Ebenezer Pettigrew. This mansion stands yet, after the lapse of 92 years, a monument of the piety and worth of the first Bishop-elect.
MR. PETTIGREW AS A PREACHER; AS A MAN; AS A CHRISTIAN.The writer of this, in his early life, would occasionally
meet with persons themselves advanced in years, who knew old Parson Pettigrew, as he was usually denominated throughout the country when spoken of. They spoke of him in terms of unqualified praise as a preacher, as a man, and as a christian. He was a firm believer in the doctrine of Infant Baptism as practiced by his Church; and during his ministerial life, he was one of its most zealous advocates. He felt deeply the meaning and force of the words of the Blessed Saviour when he said; “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me; for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matt. xix: 14).
He baptized many children in the course of his ministry; but no record of their names has been preserved to this day. As a preacher, he had a great reputation. He was fluent and eloquent as a speaker, oftentimes preaching without manuscript or note. His voice was similar to his son's (my father), which had much compass, yet was soft and pleasant to the ear; and his manner was eminently persuasive, and calculated to win the hearer to him. But few speakers were more effective with their audience and his congregations were large and attentive. As a writer, his style was easy, chaste and eloquent. As a man, he was popular with all classes with whom he might be thrown in contact. He had a gentle and sweet disposition and an unsual share of the milk of human kindness in his composition. But, at the same time, he was possessed of the highest degree of courage—moral and physical—and had no fear of men. No question of personal favor or self-interest would cause him to shrink from the discharge of his duty. He was a sincere friend, a generous neighbor, and especially amiable and pleasant in his family. He possessed, in a large degree, that wit and humor, which constitute so marked a feature among the people of his father's native country—Ireland. As a Christian, he was exemplary in his life, and faithful to the end. He was humble in his estimate of his own merits, with none of the
spirit of the proud Pharisee, but with much of the spirit of the humble Publican. He was ever disposed to help forward the cause of CHRIST, even when it was but a little spark. In his family-prayers beneath his own roof, he often used this passage of scripture: “Use this world as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.” (1 Cor. vii: 31.) The writer of this has heard his father say, when speaking of the subject of this sketch, “I never knew a better man than your Grand-father.” Among the papers of the late General Pettigrew, there is a letter to him, dated January 4th, 1858, from Governor Swain, who was at that time President of the University. He was speaking of a letter written by the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew to the Rev. Mr. Caldwell (in after years the very distinguished Dr. Joseph Caldwell)* which letter was written in November, 1797, and is yet in the Archives of the University. Mr. Caldwell was at that time 24 years of age, and the principal Professor at the University. Governor Swain was speaking of the prevalence of French Infidelity, and of its danger, and of Mr. Pettigrew and Mr. Caldwell as defenders of Christianity, when he uses the following language: “At the date of your grand-father's letter, he at the head of the Episcopalians and Mr. Caldwell of the Presbyterians, were the most prominent defenders of the Christian faith. There have been but few as worthy leaders in any period of our History; their followers, at that time were few, but tried and faithful.”
MR. PETTIGREW'S DEATH.Mr. Pettigrew's life was now drawing near its close. The disease, Consumption, which had been progressing gradually with him for some years, was now about to complete its task, and bid his spirit return to the GOD who gave it. The happiness that existed in his family would cause him to be willing to remain here longer; but the
* This is not Dr. Joseph, but Dr. David Caldwell.—Ed.final summons was at hand, and he was to bow in submission to the will of the Creator, who had watched over him by day and by night for 64 years. In a manuscript, which he left behind for his son Ebenezer, who was his only surviving child, his son John having died in the year 1799, he says—That, at an early period of life, he had devoted and dedicated himself to GOD in a perpetual covenant, and that GOD had never forsaken him. When death was approaching he said, “I have talked a great deal to Ebenezer in my life, and when I am dead he will remember it. I thank GOD I leave an honest son behind.” He breathed his last on the 8th of April, 1807, at 21 minutes past 1 in the morning, aged 64 years and 18 days. His remains were carried to Edenton, a distance of 40 miles from Belgrade Plantation where he had died. They were received at the wharf, and placed in a conveyance, which the first Mr. Josiah Collins had ordered to be there in readiness for their arrival; and were probably then carried to St. Paul's Church, where he had so often preached.
The burial service of the Episcopal Church was read by the Rev. Dr. Freeman, a Presbyterian clergyman, who, for many years after this, was a noted teacher in Eastern Carolina. At that time, there was no Episcopal clergyman in that region of country. His remains were carried to the family cemetery of the Blounts at Mulberry Hill, 7 miles from Edenton. Here they remained until the year 1831, when they were removed with the remains of the first Mrs. Mary Pettigrew, who had been buried there in 1786; John Pettigrew, who had been buried there in 1799; and Miss Hannah B. Shepard, who had been buried there in 1818. They all were carried to Bonarva, and deposited in a cemetery which his son Ebenezer Pettigrew had then recently constructed. Here now sleep the remains of all the descendants of Parson Pettigrew, who lie beneath the sod, with the exception of one who rests beneath the soil of Kentucky.
They all sleep beneath the sound of the same waves, that, in years long since past, they had heard as they lashed the shores of the beautiful Lake.
Over the remains of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, there is a brown Stone, on which is the following inscription:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE REV. CHARLES PETTIGREW, LATE MINISTER OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, AND BISHOP-ELECT OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA, WHO AFTER A LIFE DEVOTED TO THE CAUSE OF RELIGION AND VIRTUE, FELL ASLEEP IN JESUS, ON THE 8TH OF APRIL, A. D., 1807. AGED 63 YEARS.
In his private life, as well as in his public ministrations, he was the humble follower of his crucified LORD and Master. In his temper cheerful, humane and benevolent; in his manner mild, affable and engaging; in his discourses chaste, fervid and devotional. With manly dignity and christian fortitude he met all the changes of this sublunary state, and we trust has gone to receive the glorious reward of his labors in those mansions of endless felicity prepared for the righteous from the foundation of the world. “Mark the perfect and behold the upright man, for the end of that man is peace.”
My task, of recalling from the mists and obscurity of a century ago events long since forgotten, is ended. The actors then have long since gone on their silent march and we must soon follow. Thus ends the story of the early
Conventions; of the first efforts that were made to reorganize the Church in North Carolina after the Revolution; and of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, the first Bishop-elect. The writer of it will be more than compensated, if he shall have contributed, in any degree, to the gratification or instruction of the friends of the Church which he loves, or to the embalming the memory of an ancestor whom he venerates.
VII.
DECAY AND REVIVAL.
1800—1830.
BY REV. JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE, JR.
The effort to organize the Diocese of North Carolina, and to procure the consecration of a Bishop, which was made by the Conventions of 1790, 1793, and 1794, failed utterly. These Conventions not only failed to accomplish their particular purpose and the object immediately in view, but they did not in any way revive the declining cause of the Church in North Carolina. They did not represent the birth of new energies, and the adaptation of the Church to her new surroundings; they were only the death-struggle of the old Colonial system.
The Church, even after all her losses, was probably still the strongest body in the State in the number of nominal adherents at the close of the Revolution. The greater part of our population lay east of Hillsboro. Most of the people of this section were of English blood, and were attached to the Church of the mother country. The Methodists were a growing body among them, but the Methodists still counted themselves Churchmen. The Baptists were also numerous, but as yet they had only two Associations in the State, and they were in every way of much less importance in the life of the community than they have since become. There were also many Presbyterians in the Scotch settlement of the Cape Fear; and the tide of immigration from Pennsylvania and Virginia along the foot-hills of the Appalachian range was still bringing numbers of the same faith into the settlements of their
brethren along the Yadkin and the Catawba. So numerous had the Presbyterians become by the year 1788, that in the Hillsboro Convention of that year, Mr. Abbott, of Camden county, reckoned them the most numerous body in the State. But this was after almost all the congregations of Churchmen in the State had for years been without any ministrations whatever; after the Methodists had abondoned their original position as a Society in the Church; and after the Churchmen of North Carolina had been reduced in most of our old parishes, to the sad alternative of abandoning the Church of their fathers, or of being wholly deprived of all privileges of common worship and instruction. In every county from Hillsboro to the sea-coast the scanty records of the Colonial Church speak of Churches and Chapels, and local tradition preserves the memory of many which are not mentioned in any known document. Some of these had been served by ordained ministers; many were supplied only by lay-readers. But in one way or the other the outward forms and services of the Church had been generally observed throughout the greater part of the Province, and the people had not forgotten the Mother Church. The enactment and re-enactment, all through our Colonial period of laws for the election of Vestrymen, the building of Churches, the support of ministers, and, in one or two instances, for the benefit of parish schools, show that whatever may have been the strength of the various Dissenting bodies prior to the Revolution, they did not feel able to oppose this public recognition and support of the Church.
In this general diffusion of the Church population, and their dependence upon legislative recognition and support, lay the weakness of the Colonial Church. The country was too poor and the population too sparse, to allow of the building up of strong local organizations with their established institutions and endowments, which by a sort of moral and intellectual momentum should carry the Church
through the crisis of change from one system to another; as was the case in New York and Pennsylvania, and to some extent also in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina. At the same time the deceptive legal status, and the legislative provision for the Church, obscured her essentially spiritual character, and prevented her people from crystalizing in strong and self-reliant congregations capable of sustaining themselves by the power of their faith in the divine authority of the Church and their love for her as a spiritual kingdom among men; as was the case with the Churchmen of Connecticut and the other New England States.
In some few places in the Eastern part of the State there were comparatively strong local organizations. In Edenton, Newbern, and Wilmington, the Church people held together, and preserved some feeble sparks of light even during the darkest period. At the other extremity of the State, Parson Miller gathered together the handful of Churchmen of Lincoln and Rowan counties, who had never enjoyed the disadvantage of any participation in the old legal establishment, but who recognized the spiritual character of the Church; and in spite of his fatal error, whereby the compromised his principles and stultified his position, in consenting to receive Lutheran ordination, he did keep alive some little sense of loyalty to the Church in that distant field from 1785 until the happy revival under Bishop Ravenscroft, which he was permitted to see. But in all the intervening country the Church went utterly to decay. It had no strong organization, which by the power of numbers and of established institutions might have served to keep it together until it could adjust itself to its new conditions, and learn the new methods made necessary by the change; and moreover, it had not that strength which comes from a clear conception of the spiritual kingdom, which must command men by laying hold upon their hearts and consciences, nor had Churchmen had their love
for their mother Church developed by distinct instruction in her principles, and by the habit of freely bearing the burden of her support in order to enjoy the benefit of her ministrations.
It has already been said that the Tarborough Conventions of 1790—’94 were not an indication of new life in the Church, but only the vain struggle of a dying system. This is apparent from the records of the Conventions. There had been in the Province of North Carolina no strong and vigorous parishes. The Colonial system did not tend to produce such. Even in Edenton, Newbern, and Wilmington, the ministers in charge had been missionaries of the society for the Propagation of the Gospel, as they were all over the Province. A notable exception to the rule was Edgecombe Parish, Halifax county, where the Rev. Thomas Burges was the minister from 1759 until some time about the period of the Revolution, under a special agreement with his vestry and without any stipend from the Society. But this exception is more in appearance than in reality, for his salary under the special agreement was only one hundred and twenty pounds in the paper money of the Province, a sum totally inadequate for the support of his family. It may therefore be affirmed with perfect accuracy that at the date of the Tarborough Conventions there was not a single vigorous congregational or parochial organization in the proposed Diocese of North Carolina. The loose method of the old Vestry Acts, which left the choice of Vestrymen to the free-holders of the parish,* in an election held by the Sheriff, not even
* As illustrating this statement the reader may refer to the letter of Mr. Charles Moore to Mr. Pettigrew, dated April 21st, 1796, and given on pages 207 and 206 of this volume. Mr. Moore there says that the vestrymen of the parish were to be elected on Easter Monday, at the same time when the inhabitants convene for the election of Wardens of the Poor. In like manner it appears by the circular letter sent out by the Convention of November, 1793, which will be found in the Appendix, that the parish elections therein provided for are to be held at the Court House door Though these are slight particulars they show that there was a clinging to the old order of things, and a failure to appreciate the condition and necessities of the new situation. It is interesting to observe in this connection that a distinct trace of the old religious establishment of the Province runs down through our civil institutions until the total overthrow of an old system in 1868. Up to that time, the county officers who had the charge of poor of the county were called Wardens of the Poor. This was but a survival of the old office of Church Wardens, stripped of its ecclesiastical functions, and confined to one of the duties which before the Revolution had been associated with others.requiring that the vestrymen should be members of the Church, had almost totally destroyed all sense of responsibility in the minds of Churchmen for the conduct of Church business, and by an unreasonable extension of privilege had sadly weakened the feeling of personal obligation and loyalty. By a common experience everybody's business came to be nobody's business. The first thing which the Church needed in 1790 was a Bishop; another thing it needed quite as much in fact, though not in theory, viz: the organization of its few zealous members into congregations, and the development of a spirit of loyal devotion to its service, and a sense of responsibility in the individual for the welfare and prosperity of the Church in in his particular sphere. The old system had thrown the privilege upon the ground to be picked up by any who would: as a consequence it had been trampled under foot. The Church was now at liberty to prescribe the terms upon which her privileges should be enjoyed, and to command the allegiance of her children.
The failure of these Conventions to accomplish anything toward the revival of the Church in North Carolina was not solely because Mr. Pettigrew failed to be consecrated. That might easily have been remedied by a new election. The fact that there never was any prospect, or even possibility, of another election, would go far towards excusing him for having remained unconsecrated, had that been the
result of his own choice, which it certainly was not. These Conventions accomplished nothing permanent because they could not cast away the old methods of Colonial times, and rise to the demands of the hour. It is not meant that any mere resolution or direction put forth, different from what was done, would of itself have produced a different result; but the absence of a new spirit of vitality was manifested in this inability to rise to an appreciation of the needs of the time. Nothing whatever was done at any of the meetings towards the proper organization of the scattered congregations, or towards setting before the few large parishes their privileges and responsibilities as Churchmen. The Constitution adopted in 1794 provided that not only the parish vestries should send one delegate each to the Convention, but that each county should send two, and each town (i. e., I suppose, the six “borough towns” of that date, Edenton, Newbern, Wilmington, Halifax, Hillsboro, and Salisbury), one, “to be elected by the people.” No local organization was required to be formed or kept up, in order to be entitled to representation in the Convention. At the same time only one-third of the Clergy “and an equal number of the lay deputies” were required to make a quorum for the transaction of business. These may seem but small matters, but they indicate a condition of disorganization and an indefiniteness of allegiance most unfavorable to the Church. Her privileges were still to be made so common that they could not seem to possess any value, and no one need feel any special responsibility for her interests, which could be attended to by three Clergymen and a like number of laymen. The elections were to be held at the Court House in each county, according to the former custom, and the Church was thus kept as close as possible to the memories of the past “establishment,” at the very time when of all things it was most needed that her spiritual character should be set forth and emphasized in the eyes not only of her own people, but of the community.
The subsequent history of Mr. Pettigrew need not be considered here, nor his efforts to arouse the interest of Churchmen in different parts of the State. It is enough to say that those efforts were fruitless. In Edenton, in Newbern, and in Wilmington, the parochial organizations were kept up, as perhaps also in one or two more obscure country or village congregations, and the people refused to accept any substitute for the old Church and her solemn services. When they were unable to procure a minister they had lay-reading, and from time to time the necessity called forth men to go forward and to seek Holy Orders that they might return, and keep the light burning in our few remaining shrines. From the end of the Revolution to the organization of the Diocese in 1817 no less than six candidates for orders went from the little handful of struggling Churchmen in North Carolina; Adam Boyd, from Wilmington; Solomon Halling, Thomas P. Irving, and John Phillips, from Newbern; James F. Wilson, from Martin County, and John Avery, from Edenton. There were in the three towns above mentioned a large number of people attached to the Church, and many of them persons of the first distinction and most exalted character. In Edenton, Gov. Johnston, Judge Iredell, Charles Johnson, William Littlejohn, the Blounts, Skinners, Collinses and others equally well known, made up a congregation which had every element of strength, if only they could have been aroused to a proper zeal. In Newbern, Dr. Isaac Guion, Col. Joseph Leech, the Nashes, Speights, Stanleys and Shepards, were of equal reputation and influence. In Wilmington almost the whole body of the most intelligent and prominent people were connected with the Church. Moore, Ashe, McLean, Hooper, De Rosset, Walker, Eagles, are names of families attached to the Church, and eminent for all civic and social virtues. And this was almost equally the case in every community through all the section of the State lying east of Hillsboro, except in
the Scotch settlements on the Cape Fear. The great body of the population, though under the defective and vicious ecclesiastical system of the Provincial period, they had been allowed to grow up in ignorance of her principles and insensible of their own responsibilities to the Church, were still Churchmen by tradition and by preference. Even in the West, in the region settled chiefly by the Scotch-Irish and the Germans, there were many Churchmen. In his missionary tours as evangelist of the Lutheran Synod, Parson Miller tells us that he found many members of the Church scattered among the Presbyterians of that section; and in Rowan and in Lincoln were very considerable communities of them. Such was the situation of affairs at the beginning of the present century.
It is easy to understand the rapid and total ruin which overtook the scattered congregations throughout the State after the failure of the attempt to revive the cause by means of the meetings at Tarborough. Ancestral regard for the Church and a preference for her doctrines and her mode of worship could not hold the congregations together after they had been deprived of her ministrations; nor could the most sincere belief in her divine origin and mission render her members entirely insensible of the advantage, and even the necessity, of actual communion with their fellow Christians in common worship, however defective that worship might be in respect to the authority of the minister or the mode of service. Add to this the natural desire of other religious bodies to recruit their ranks from so intelligent and influential a class, and the result needs not to be described. The Address to the General Convention drawn up in June, 1790, by the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew and Dr. John Leigh, declares that the “state of our Church in this Commonwealth is truly deplorable from the paucity of its Clergy and the multiplicity of opposing sectarians who are using every possible exertion to seduce its members to their different communions.”
Another cause of weakness and decay, implied in what has already been said, but needing to be emphasized by a distinct ennumeration, was the demoralized and hopeless feeling of Church people themselves, even those who remained faithful to the end. “Posssunt quia possse videntur,” is a maxim which holds equally good when thrown into the negative form. The Church was powerless because Clergy and laity thought that they were powerless. And this feeling arose not so much from the really hopeless condition of affairs, as from their inability to adjust themselves to the strange conditions of their new situation. This is apparent from the fact that this hopelessness and helplessness was greatest where there was least cause for it. Neither Wilmington* nor Edenton were represented in any of the Tarborough meetings; and although the purity of Mr. Pettigrew's motives and the sincerity of his devotion are altogether above question, yet a careful reading of his correspondence during this period convinces me that he felt but little confidence in those efforts for the revival of the Church, in which he bore so prominent a part. He was by natural disposition very averse to controversy or contention of any sort; and he must have seen that a new spirit could not be aroused in the Church, and new methods devised to set her in her true position, and to assert her proper influence in the community, without danger of violent opposition and bitter controversy and sharp criticism both within the Church and without. In a letter to Dr. John Leigh, of Tarborough, in regard to
* So little interest was taken by Wilmington in these meetings that when in 1813 Mr. Empie began his effort for the revival of the Church in the State and the organization of the Diocese he could learn nothing whatever of the attempt made by the Tarboro’ meetings only twenty years before. When Bp. White's memoirs of the Church were published in 1820, they seem to have given him the first account of those Conventions which he had received, except what he had learned from Parson Miller's letters.the proceedings at the meeting of June 5th, 1790, he writes:
The time employed in that Business was too short, and our hurry too great, to prepare anything for the public Eye; at a period too when there are so many would be Critics still agape for something to fault. And to be candid, there is nothing I dread more than the severe tribunal of the public.
It was probably his consciousness of this softness of natural disposition and his unfitness for taking the part of leader in what might prove a long and trying struggle, which made him reluctant to accept his election to the Episcopate in the first instance, and willing to give over the effort to obtain consecration when his first attempt seemed to be providentially frustrated. To the end of his life he remained faithful to his conception of ministerial duty, but the thought of making any further exertions to arouse the slumbering congregations throughout the State seems never to have crossed his mind.
It has been common to attribute the many defections from the Church during this sad period to the inefficiency, or even to the irreligion, of the Clergy. It is easy for those who desert the sinking ship to blame the officers: and then too we are glad to accept any explanation which those whom we love and honor may give of their conduct. But without questioning the honesty and sincerity of such persons, we may be allowed to doubt the faithfulness of their memory or the justness of their discrimination with respect to their motives. There may have been unfaithful and vicious men in the ministry then, as there have been since; but even where the ministers are known to have been most exemplary and diligent, the same gradual decay and loss was going on. No better men have ever served GOD and their fellow men in North Carolina, than Parson Burges in Halifax, Mr. Reed in Newbern, Mr. Stewart in Bath, and Clement Hall in Chowan, before the Revolution; and Mr. Pettigrew in Edenton, Nathaniel Blount in
Beaufort County, and Solomon Halling in Newbern and Wilmington, after the Revolution: and yet we do not find that the Church in these localities was exempt from the common experience.
It is a prevalent opinion that popular prejudice against the Church as the former legal establishment, associated by its very name with the memory of English rule, was the great cause of weakness and decay after the establishment of American independence. I believe that this feeling, so far as it applies to the Church in North Carolina, has been much exaggerated and misunderstood. The laws in favor of the Church had not been enforced in those parts of the Province where a majority of the people had not been in favor of them; and when the struggle with Great Britain had come on, almost all the leaders on the patriot side had been Churchmen. There must have been some such prejudice against the Church in parts of the State, though contemporary evidence of it is very scanty. But after the Church had ceased to be seen and known among the people, and when it was remembered only as a part of the old order of things, then it was I believe, that it acquired by association its share of the popular prejudice against all things British.
The true cause of the sad experience of lethargy and decay through which the Church had to pass before it could begin the upward course of real progress, is to be found in the three quarters of a century of state patronage which preceded the year 1776. This civil “establishment” had been maintained by the action of the people through their representatives in their legislative assemblies. It had never been felt to be a popular grievance, nor had it created prejudice against the Church among the people of the Revolutionary period. But it had produced a fatal weakness in the Church itself by obscuring its spiritual character and its divine claim upon the hearts and lives of its members. The people had not been
taught the duty and privilege of supporting the Church by their prayers, their offerings, and their personal service; and the Clergy had forgotten that it was not only honorable to the minister to “live of the Gospel,” but they had lost sight of the fact that “even so had the LORD also ordained,” for the good of the laity, who should thus be trained in love and gracious liberality, as well as for the support of the ministry in the discharge of their holy function. Mr. Pettigrew not only served the people of his neighborhood in the double capacity of pastor and physician, without compensation, but he built them a church. And he confesses that he was as unwilling to be dependent upon the people, as they were reluctant to give to his support. In a letter to the Rev. Nathaniel Blount, dated February 22d, 1804, he says: “I own that I derive a far greater pleasure from it,” that is, from the exercise of the pastoral office, “than ever I did while as a dependant I received an emolument for my services.” While the Colonial Vestry Acts made no adequate provision for the Church, even while they continued in force, their evil results remained long after they had been forgotten.
The decay and ruin wrought by the preceding causes would be too tedious to follow out in detail. It will be sufficient to indicate briefly the course of events in the few larger parishes where the remnant was left, which in GOD's good time was destined to take root downward and to bear fruit upward; and then, in tracing the progress of the gracious revival, to note how it was the smoulding brands of the old Colonial Churches, which by the spirit of the LORD were blown into a flame to show forth again the light of Apostolic truth in North Carolina. There are only three of these which demand our special attention, St. Paul's Church, Edenton, Christ Church, Newbern, and St. James's Church, Wilmington.
The parish of St. Paul's, Edenton, is, I believe, the
oldest corporation (using the word in its popular sense) in the State of North Carolina, dating back to the year 1701*. It still has for its parish Church the spacious and handsome brick structure erected in Colonial days, which was, with St. Philip's, Brunswick, probably the most ambitious building in the Province, with the exception of Tryon's famous “Palace.” The character of the congregation has already been referred to. It suffered in common with other congregations, but as a rule the people remained faithful to the Church, and rejected with becoming spirit a proposition made during Mr. Pettigrew's incumbency, that the Church should be used for the purposes of other religious bodies. But the infrequency and irregularity of the services, and the consequent disuse to a great extent of the devotional and practical system of the Church, had a sad effect here as elsewhere; and for years after the revival of the Church, but a very small proportion of her people were communicants. From 1794 to his death in 1807, Mr. Pettigrew resided either in Bertie, or upon one or the other of his two plantations on the South side of the Sound, and his ministrations must have been infrequent; and after his death the parish was vacant for several years.
The part which the Edenton Academy played in the history of the parish is curiously illustrated by an arrangement made with the teacher of the Academy soon after Mr. Pettigrew's death. It has been shown in a previous paper† that the Academy at Edenton, as well as the one at Newbern, was strictly a Church school, built and maintained as such. And it is a most interesting fact that in
* St. Pauls’ Chowan, dates from the same year in which four other parishes were also organized, Currituck, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Pamplico—Pamplico being the first name of the present parish of St. Thomas, Bath. I have, however, called St. Paul's the oldest, because it is the only one of the five, which was organized at once and has practically kept up its organization continuously to the present time. † “Colonial Parishes and Schools,” by the Rev. Robert B. Drane.both places the Academy carried the parish through its most critical period, and so played a most important part in the life of the Church in North Carolina.
The curious arrangement referred to was in connection with the employment of Mr. Jonathan Otis Freeman, as teacher in the Academy in 1808-11. Mr. Freeman was a——minister, though at that time there were none of his denomination in Edenton. The Trustees of the Academy and the Vestry of St. Paul's Church seem to have been to a great extent the same persons acting in the two capacities. The year after Mr. Pettigrew's death the Church being without a minister, we find the Trustees of the Academy paying Mr. Freeman six hundred dollars as teacher of the Academy, and four hundred dollars for delivering lectures to the students on the Sabbath. This was evidently a substitute for Sunday services. Mr. Freeman was a man of ability and culture, and though the Vestry could not accept his ministrations, yet they seem to have been desirious of availing themselves of his services to keep the Lord's Day with religious worship and instruction, so far as they could do so conscientiously. Mr. Freeman left in 1811. He was the elder brother of the late Bishop Freeman, and the father of the late Edmund B. Freeman, for many years the Clerk of our Supreme Court.
In 1811, the Trustees of the Academy applied to the Rev. Frederick W. Hatch, of Maryland, to take charge of the Church and of the Academy at the same salary paid Mr. Freeman, one thousand dollars per annum. He took charge October 1st, 1811, and though he resigned charge of the Academy at the end of the school-year in 1812, he continued rector of the Church until the end of the year 1815, when he returned to Maryland.
Mr. Hatch had been succeeded in the Academy by Mr, John Avery. About the time that Mr. Hatch left the parish Mr. Avery began to act as lay-reader, and soon after seems to have turned his thoughts to the ministry.
Mr. Avery was a native of Conway, Massachusetts, being the son of a Congregational deacon of the same name. An injury in youth, which disabled him temporarily for farm work, confined him to books, and contrary to his parents’ first intention, he was sent to College, first to Williams College, Massachusetts, and afterwards to Yale, where he was graduated in 1812. Very soon after his graduation he went to Edenton as teacher in the Academy. It seems most likely that he became a Churchman after his removal to Edenton, as was the case with Mr. Pettigrew, who came to Edenton a Presbyterian, as Mr. Avery came a Congregationalist. When Mr. Avery became a candidate for Holy Orders we do not know, but he was ordered Deacon by Bishop Kemp, of Maryland, October 22d, 1817, and ordained Priest by Bishop Moore, of Virginia, at Norfolk in November, 1818. He married Miss Ann Paine, of one of the notable Edenton families, and continued Rector of St. Paul's Church until 1835, when he removed to Greensboro, Alabama. He did not long survive the severance of his old ties. He died January 17th, 1837, before he had fairly begun the work to which he had set himself in his new field.
Mr. Avery was a man of learning, and commanded the respect and confidence of all. He was faithful in the old exercise of Catechising the youth of his flock. One of the oldest of our North Carolina Clergyman, whose mother for a time during this period was connected with the Methodist Society in Edenton, loves to recall the fact that his mother not only continued the constant use of her Prayer Book and was diligent in teaching him the Church Catechism, but also sent him regulary to the church to be catechised by Mr. Avery upon the appointed days. It is impossible to estimate how far this single influence may have gone in eventually bringing parents and children back to the Church of their fathers. The history of Mr. Avery's pastorate does not come within the scope of this
paper, but his accession to the Church, and his candidacy for Holy Orders are properly a part of the story of the Revival of the Church in North Carolina.
In this connection it may be mentioned as an evidence of life in the parish, that the Church building, completed shortly before the Revolution, and now for some years having been in a dilapidated condition, was in 1809 by the liberality of one of the parishioners, Mr. Josiah Collins, the first of the name, handsomely restored and beautified, and put in a thoroughly safe and comfortable condition.
The course of events in the history of Christ's Church, Newbern, runs somewhat paralled with that which we have just traced in Edenton. From 1785 to 1792, the minister of the parish was the Rev. Leonard Cutting, a man of piety and learning, and of high reputation in the Church. In 1792, Dr. Solomon Halling, a native of Pennsylvania and bred a physician, but who was probably teaching in the Newbern Academy at this time, was ordered Deacon by Bishop Madison; and served the Church in Newbern until his removal to Wilmington in 1795. Dr. Halling was a most exemplary man, and the most zealous Clergyman of his time in the State. It was by his earnest assiduity that the Convention of 1794 was gotten together. If the other ministers had had his enterprising and courageous spirit we should have had another tale to tell here to-day.
Among the subscribers to F. X. Martin's “Private Statutes of North Carolina,” published in 1795, I find the name, “Mr. Thomas Pitt Irving, A. M., Principal of Newbern Academy,” and the next year his name is among those of persons ordained to the Diaconate by Bishop White, of Pennsylvania. He was a native of Somerset County, Maryland. How long he had been teaching in Newbern I do not know. It was during his occupancy that the old Academy building, erected by Mr. Reed before the Revolution, was burned; and he had the misfortune to
burn down also Gov. Tryon's “Palace,” which the General Assembly had allowed to be used for the purposes of the Academy after his first fire. So it may be said that Mr. Irving's school-teaching was disastrous to the historical monuments of Newbern. And his pastorate was by no means a prosperous one. He remained in charge of the Church from his ordination until about the year 1813, when he removed to Hagerstown, Maryland. He is said to have been lacking in zeal and religious fervor, and to have performed his duties in a cold and perfunctory manner. Some of the most prominent people of the parish left the Church during his time, yielding to the unfavorable influences heretofore alluded to, and attracted by the enthusiasm of the Methodists on the one hand, or by the more sober spirits of Calvinism on the other.
After Mr. Irving left, the Rev. George Strebeck was Principal of the Academy and Rector of the Church for a short while. He employed as his assistant teacher during the year 1814, Mr. John Phillips, who had come from England originally as one of Wesley's lay-preachers, and whose wife was a ward of one of the two famous brothers, but who had adhered to the Church when the Methodists left it. While in Newbern Mr. Phillips became a candidate for Orders, and was ordained by Bishop Moore, of Virginia, in August 1814. He continued to assist Mr. Strebeck in the school, and now also in the Church, until his removal to Virginia in 1815. Mr. Strebeck probably left about the same time. In 1816 came the Rev. Jehu Curtis Clay, who also combined teaching with his pastoral duties. This brings us to the year 1817.
Of Wilmington we know very little during the period immediately following the Revolution. Adam Boyd, who had edited a paper, “The Cape Fear Mercury,” in that city before the war, and who was Chaplain of the 5th North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line during the struggle, was ordained Deacon by Bishop Seabury,
August 18th, 1788. He was a native of Pennsylvania, but married in Wilmington the widow of Moses John De Rosset, and is thought to have officiated in St. James's Church for several years, probably from 1788 to 1795 or thereabouts, though there is no mention of him in the records of the parish. He must have been a preacher of some sort before his ordination by Bishop Seabury, as his appointment to be Chaplain of the 5th Regiment, in 1777, shows. He was doubtless the same “Rev. Mr. Boyd” who in May, 1775, presented to the Provincial Congress at Hillsboro, two hundred copies of “the Pastoral Letter of the Synod of Philadelphia on the subject of the war.” This fact suggests the idea that Mr. Boyd might then have been an agent or representative of the Synod. But at this time he had been for some months publishing his paper in Wilmington. He was active upon the patriot side, and was a member of the Wilmington Committee of Safety. The minutes of the Committee's proceedings show that Mr. Boyd was absent from just those meetings which he must have missed in order to attend the Congress at Hillsboro. His paper seems to have been the recognized organ of the party in Wilmington, and he probably printed the Pastoral Letter as a good party document to circulate among the Presbyterians of the Cape Fear; and the two hundred copies were probably presented by him to the Congress as his own individual act, and not as in any way representing the Philadelphia Synod. This is the more likely from the fact that the Congress appropriated a sum of money out of the public funds for his benefit. He seems to have been the son of a Presbyterian minister of the same name, whose wife was Jane Craighead, daughter of the Rev. Thos. Craighead, also a Presbyterian minister. As he is spoken of in 1775 as the “Rev. Mr. Boyd,” and was appointed Chaplain of a regiment in 1777, he was probably a Presbyterian “licentiate;” I believe there is no record of his ordination as a Presbyterian minister. After his ordination
by Bishop Seabury he officiated, as has been said. in Wilmington, but was soon forced to remove to Augusta on account of some asthmatic trouble. He died in Natchez, Mississippi, in the year 1800, at the age of sixty-two.
In 1795, the Rev. Solomon Halling was called from Newbern, and continued Rector of St. James's Church until his removal to the Diocese of South Carolina in the year 1809. While in Wilmington he was principal of the Wilmington Academy. His character has already been given in connection with his rectorship of Christ Church, Newbern. It only remains to be said that in the Diocse of South Carolina he continued the same course of devout faithfulness, and endeared himself to all his brethren in that new home. He died in 1813, much honored and lamented by the Bishop and the Clergy of that Diocese.
After Dr. Halling's departure the parish at Wilmington remained vacant until November, 1811, when the Rev. Adam Empie became rector. In 1814, ill health compelled him to return North, and he was succeeded by the Rev. Bethel Judd. But in 1816, he returned to Wilmington, and became again rector of the parish. It will be seen as we go on that he played a very important part in the history of the Church in North Carolina: no name should stand higher than his in our respect and affection. We have however no space adequately to portray his character here.
Having traced the course of events in these three parishes with some particularity, it now becomes necessary to glance more briefly at some other parts of the State.
In Bath, and in the new town of Washington, as well as across the Pamplico river at Chocowinity, where he had built Trinity Church (still standing, and familiarly known as Parson Blount's Chapel), and in other places in Beaufort County; also up the river on both sides, through the county of Pitt, and even in the borders of Edgecombe,
the Rev. Nathaniel Blount continued his ministrations; and amid the gloom of domestic bereavements darkening the shadows of declining years and failing powers, he served his scattered congregations and looked after his people, so far as his strength would permit; until his death in September, 1816. His summons came while he was like a faithful shepherd seeking his distant sheep. He died in Pitt County, and his mortal remains were conveyed down Tar river in a canoe, and laid with the ashes of his fathers in the Blount family burying ground at Chocowinity. He was the last survivor of our Colonial Clergy in North Carolina. His death left not a single minister of the Church in the State.
His neighbor, the Rev. James L. Wilson, of Martin county, had been dead for some years. Mr. Wilson, who seems to have gone North from this State seeking Holy Orders, was ordained by Bishop White, as we learn from Bishop White's memoirs of the Church, in the year 1789; and in Mr. Pettigrew's list of the Clergy and their places, of 1795, we see that his field of labor was Martin and Edgecombe counties. His connection with the conventions at Tarborough shows that he was a most zealous and devoted minister, and highly respected and trusted by all. He is the only one of the Clergy who attended every one of the four meetings held at Tarborough. He was president of one of them; was more than once appointed a deputy to the General Convention, and was a prominent man in all. He continued his ministry in Martin and perhaps also in Edgecombe and Halifax, until his death early in the present century. He is known to have officiated in the last named county at a funeral as late as the year 1800. He must have died very soon after this date. He seems to have ministered to the lower congregations of Halifax upon occasions of emergency, and thus to have continued in some measure the work and influence of Parson Burges, especially in the neighborhood of old Kehukee Church, Scotland Neck.
In Edgecombe county the building of the town of Tarborough so for from the site of St. Mary's, the parish Church, probably had a good deal of influence in breaking up local associations and thus scattering and weakening the congregation. The principal inhabitants of the county would gradually be drawn towards the county town, and the parish Church thus lose its position and influence as a center of interest and a bond of union and fellowship among the people. And before a Church could grow up there, the war came and swept all away. After the Revolution we hear indistinct traditions of the Rev. Wm. Holt, from Virginia, who for a time officiated at St. Mary's, probably for only a short time, and before the year 1789. The Parish Register was for many years kept at the house of Mr. Knight, about four miles from Tarborough, but afther the death of the older members of the family, it was destroyed by their children, who did not realize its value. The Bible and Prayer Book, after the Church had come to be disused, were sold by order of the County Court, and the money paid over to the “Wardens of the Poor-”* Some time towards the end of the century a Church was built in Tarborough, which was pulled down about 1856. Uniform tradition represented this as having been built for an Episcopal Church, and it is not impossible that the Tarborough Conventions may have been held in it. As late as 1821, the Rev. John Phillips is described in an inscription upon a tomb-stone near the building as “Rector of this Church.” But as there was no minister
* These statements as to the Parish Register and the disposition of the Bible and Prayer Book belonging to St. Mary's, are made upon the authority of Gov. Henry T. Clark, and were accompanied by such a narration of particular circumstances, as established their truth. The sale of this property of the Parish was in accordance with the provisions of the Act of 1777, C. VII, or rather it was probably suggested by that Act, which made the Wardens of the Poor answerable for debts of former Vestries, and so it might be thought entitled them to take abandoned Church property.in Tarborough for many years after the building was erected, it came to be used as a free Church open to all sorts of services and meetings; and shortly before it was pulled down the Primitive Baptist congregation having erected a church in the town took the bell of the old church and put it into their own new structure. But there remained a number of the inhabitants of the county attached to the Church. Definite and trustworthy tradition connects with the old Church of St. Mary's many of the familiar names of the county. Besides the Haywoods, Johnstons, Tooles, Irvins, Penders, Knights, Philipses, Suggses, and others, still largely represented in the population of Edgecombe, who were old St. Mary's people, we find a number of prominent men in Tarborough during this period of “Decay,” who were active in their endeavors for the Church. Dr. John Leigh, of Tarborough, was eminent both as a physician and a politician. He frequently represented his county in the House of Commons, and was more than once Speaker of that body. William Clements, Secretary of three of the Tarborough Conventions, and deputy to the General Convention, seems to have been originally a Presbyterian, the first we have heard of in the county, but he married into a Church family (his wife was a daughter of Christopher Clark, of Bertie), and, after Dr. Leigh, he was the most prominent layman in those Conventions, and in the effort to organize the Diocese and to procure a Bishop. We find also the names of Mr. Robert White, a lawyer, representing Tarborough in 1794, and Mr. James Adams representing Edgecombe. General Thomas Blount, (son of Jacob Blount,) whose second wife was the daughter of General Jethro Sumner, of Warren, was also a resident of Tarborough during this period and a Churchman, as was also Blake Baker, Attorney General of the State, the Hon. Jas. W. Clark, and others. The bearing of these personal details will appear when we come to consider the Revival of the Church in North Carolina.
In Warren and Franklin counties the Rev. Chas. Cupples had ministered before and during the Revolution. He is well remembered as having taken the American side in the Revolution, though himself an Englishman. How long he lived after the Revolution is not known. He was certainly dead some years before the Tarborough Conventions, but the memory of his ministrations and of the Church was not lost for many years among the people whom he served. One of his Churches, still remembered as “the old Portridge Church” (I spell by sound never having seen the word written or printed) stood until between 1850 and 1860, in a grove near the road from Louisburg to Franklinton about four miles from the former place. He probably resided near the present town of Warrenton. There are not a few Churchmen in those counties who trace their ecclesiastical descent from the old Colonial Churches. The Seawells, Branches, Hills, Hawkinses, Sumners, Perrys and Norwoods were members of the old churches in Bute.
Just west of these, and taking in also part of this field after the death of Mr. Cupples, the Rev. George Micklejohn, ended his work as a minister. Having been captured with the Tories at Moore's Creek, and paroled to Perquimans county, and not allowed to return to Hillsboro during the war, he seems never to have resided there afterwards, but to have made his home in Granville county from the close of the war until his removal to Mecklenburg county, Virginia, which was somewhere about the year 1805 or 1810. These dates are conjectural, but we know that before 1817 he had made this change, though he was then near or quite one hundred years old, and never had any charge in Virginia. When the Rev. John Stark Ravenscroft was ordained in 1817 and took charge of St. James's Church, Mecklenburg county, Virginia, Mr. Micklejohn was a resident of the parish, and an attendant upon the ministrations of the future Bishop of North
Carolina. There is a tradition in the parish that Mr. Ravenscroft once in a sermon alluded to the presence of Mr. Micklejohn, saying that he could give a century's witness to the truth and power of the gospel. “Naw, Naw, Mon!” exclaimed Mr. Micklejohn aloud in broad Scotch, “ninety acht! ninety acht!” He died very shortly after this time. As long as he remained in North Carolina he ministered irregularly over a wide extent of country, besides serving regularly the people in his neighborhood. I presume he resided near Williamsboro, and that he had charge of St. John's Church; but at least occasionally he visited the remote parts of Orange, his former cure, and by these visits, by celebrating divine service at intervals and by baptizing the children, he kept the people in some sort of knowledge and love of the Church as far west as the present county of Alamance. I have myself known and ministered to persons in Orange county who had been baptized by Mr. Micklejohn, and one of them at least was old enough at the time of her baptism to remember it, and to give me some account of it. It seems probable that he removed to Virginia not much before the year 1810.
And all during this period the Rev. Robert Johnston Miller, another Wesleyan lay-preacher, who had remained faithful to the Church when Coke had organized the American Methodists into an independent body, kept his little congregations of Churchmen at White Haven, and in Iredell and Rowan, in such knowledge of the Church as he had himself, looking for better times to come, and, as he wrote to Dr. Empie in 1814, longing more for nothing on this side the glory of heaven than to see the revival of Episcopacy in our beloved country, though at that time he was a member of the Lutheran Synod.
THE REVIVAL.The pleasanter part of the story can be more briefly narrated. The facts are more accessible and need not be so circumstantially detailed.
It is well known that the leading clergyman in North Carolina at the time of the organization of the Diocese was the Rev. Adam Empie; but I believe it is not so generally known that the meeting at Newbern in April 1817, when that organization was accomplished, was the result of the efforts of Mr. Empie, begun more than three years before. A correspondence between Mr. Empie and Parson Miller has lately come to my hands, begun in November, 1813, from which it appears that at that date Mr. Empie was endeavoring to put himself in communication with the remaining Clergymen of the State with a view of inducing them to effect an organization, and to make another effort for the cause. This purpose, postponed for a time by his temporary absence from the State, but not abandoned, was renewed upon Mr. Empie's return in the Autumn of 1816. The Journals of our Conventions seem to indicate that Parson Miller was no ways concerned with this new movement in the Church until several years after its successful initiation. This correspondence, however, shows that he had been consulted about it, and had given his counsel and sympathy from the first; though until 1821, the places of meeting were so distant from his residence that it was entirely impracticable for him to attend the Conventions.
When in response to Mr. Empie's efforts a meeting was agreed upon, the four congregations which met at Newbern on the 24th of April, 1817, by their representatives, were St. James's Church, Wilmington; Christ Church, Newbern; St. Paul's Church, Edenton, and St. John's Church, Fayetteville. Three of these, we have seen, had from an early period been organized parishes of the Province of North Carolina. The fourth, St. John's Church, Fayetteville, is a new name in our annals, dating only from the year 1817. What is the story of its birth?
Fayetteville, formerly Campbelltown, and before that Cross Creek, was the centre of the Scotch Presbyterian
settlements on the Cape Fear, where perhaps still linger some echoes of the Gaelic tongue. These Highlanders were valiant Tories during the Revolution, though it must be owned that they had some of their Episcopal brethren from Orange with them on their disasterous day at Moore's Creek. After the Revolution, the movement of population, so characteristic of our American life, brought together in Fayetteville a number of Churchmen from different parts of the country. First among the number was John Winslow, son of Edward Winslow who, during his life had served the Church faithfully as a clergyman in Massachusetts and Connecticut before the Revolution. Then there were the Stranges and Camerons, Churchmen from Virginia; and other names. Tillinghast, Huske, Wright, Mallett, Henry, some our own people, others new comers into the State, but having in common their attachments to the Church. In January, 1817, the Rev. Bethel Judd, who was at Wilmington, but was no longer rector of the Church there, was invited to Fayetteville by Mr. John Winslow. He came and held services. He continued these services, and on Easter Monday, April 9th, organized St. John's Church, Fayetteville, and with John Winslow, his Senior Warden, took part, two weeks later, in organizing the Diocese of North Carolina. St. John's was a new parish; the services of the Church had never been held in Fayetteville before 1817, but the parish was mostly made up of persons whose connection with the Church ran back and found its root in Colonial times. From its first organization St. John's, Fayetteville, took a zealous and important part in all Church work: it showed the best qualities of youth and none of its faults.
Having now before us the spectacle of the Church in North Carolina at length aroused and preparing to begin a more hopeful course, I desire to set forth one aspect of that movement, to which attention has not heretofore been directed; and if I can illustrate it by brief references to some
details of local Church history, I shall feel that the subject of this paper has been sufficiently treated. The proposition which I maintain is this: That the work of the first Conventions and the first Bishop of this Diocese was simply to gather together and to organize the remains of the old Colonial Church in the several localities where it had been most successfully established, and that we to-day are the ecclesiastical and spiritual representatives in fact, and not merely in theory, of the Church which our Anglo-Saxon fathers set up here to sanctify the new continent which they were subduing and civilizing.
I will not enter upon the story of the early Conventions of our Diocese, except so far as they bear upon the proposition above set forth. But taking the records of those meetings, we find that after the four parishes which met at Newbern in April, 1817, the following were admitted into union with the Convention from 1817 to 1830, omitting two or three names which never were much more than names.
To go over the list is almost like calling the roll of the Churches and Missionary Stations of the old Colonial preachers, who, after the Revolution continued their work in the State: St. Jude's, Stony Creek, Orange county; Trinity Church, Tarborough; St. John's Church, Williamsboro; St. Mary's, Orange county; Emmanuel Church, Warrenton; Christ Church, Rowan; St. Michael's, Iredell; St. Peter's, Lexington; White Haven and Smyrna, Lincoln; Grace Chapel, Pitt; St. Mark's, Halifax; Calvary Church, Wadesboro; Christ Church, Raleigh; St. Andrew's, Burke; St. Stephen's, Oxford; St. Matthew's, Kinston; Zion and Trinity, Beaufort county; St. Thomas's, Bath; St. Peter's, Lincoln; St. Luke's, Salisbury; St. Peter's, Washington; St. Matthew's, Hillsboro; St. James's, Greenville. This brings us to the end of Bishop Ravenscroft's administration at the begining of the year 1830.
Now let us analyze the foregoing list:
1. St. Judes, Stony Creek, Orange county (now Alamance); St. Mary's, Orange county; Emmanuel Church, Warrenton; St. John's, Williamsboro; St. Stephen's, Oxford, and St. Matthew's, Hillsboro; Class one.
2. Grace Church, Pitt county; St. Matthew's, Kinston; Zion and Trinity, Beaufort county; St. Thomas's, Bath; St. Peter's, Washington, and St. James's, Greenville; Class two.
3. St. Mark's, Halifax, to which may be added Trinity Church, Scotland Neck, soon after admitted; Class three.
4. Christ Church, Rowan; St. Michael's, Iredell; St. Peter's, Lexington; White Haven, Smyrna, and St. Peter's, Lincoln, and St. Luke's, Salisbury; Class four.
5. Trinity (in 1833, re-admitted as Calvary) Church, Tarborough; Calvary Church, Wadesboro, and Christ Church, Raleigh; Class five.
This analysis brings out most distinctly the fact that the movement of 1817-1830 was truly a revival of old things. It shows that the Diocese of North Carolina not only laid its foundations along the lines of the old Colonial Church, but that it traced those lines backward from the point to which they had been brought down by the laborers who longest continued their work after the failure of the Tarborough Conventions.
Class One represents accurately the extent of the labors of the Rev. George Micklejohn, President of the Convention of November, 1790. Everyone of the parishes of this class is within the bounds of his first jurisdiction while Rector of St. Matthew's, Hillsboro, which he continued to visit until some years after the beginning of the present century; or it is part of the field which he served with more regular care after his settlement in Granville. If some hesitation should be felt at including Warrenton in this class, it will be removed when it is learned that distinct memories and associations in the Norwood family connect Mr. Micklejohn and John Norwood, of Franklin,
who was a most zealous Churchman and faithful lay-reader in the congregations formerly served by Parson Cupples, in Franklin and Warren counties. The relations in which Mr. Norwood and Parson Micklejohn stood to each other show clearly that the latter had the pastoral oversight of those congregations which the former served as lay-reader. After Mr. Norwood's son, the late Judge William Norwood, had removed to Hillsboro, his was one of the families which Parson Micklejohn regularly visited for the purpose of baptizing the children and otherwise ministering to them as occasion might serve.
Though there are comparatively few instances in which the names of the parishioners can be traced by documentary evidence from one period to the other, yet in many cases there are distinct traditions all over this field showing that the parishes above named at their first organization were composed of the old Colonial Churchmen. St. Jude's, Stony Creek, was chiefly composed of the Davises and Lattas, remnants of the old Colonial Church population. The names of Colonial Churchmen of Granville, Henderson, Taylor, &c., are among the first that appear in the Journals of the Diocese. Bishop Ravenscroft in his address to the Convention of 1828, refers to this:
Along the northern line of the Diocese, from Edenton westward, we have many friends, the descendants of Episcopal families, who would hail with gladness the revival of the Church, where, in former days, there were flourishing congregations, now scattered and peeled away; and where there are yet many buildings standing, some of them in decent repair, and the exclusive property of the Episcopal Church, but now, and long, silent to the responses of her Liturgy.
In this connection it may be mentioned that the old St. Matthew's Church, Hillsboro, stood upon the site now occupied by the Presbyterian Church, and the surrounding grave-yard is strictly speaking still the property of the Episcopal Church, being secured by an ordinance of the Provincial Congress of 1776, along with all other Church property in the State. The present brick structure was
erected somewhere about the year 1810 by subscription, and for general use. The Presbyterians being the first to have a resident minister came to occupy it regularly, and so it gradually passed under their control; but so far as is known, they have never asserted any legal ownership of it.* The old St. Matthew's Church had been a wooden structure, and fell to decay about the end of the last century. It was the place of meeting of the famous State Convention of 1788, which rejected the Federal Constitution, though Mr. McRee in his life of Judge Iredell has fallen into the error of saying that that Convention was held “in the Presbyterian Church.” There was no Presbyterian Church in Hillsboro at that date.
Class Two is hadly more than a list of the places upon the regular circuit of the Rev. Nathaniel Blount, so far as we can ascertain the bounds of his work. Unvarying tradition throughout this section ascribes the survival of any knowledge of the Church during this period, to his faithful ministrations. In speaking of his first visitation made to the several congregations and parishes of Beaufort county, including Trinity Church, Chocowinity, which he calls by its popular title of “Blount's Chapel,” Bishop Ravenscroft says:
In the section of country through which I have just passed it glads my heart, brethren, to find the affections of so many of the inhabitants still strong towards the Church of their fathers; and * * * * to find such numbers quite at home in our Liturgy, and prepared and desirous to profit by those apostolic services which they had learned to revere as wise appointments of the great Head of the Church, &c.
And as late as 1836 upon the application of the congregation of St. Paul's Parish, Swift Creek, Craven county, (which was near the residence of Jacob Blount, an eminent churchman and citizen of Colonial times and of his son
* These facts, which were familiar to the older inhabitants of Hillsboro, have not been generally known by the later generation. Besides other authorities, I had them from the late Jno. W. Norwood, Esq., who himself remembered the whole history of the present building.William Blount, an eminent statesman of our Sub-Revolutionary period) the Committee to whom the application had been referred, say in their report:
Prior or immediately subsequent to the Revolution in this country, Divine Services were regularly held there by a Clergyman of the Church of England, and * * the majority, if not all those residing in the vicinity, were then attached to the Doctrines of the Protestant Episcopal Church; * * upon the death of the Rev. Mr. Blount, Divine Services were discontinued there.
It is interesting to note that the first movement for the organization of a parish in Washington and its union with the Convention of the Diocese, appears by our Journals to have been made by one of his name and family, the late Maj. Thomas H. Blount.
Class Three is hardly a class at all, being only the single county of Halifax, but the Church as here revived had a most direct connection with the old Colonial parish of Edgecombe, as Halifax county by a strange arrangement, was denominated. St. Mark's Church in the town of Halifax probably represented what remained of Parson Burges's congregation in the town and at his neighboring chapel of Conocanara. But we know somewhat more of Trinity Church, Scotland Neck. It was organized near the site, and out of the remains of the old congregation of Kehukee Chapel, the lower chapel of Edgecombe Parish. When Trinity Church was organized in 1832, it was composed in part of the following persons who had been baptized members of the Colonial Church, some in that parish, others in other parts of the Province; Dr. Simons J. Baker and Mrs. Baker, Mrs. Thomas B. Hill, Mrs. R. W. Lowrie, William R. Smith, Sr., Mrs. Sarah W. Smith, Miss Sallie Packer, Rebecca, a slave, and others whose names are not remembered.
Class Four represents the work of Parson Miller in keeping alive the love of the Church in a region which never had the benefit of regular ministerial services until after 1817, but where the people resolutely held to their
Church principles inherited from their fathers. When Mr. Miller attended the Convention of 1794 he came from a few little congregations of Church people upon the west bank of the Catawba, whom, by acting as lay-reader and chatechist, he kept together in faith that the divine blessing upon the Church would ensure them the means of enjoying its privileges, if only they should continue faithful. To these congregations on the Catawba he afterwards added Christ Church, Rowan, and St. Michael's, Iredell. Thirty years passed in vain expectation; and yet at the end of that time he stood up in the Convention at Salisbury with the same little congregations, faint but not despairing, the only congregations in North Carolina, outside the three towns of Edenton, Newbern, and Wilmington, which had preserved any kind of being from the time of the Tarborough Conventions until the successful organization of the Diocese in 1817. In 1794 he and the lay representatives of his congregations had voted for Mr. Pettigrew for Bishop; in 1823 they came up again and voted for Bishop Ravenscroft. He himself is the only man who was in both these Conventions: he is the link between the Conventions at Tarborough and the present Diocese of North Carolina.
Class Five is a miscellaneous class, embracing the congregations at Tarborough, Wadesboro, and Raleigh, and at first sight seems to be an exception to the rule, being in the fields of none of the Clergy who survived the Revolution. Of the history of the Church in Wadesboro before the organization of the parish in 1822 I know nothing.
When the congregation at Tarborough was organized by the Rev. John Phillips in 1819, as “Trinity Church” (in 1833 it was re-organized and re-admitted to the Convention as “Calvary Church)” it was composed largely, if not wholly, of persons who were either actually members of the Church by baptism at old St. Mary's Parish Church, or attached to the Church by ancestral associations and
convictions. The names of the first members of the parish, Toole, Irvin, Blount, Spruill, Haywood, Evans, Lloyd, Clark, Parker, Cotten and Hines, are of families long inhabitants of that section, and all, so far as I know, members of the Church in Colonial days. The parish in Tarborough should have been called neither Trinity nor Calvary, but St. Mary's. It is not only locally the old parish of that name, but it sprang directly out of the Colonial parish, many of its first members having been members more or less remotely of old St. Mary's Parish, Edgecombe. The revival of the Church in this parish being so long deferred, and even after its nominal establishment in 1819 so many years elapsing, before the services of the Church were in fact regularly re-established and maintained, most of the families throughout the county forgot their old attachment to the Church, and in most cases their descendants are ignorant of the fact that their ancestors were once Churchmen.
In the history of the Revival of the Church in North Carolina the name of John Phillips deserves honorable mention. It has already been said that while acting as assistant to the Rev. Geo. Strebeck in the Newbern Academy in the year 1814 Mr. Phillips went on to Virginia, and was ordained by Bishop Moore, and that for the rest of the year 1814, he assisted Mr. Strebeck in the Church, as well as in the Academy. After the expiration of his year in Newbern he went to Virginia, but in 1818 he returned, and labored as a missionary in North Carolina until 1822. He organized the Church at Tarborough, also that at Warrenton, and was more or less instrumental in establishing or reviving the services of the Church in many places, from Hillsboro in one direction to Washington in the other. In 1820, he reports having travelled since the preceding Convention two hundred and twenty miles per month in the region lying between these two points. Tarborough, Washington, Warrenton, and
Blount's Chapel (Trinity Church, Chocowinity,) were his regular charge. The principal places occasionally visited by him were Hillsboro, Raleigh, Williamsboro, Oxford, Scotland Neck and some of the country congregations in Pitt and Beaufort counties. He was a man of great simplicity of character, which would sometimes have exposed him to ridicule, but for a vein of pure and fervent piety, which showed itself in every action, and stopped the mouths of gain-sayers. His health seems to have failed about 1822, and thereupon he returned to Virginia, where he died in 1831.
The parish at Raleigh is closely connected with the Church in Edgecombe county. It was under the ministry of Mr. Phillips, while rector of the Church in Tarborough, and acting as missionary in other parts, that the first steps were taken to organize the parish of Christ Church, Raleigh, and to build a church in 1820, though the parish was not organized and admitted to the Convention until 1822. When it was admitted it was represented by Chief Justice Taylor, the Hon. Wm. H. Haywood, Jr., and Dr. A. S. H. Burges. Judge Taylor was a member of the Church of England, but Mr. Haywood was the son of one of four brothers, all members of the old parish of St. Mary's, Edgecombe, who had removed to Raleigh when it became the Capital of the State; and Dr. Burges was the son of the Rev. Henry John Burges, rector of St. Mary's in 1770, but who afterwards moved to Virginia. It may also be mentioned that when Mrs. Blount, widow of the Hon. Thomas Blount, of Tarborough, and daughter of General Jethro Summer, died at Tarborough in 1822. He left a large legacy to the Hon. Duncan Cameron and the Rev. Wm. Hooper, in trust, for the purpose of building an Episcopal Church, in the city of Raleigh. The value of this legacy was at the time estimated at from ten to fifteen thousand dollars. What was actually realized from it, and how far it became available for the purposes
of the trust, I cannot say. It is mentioned here to show in regard to the parish at Raleigh, to what an extent even a new parish, during this revival, had its roots in the affections and convictions of people whose religious principles had been obtained from sources back of these times: and also as being a pleasant link between the parish in Raleigh and the Church in Edgecombe. The parish at Raleigh was evidently made up of Churchmeu from other counties drawn to this new centre of our Commonwealth, and perpetuating there the Church in which they had been brought up in other places.
This completes the task which I set myself, of tracing the story of the Revival of the Church in North Carolina from 1817 to the death of Bishop Ravenscroft it 1830, with reference to its bearing upon the proposition which I laid down, and undertook to maintain. That proposition was: That the work of the first Convention and the first Bishop of North Carolina was simply to gather together and to organize the remains of the old Colonial Church in the several localities where it had been most successfully established; and that we to-day are the ecclesiastical and and spiritual representatives in fact, and not merely in theory, of the Church which our Anglo-Saxon fathers set up here to sanctify the new Continent which they were subduing and civilizing. This survey has, it is believed, sufficiently established the truth of that proposition. That it has not done so more fully is due partly to the limited space at command, and partly to the meagreness of the accounts which we have of local Church matters during the period under review. But it has been shown beyond all question that the formation of the Diocese of North Carolina was only the organization and perpetuation of principles and forces which had never ceased to be operative in the life of our people.
Though the course of the argument in this paper has not allowed of much space being given to the consideration of
the characters and lives of individuals except as they were associated with the internal development of our Diocesan History, yet a word must be said, before closing, of him who first received Episcopal authority in and over the State of North Carolina. The Convention of 1817 upon organizing the Diocese applied to the Bishop of Virginia and requested him to take the infant Diocese under his pastoral oversight. This he consented to do, and in performing this duty he made four visitations in North Carolina, in 1819, 1820, 1821, and 1822, and presided in the Conventions of those years, signing the Journal as “Bishop of the two Dioceses of Virginia and North Carolina.” In the depressed condition of the Church at that time, and in view of the popular prejudice against it, the value of the services of such a man cannot be overestimated. His attractiveness as a preacher commanded popular attention, the beauty and dignity of his character conciliated popular favor, and the simple, yet unmistakable holiness of his life was the best exposition, both to those within and to those without, of the true character of a Churchman. The Diocese of North Carolina will always be proud and grateful to write first upon the roll of her Apostolic overseers the name of RICHARD CHANNING MOORE, of Virginia.
VIII.THE FIRST THREE BISHOPS—RAVENSCROFT,
IVES, AND ATKINSON.
BY THE RIGHT REVEREND ALFRED A. WATSON, D. D.
In beginning what I have to say, you must allow me to premise two things:
1st. My limited opportunities for research have almost absolutely prevented me from introducing original matter. Specially, in what I have to say of Bishop Ravenscroft I have been obliged to depend upon books which many of you have read for yourselves. To those of you who have done so I can bring nothing new. There are however presumably many present who have not had that opportunity, to whom the slight resumé which I shall present may be of original interest.
2nd. The extent of the subject assigned me is such that I have been left to the alternative of a very superficial treatment of it, or a length of treatment too great for your time. I have endeavored to take middle ground, which is not hower always the safest for the Author, but which is the only practicable one in this case.
I am to speak to you to-day of the first three Bishops of our old Diocese of North Carolina; three I say, for the reckoning and history would be incomplete were I to leave out either of them.
First in the line of our Chief Governors, in matters ecclesiastical, comes the lion-hearted Ravenscroft.
The first Master Builder in our Diocesan edifice, John Stark Ravenscroft, was born in 1772, of parents in easy circumstances, on the family estate of “Ravenscroft,” said
to have been a suburb of the present city of Petersburg, Virginia. By the death of his father, when he was only eight years of age, it fell to the lot of his mother to mould the future Ruler of the Church. Providentially for him, and for us, the training provided by his mother was not only intellectual but religious. The Bible was recognized as teaching the will of the Supreme Ruler, for the child as well as for the adult. Its teachings were recognized as essential to any thorough school education. He himself, at a later period, recognized the great advantage he enjoyed through life in that the Bible was one of his school books. The substance and words of Holy Scripture stored in his memory at that early age, although at the time lessons of mere rote, and however overlaid by indifference, were yet so lodged intellectually with him as to become in after life a permanent treasury of religious knowledge. When, later in life, involved in that spiritual struggle, which resulted in his conversion, he found the great benefit of his early acquaintance with the text of Holy Scripture. “I had not”, he says, “to look afar off for their doctrines. They were familiar to my memory, from a child I had known them, though now it was that their living proof was to be experienced.”
While he was yet a child, the family had removed to Scotland to escape the political troubles which were seen arising in this country. There his father died. At about the age of seventeen young Ravenscroft returned to look after what remained of his father's property in Virginia. Soon after his return he entered William and Mary College to prepare himself for the battle of life; but the temptations which surrounded a youth, liberally supplied by his guardian with money, led him aside into habits of dissipation and came near making a final wreck of him religiously. From these dissipated courses, he was providentially rescued by his attachment to the lady who became his wife, and who must have been a woman of remarkable
qualities to have been able to influence so effectively a man of such strong and wayward will, and excitable and high temper. There must have been in her a rare mingling of firmness and gentleness. He testifies of her that “what she did not approve she would not smile on, yet she never gave him a cross word or an ill natured look in her life,” and that in the twenty-three years it pleased GOD to spare her to him, though he often acted otherwise than as she wished, and though she was faithful in reproving him, there never was a quarrel or even a temporary estrangement between them.*
Bishop Ravenscroft is described as a man of large person and commanding presence, with an impressive face and heavy overhanging eyebrows, which he called his “dormer windows”, with a voice finely modulated on ordinary occasions, but which became, when he was excited, “like the roaring of a lion.” Though of an affectionate nature, yet his predominating charactistic seems to have been force. In his earlier life this exhibited itself, as in other things, so also in his pursuit of pleasure and amusement. As a young man, he seems to have taken the lead of his neighbors in all the sports (and genteeler vices, as they were considered) common among gentlemen at that day, except gambling. He is represented as being, at that time, very profane, and with a profanity that corresponded in intensity with his force of character in other respects. It was said, by one of his lady friends that though accustomed to the oaths which were then in every gentleman's mouth, (the more shame for them) when Mr. Ravenscroft swore she trembled. And when afterwards
* There is a touching incident recorded of him by one of his biographers—that at his wife's funeral, as the officiating minister was about to read the sentence of committal, he insisted upon doing it himself, but that when he came to the words “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” his voice became so choked and his whole frame so shaken by his emotion that it was feared by those present that he would fall into the grave.the Spirit of GOD strove in him, he tells us that one of the, if not the most difficult of his vices to overcome, was his profanity. Time and again he attempted to reform himself of this fault, but time and again the habit proved too strong, and he was himself defeated. But when at last the victory was had it was with a thoroughness characteristic of the man. From that moment, he writes of himself, “my besetting sin of profanity was overcome and has troubled me no more.”* It seems to have been only as life advanced into maturity that he began to think of his religious responsibilities.
The story of his conversion, in consequence of having overheard a negro servant's prayer, is rejected by his biographers as without any foundation. Again it was the silent voice of his wife's example which spoke to his heart and aroused his attention. He sought the secret of her patience and found it in her religion, and in the influence upon her of the Word of GOD.†
With his usual independence and force of character he began his struggle from darkness into light, at first, very naturally trusting to his own force of will to correct his faults. It would seem to have been one of GOD's special mercies to him that he was left for a while to try by himself, in his own strength, to climb the path to virtue; as it was another of those mercies to intervene at the last with grace for his assistance. This defeated will best explains
* His native fearlessness was illustrated when, crossing the ocean at the age of eighteen, the ship becoming entangled in ice-bergs, was saved only by his venturing, hatchet in hand, with a companion, out upon the bowsprit and cutting a portion of it away, thereby releasing the vessel from its perilous situation. † It is written of her that “her forbearance and sweetness of temper led him at last to ask himself ‘what can be the cause? Why does not the woman revile me as I deserve? This is not natural, where then does it come from?’ ” He was too proud to ask her, but he remembered that her daily companion was the Bible. Thinking that there he might find the wonder explained, he resolved to become himself a reader of the Scriptures, and soon saw what a sinner he was.”the strength of his convictions in after life, with respect to the sinner's absolute dependence upon GOD's grace for sanctification and salvation, and his emphatic, almost startling death-bed rejection of all idea of merit in himself, declaring to one whom he suspected of an intention to write a commendatory memoir of his last moments, that he was nothing but a wretched sinner, indebted to GOD's grace for everything. It was in the grace of GOD, and in the power of GOD alone, that he moved along his path of strong and effective life and action. But in that dependence upon GOD he found no excuse for supineness or inaction. He wrought, and GOD wrought with him.
In the exercise of his ministry he was exceptionally regular. He could see no excuse for a clergyman failing to meet his appointments punctually, unless it was literally impossible to do so. He set his Diocese an example in this, worthy of imitation. Like S. Paul, immediately upon his conversion, he sought out his Master's work. Not being at this time acquainted with the Church, which he afterward so signally served, having indeed, as might have been expected, from his early Scotch Presbyterian training, a contempt for Episcopacy, he joined himself (still however as a mere layman) to a body of christians known as Republicans, or Reformed Methodists; took an active part in the conduct of their services, associating himself with a worthy minister of that body by name John Robinson. He even began to question himself whether it was not his duty to enter their ministry. But this was not to last. His conviction of the necessity for valid orders in order to valid baptism, a sacrament, the wilful rejection of which he regarded as a bar to the salvation of the Gospel, led him to questions concerning the validity of the various religious ministries around him. In the year 1815, when forty-three years of age, he writes of himself: “I began to revolve the question of orders in my mind, and the authority by which I should be commissioned
to perform the duties of the ministry. I became convinced that the awful deposit of the word, by which we shall all be judged, could never have been thrown out in the world to be scrambled for and picked up by whosoever pleased to take hold of it. And though this objection might in some sort be met by the manifestation of an internal call, yet as that internal call could not be demonstrated to others, something more was necessary, which could only be found in the outward delegation of authority from that source to which it was originally committed. As an instance of the necessity of this verifiable authority, the sacrament of Baptism presented itself. Being the only possible mode by which fallen creatures can become interested in the covenant of grace, and entitled to the benefit of CHRIST's gracious undertaking for the salvation of sinners, it must be of the last importance to be assured that such unspeakable blessings should be authoritatively conveyed, and as the authority of CHRIST is the very essence of Baptism, in the assurance of its pledges to those to whom it is administered, and as this assurance can only be such by the verification of the requisite power and authority to administer the rite, it appeared clear to me that no assumption of that power by any man or body of men, nor any consequent delegation of it, could by any possibility answer the intention and purpose of the Author and Finisher of our faith, in making Baptism the door of admission into His Church.” I have quoted these words from the pen of the Bishop himself, as disclosing the secret of the sturdy and consistently exclusive positions afterward taken by him in maintaing the claims of that branch of the Holy Catholic Church, of which he subsequently became a Chief Pastor.*
* When challenged on one occasion to a discussion of the proper mode and proper subjects of Baptism, he readily assented, but insisted first upon the answer by his challenger to a preliminary question, “Where do you get your authority to baptize anybody or in any way?”The result of all this painful enquiry into the validity of the orders of the Religious bodies about him, and of his search for orders which should be valid, was that after pausing awhile on the Presbyterian claim to Apostolic succession, he found himself as he says obliged to turn his attention to the Protestant Episcopal Church “for that deposit of Apostolical succession in which alone verifiable power to minister in sacred things was to be found in these United States.”
He accordingly presented himself as a candidate for Holy Orders to Bishop Moore, of Virginia, and by him was first licensed lay-reader, February, 1816, and subsequently, on the 25th day of April, 1817, in the Monumental Church in the city of Richmond, was ordered Deacon, and for reasons satisfactory to the Bishop, and Standing Committee of the Diocese, was ordained Priest in the Church at Fredericksburg, on the 6th day of May, following.
Of the Church to which his investigations and resulting convictions had drawn him, without extraneous influences, and contrary to his previous prejudices (and prejudices in such minds are very powerful abstractants, if I may so express it) he became a consistent minister—inflexible, while affectionate and humble.
The Diocese of North Carolina, when in 1823 it chose its first Bishop, was guided to select this man, of strong but loving heart, iron will and uncompromising convictions. Its members did better than they knew, for at that time they knew but little of him. But when he came to view the work, and lay the foundations they found they had indeed a Master Builder. He met with much and bitter opposition at the first. His uncompromising maintenance of truth, which is always in its very nature exclusive and intolerant of error, came into contact and conflict with a prevalent indifference to, and indeed rejection of all precise Religious doctrine. But his firm convictions and
his intelligent and clear apprehension of what he believed, and his fearless, unflattering, un-temporizing advocacy of that exactly which he held as true, with no timid and inconsistent concessions to error, enabled him to hew his way through all the tangled thicket of error and prejudice about him, and to set deep in the soil, for which he was responsible, the plants of absolute and eternal truth.*
Whether or not he realized his own success, whether or not that success was apparent to him in his own lifetime, the subsequent history of the Diocese and its reputation for holding inflexibly its religious convictions with respect to Religion and the Church, bear witness to the thoroughness and permanency of his teaching. He was no temporizing teacher. It is said of him that he knew nothing of tact but went straight to his ends with no fencing of rapiers, but with the sledge-hammer blows of direct and open, uncompromising assault. In one of his letters he says: “Everything serves to convince me more and more of the injurious tendency of halfway measures; I will therefore have nothing to do with them. Every circumstance confirms the propriety of being open and candid in declaring our principles. I see that success follows them and that loss and dilapidation are the result of a different system.” To one of his Episcopal brethren who objected to what Bishop Ravenscroft declared that he had done or would do in a certain case—“My dear sir, that would not be good
*He held inflexibly, and taught fearlessly and without compromise, the distinctive character of the Church. “If we hold principles which are indefensible” were his words “let us abandon them. But if these are our principles, i. e. things which we really believe—interwoven with the very frame of our polity, impregnable in their truth, let us not be ashamed of them and become parties to that miserable delusion which weakens us as a body, strengthens the ranks of our adversaries, weakens the cause of true Religion by tacitly owning one division after another until the great Master principle of the Church of GOD—its unity—is merged in the mass of Christian names, and swallowed up by the indifference and infidelity thus fostered.” Schism he held to be destructive of the eternal interests of man, and injurious to the Majesty of GOD.policy,” he replied in a way which must have been rather startling—“Policy sir! Policy! there is no such word between the lids of the Bible!” But under his unyielding stern and bluff exterior there as a warm heart, which while condemning the sin or the error could make gentle allowance for the sinful or mistaken. Just before his death, he said to one of his friends: “I have been a rough creature” but, striking his breast, “GOD knowns there was no roughness here.”*
It was characteristic of him that making preparation for his own funeral he directed that his coffin should be a three dollar pine one, painted black; that the show and expense of a hearse should be avoided and that the body of his own sulky being removed, his own horse should carry him to his grave. He yielded his soul to GOD, March 5th, 1830, at the house of his friend Gavin Hogg, at Raleigh.
In October, 1831, was consecrated Bishop Ravenscroft's successor, Levi Silliman Ives; up to that time, rector of S. Luke's parish, in the city of New York, a parish which had been a mother of Bishops.
Few men have ever been more popular and beloved than was Doctor Ives, as pastor of a congregatian, or, for the first years of his Episcopate, as Chief Pastor of the flock.
In those days the Diocese was more as one great family, living in loving social relations. The Diocesan Conventions were social gatherings of the warmest brotherhood, like the annual meetings of the separated parts of a family tied by blood. Their deliberations were conducted as consultations of brothers, who shrank from all avoidable differences of opinion, or expressions of difference, and found pleasure in prolonged association; who drew their annual
* As a preacher he was a man of power. His sermons usually long were yet felt to be too short. His gestures were few and simple. It may interest some of our younger clergy to know that more than once he failed. On one occasion, after five minutes being obliged ignominlously to stop.gatherings regretfully to their close and parted with sorrow and often with tears. Instead of hastening to the doors immediately upon the closing benediction, the members were wont, when all was over for the year, to gather lingeringly around the chancel and bid each other loving adieu. The Bishop's visit to each parish was a great annual event, a feast-day for the congregation. From the broad Atlantic on the East to the majestic mountains of the West the Bishop's journeys were a perpetually unrolling scene of social sojournings of a father among his children. He was welcomed with affection and desire, entertained with the most abundant and loving hospitality, and sped on his way with sad regrets. His utterances in theology and practical religion were earnestly awaited, listened to and talked over, with independent thought, but with great respect; and generally, at least largely, with docile regard, adopted into the practical living of the people. This for many years was the history of Bishop Ives’ Episcopate. The speaker well remembers his first meeting with him after coming into the Diocese as a candidate for Orders, when for several days he was housed with him at the hospitable home of the late Josiah Collins, on Lake Scuppernong. The Bishop's earnest sermons, his oratorical power, his forcible presentation of the Gospel, and then the delightful hours of private intercourse when, in the intellectual household of his host, high questions of theology and the practical issues of the Church at that day were debated at the table, or around the fire-side, or in rides around the sunny shores of the solitary but beautiful Lake.
The Bishop's five sermons, published about that time, viz: “The Apostles’ Doctrine and Fellowship,” treating of Baptism, Confirmation and the Supper of the LORD, were warmly accepted by his people as embodying, in forcible form, some of the peculiar doctrines of the Church; peculiar only as they differed from the more newly begotten notions of a surrounding population, not over thoroughly
trained either intellectually or theologically—not peculiar in themselves, therefore, for they were the heritage of all the ages since the foundations of Christianity were laid.
But unfortunately for the Bishop, and for his flock, notions which sprang up outside the staid old Diocese, which still stood by the teachings of Ravenscroft, began to infect the Protestant theology of the past, and to disturb our peace—an infection largely caught from our erring Sister Church of Rome—from whom at the Reformation we had definitely and conscientiously separated while acknowledging her as an integral part of the Holy Catholic Church, but believing her course of action schismatical, and her peculiarities heretical, and to be departures from the Faith once delivered to the Saints, and therefore to be cast out and abjured as inconsistent with the purity of the Gospel. One of the special and most obnoxious of these peculiarities, at least in the eyes of our North Carolina Churchmen, was the doctrine of the Confessional, as a system, for exceptions might easily exist. But other and cognate doctrines and practices associated themselves with this; and to the sorrow and damage of the Diocese the Bishop, who hitherto had been such a stalwart champion of the old Faith of the Church of England, felt the infection and began to speak with other tongues than those to which we had been used. His seven sermons, issued at this time, drew forth much adverse and severe criticism. For the faith of the Clergy and of the people remained unchanged.*
Some time before this, he had founded, in a romantic valley of Watauga county, on the banks of the beautiful stream of that name, calling the valley after the old English Abbey, Valle Crucis—Vale of the Cross—a mission
* Temporary and slight disturbances of belief there may have been, but they speedily corrected themselves; they were only the oscillations of the needie which, for a moment disturbed, returns to its true position.station and school, where with much ardent and true missionary zeal, and with much picturesqueness of management, were mingled strange theories snd observances. These new plants were not natural outgrowths of our Church vine, but grafts from another and alien stock which began to bear, in that hitherto peaceful home of religion, fruits of bitterness. The arrangements and organization of the Mountain Mission gave special opportunity and I may add special temptation, for the elaboration by the Bishop of his more recent views. Its Clergy, not however without exception, (notably the Rev. W. W. Skiles, whose praise is in the Church) sustaining him, for the time being, in their promulgation, he was led, under their influence, it was thought, and encouraged by their support, to publish Pastoral letters to his Diocese which brought to a point and converted into hostilities the divergences of feeling which had been gradually arising throughout the Diocese. The conflict which followed was very painful to all true lovers of the Church. Criminations and re-criminations resulted, and finally the almost absolute alienation of the Diocese from its once honored and beloved Bishop.
It is not my purpose to bring up the spectres of that sad night. But upon one point I may be allowed to speak. One effect of this disturbance was a temporary alienation between the Clergy and the Laity. The people regarded the Clergy as, with few exceptions, accepting largely the position of the Bishop. On the other hand, to the speaker's personal knowledge, the Bishop thought the Clergy his enemies, neither thought was true. The great majority of the Clergy felt bound before GOD to sustain His, i. e. GOD's, Chief Officer in his official position, and, to pay him the respect due that official position; but not to accept his personal views—he sat in Moses’ seat—and they accepted the command of the Master. They argued that until the Church's discipline had been canonically
invoked, and had displaced him, he was their Bishop still, and could claim the respect due his office. Hence the misapprehension of their attitude by the Laity. But to the Bishop personally they uniformly, while respectfully yet firmly and absolutely, protested against his novelties of theory, of speech and of practice, and so came to be in his eyes his enemies. They strove to be faithful both to their Bishop and to the Truth. This is the testimony of one who was on the inside of the whole controversy, and who knows whereof he affirms.
The conflict resulted, first in a public retraction of his advanced (or rather retrograded) views, by the Bishop before the Diocesan Convention of 1851, in a scene which the speaker can never forget as, in his view and in that of many others, most mortifying. It is but justice to add that the committee of twelve, to whom the investigation of the whole subject had been referred, reported evidence as having been laid before them to the effect “that the Bishop's mind had been for several years so affected by an attack of fever as to impair his judgment, enfeeble his memory and expose him to gross misconception on the part of others.”
The breach seemed healed; but it was only a hollow truce. He presided at the next Diocesan Convention held in 1852. During the summer he went abroad. His previous impressions returned and, doubtless with entire conscientiousness however lamentably in error, he submitted himself to the Church of Rome at Christmas 1852. His personal ring and cross are, or were, hung above the altar in the Crypt of S. Peter's as if official insignia and witnesses to the return of an erring Bishop to the true fold of S. Peter.
In 1853, he was declared by the General Convention as having been ipso facto deposed by his renunciation of the Communion of this branch of the Church.
So far as the speaker is informed, not one of his Clergy
proper, not even of those at Valle Crucis, and but two of his Laity, one of whom was his wife, followed him to Rome, and the other, also a lady, soon after returned to her earlier faith.
I fear that by dwelling as I have done, upon the first two of our Bishops, I have cut myself off from the satisfactory memoir of our third, and to the most of us, best beloved (for he was nearest to us) if not our greatest. This must explain the brevity with which I am compelled to speak of one endeared to me as a Spiritual Father by many years of service under him.
In 1853, at the Convention held in that year in Raleigh, we were guided by GOD's good Providence to the election as our Chief Pastor of the Reverend Thomas Atkinson. D. D., at the time Rector of Grace Church, Baltimore.
He was born August 6th, 1807, and was the great-grandson of a Clergyman of the Church of England. He graduated with distinction from Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in a class, which included among its members such men as John S. and William Ballard Preston, the latter Secretary of the Navy during General Taylor's administration. At first he studied for the Bar, was licensed, and practiced, it is said, with great success; but before long he turned his attention to the Church, that grand old Kingdom of GOD, as the preferred sphere of his life.
Here let me say—that to the speaker, Bishop Atkinson has repeatedly protested against the notion, more or less current, that he was a convert from Presbyterianism. He was always apparently anxious to have it understood, that he had never been anything but a Churchman.
In 1836 he was ordered Deacon, and within a year was ordained Priest, and entered upon his full work in St. Paul's parish, Norfolk. He afterward moved to Lynchburg, Virginia, aud later still was called to St. Peter's, Baltimore, to fill the place made vacant by the
election of Rev. Dr. Henshaw to the Episcopate of Rhode Island, where his abilities were so recognized that the beautiful edifice of Grace Church, Baltimore, was built for him, of which parish he became Rector in 1852. In 1853, as I have already said, he was elected Bishop of North Carolina and in the Fall of that year was with Rev. Dr. Davis (elected at the same time with himself Bishop of our sister Diocese of South Carolina) consecrated to his high office, in St. John's Chapel, New York, during the session of the General Convention of that year. In his consecration, Bishop Spencer, of Madras, and Bishop Medley, of Frederickton, united with the American Episcopate, Bishop Brownell, of Connecticut, presiding. It was a union of the two lines of succession. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Trinity College, Hartford, and of Doctor of Laws, from the University of North Carolina, and from Cambridge University, England.
He assumed the charge of the Diocese of North Carolina at a time and in circumstances which might with great reason have constituted an excuse for declining it. It was just after the great upheaval of opinions which preceded, accompanied and followed the defection of Bishop Ives. It was not that any serious tendency to error at least in the direction in which Bishop Ives had gone, prevailed, but rather the contrary. There was rather a recoil of the public mind of the Church from those errors. But the people were unsettled and fearful—irritated moreover. Bishop Ives’ defection had set the Church back very seriously. Men whose opinions had been converging toward the Church, and whose feet were seeking her safe enclosure, had begun to halt and hesitate. Then there had been engendered much hostility of feeling between the more active opponents of the former Bishop and those whose action had been more conservative. There had grown up a lack of confidence and a state of unrest in religious convictions more or less widely spread, which
caused the members of the Church to stand more apart than of old. Beside which, the former Bishop had personally endeared himself to many of his flock, producing a feeling which resented any disrespect to his memory. It was therefore a disturbed and turbulent water upon which the new Bishop was asked to embark. Would he be able to sail that sea in safety and peace? or would he find conflicting currents which would make his voyage uncomfortable, if not in vain? A man of very marked and peculiar attributes was required to take the helm and guide the ship of the Church in safety. Providentially the qualities needed for the time and circumstances were found in the new Bishop. He was both firm and gentle, vigorous and cautious. His intellect was of a sort to command the respect of all. His power as a speaker and preacher was exceptional. He was both dignified and genial, devout and agreeable. His views were broad while definite. Indeed this has always seemed to the speaker one of his special characteristics. He was broad-minded—took no narrow or partial views. His judgement was sound. His acquaintance with the movements of the Church in her various fields of action was comprehensive and accurate. In person he was noble. In his face sweetness and nobility were in an unusual degree combined; and in his mental contact with others there was a magnetism which made him both respected and beloved. He was indeed the very man called of GOD to take up the broken lines of Church work, and re-unite them, to infuse restored confidence and peace in his disturbed Diocese, to remove the doubts and suspicions which were beginning to fester in the body ecclesiastic, to bring the old ship of the Church (if I may use such an expression of a Diocese) back to safe and quiet moorings.
It pleased GOD to give him a fairly long Episcopate to accomplish all this. For nearly thirty years he ruled with dilligence and great success. As a preacher and debater
his powers of logic and logical analysis were conspicuous and not less his power of moving the heart. The speaker well remembers the impression made upon him on his first acquaintance with the Bishop in the General Convention of 1850, when he led the debate in the House of Deputies in an important question, in which the views he maintained prevailed.
His part in the restoration of union between the two sections of the Church which had been separated by the late war would have made him, even if not already so, a conspicuous figure in the Church. He read much and was sometimes found surprisingly familiar with the current literature of the day. It is difficult at a period so quickly following the many eulogies, which the admiration and love of his friends have pronounced, to say anything true which is not second hand. But it is also hard to say anything that is true of our late Bishop which is not eulogistic. He lives in the hearts and memories of his people.
His later days were clouded by infirmity, but not for the most part of any very painful sort, and at last he sank to rest in his own house and among his own folks, on the 4th day of January, 1881.
There is a fact recorded of him which shows how good GOD had been to him—that with fifty-three years of married happiness, with sons and a daughter born to him, he had not in all that period to mourn the death of one of his immediate family.
Brethren and friends, I am done. If I have occupied, or seemed to occupy, your time to an unreasonable length, pray consider what you have given me to do, and whether you would have had me omit any of the memories of your Chief Pastors which I have evoked. And yet, I have not begun to exhaust the record. GOD grant that these memories of our dead Bishops may stimulate their successors to the imitation of all that was good in them; and that going on at least as well as we have begun, our divided Diocese instead of losing strength by its division may double its power and efficiency.
IX.
MISSIONARY AND EDUCATIONAL ENTERPRISE.
BY THE REV. JARVIS BUXTON, D. D.
THE EDUCATIONAL AND MISSIONARY WORK, IN NORTHCAROLINA, FROM THE YEAR 1831.
PART I.
The above date is coincident with the election and consecration of Rev. Dr. L. Silliman Ives, second Bishop of North Carolina, whose first Conventional address, in the year following, recommends the establishment of a Theological and Classical school under the auspices of this Church. After urging the Diocese to make some provision for the Theological education of fit persons for the sacred ministry, the Bishop goes on to say: “The object proposed, in my view, might be accomplished in connection with another of almost equal interest, I mean the establishment in some part of the Diocese, of an Episcopal school, something on the plan of the present excellent and flourishing Institution at Flushing, Long Island, under the Rev. Dr. Muhlenberg. These two objects, Theological and Classical, have thus, from the first, been combined in the minds of the friends of education in this Church. In accordance with the Bishop's proposal, so much of his address as related to the establishment of a Theological Seminary was referred to a Standing Committee of eight persons who should report to the next Convention a plan of a Seminary and School, and who were instructed to
inquire at what place in the Diocese it should be located; what number of teachers should be employed, and what houses would be necessary; what sum would be required to pay the expenses and how it should be raised, and to collect all such information as might be useful to the Convention in the establishment of a Seminary and School.
The persons appointed on this committee consisted of the leading Clergy and Laity of the Diocese.
It may here be remarked, that although no attempt was made, nor could be hopefully made for such a Church school during the Episcopate of Bishop Ravenscroft, yet that Bishop, ever fearless and outspoken in his convictions, early perceived the necessity of such an Institution for the youth of the Church, and sounded an alarm in his charge of 1825 concerning the dangers attending the education of youth from indifference on the subject of religion generally, as well as from carelessness as to training them up in the distinctive principles of the Church. He earnestly deprecated the neglect of early catechetical instruction, and expressed himself as “bound to press this subject as of the last importance to the well-being of the Church.”
I.THE EPISCOPAL SCHOOL OF NORTH CAROLINA.
The School Committee, appointed to carry into effect the resolution of the Convention of 1832, located the school on an eligible tract of land adjoining the city of Raleigh, consisting of 159½ acres, about one mile west of the State Capitol. The Executive Committee gave their individual note for $1,600. the purchase money of the land, which was the ominous commencement of a policy of incurring debt that contributed to the downfall of the school. Debts were farther incurred for erecting buildings by bank loans. The School Committee borrowed of the Episcopal Fund to the amount of $7,500 for the erection of the Central Building, giving guarantees on the property;
while the payment of the amount due for subscriptions and donations, worth at maturity about $12,000, and—uncertain, as all such subscriptions usually are, from unforeseen contingencies—was spread over a period of five years, the demands for funds meantime, continuing urgent and not to be postponed. There were other causes of the failure of the school, which had opened for the reception of pupils on 2nd of June, 1834, under the most flattering auspices. Indeed the expectations of the most eminent men of the State, many of whom were enlisted in the cause of the school, were sanguine and even extravagant. Gov. Iredell, Chairman of the Executive Committee, uses this language, during the first year of the school—“We congratulate you upon having established a school which we believe, with such teachers as you now have, will be pre-eminent among the Institutions of our Country.” The Committee on the State of the Church in the same year, confidently indulge the hope that “a little more aid from the liberal Churchmen of the Diocese will secure for them and future generations one of the best of literary and religious schools.”
But the over abounding patronage of the school in the first year, which had raised such hopes, contributed to over-whelm it. The committee ascertaining on opening the school, that a greater number of pupils would offer than could be received, contracted for the erection of another building, of the same dimensions, and kind of material with the one already erected. In vain, in order to lessen the number of applicants for admission, they resolved to restrict the age of entrance to 14 years. Patronage continued to pour in as a flood. They felt themselves constrained to give public notice that they were unable to receive any additional pupils, until the accommodations should be further enlarged. The number of pupils at that time, which was the second session of the first year, was 103, of whom 83 were boarders and 20 day scholars. The
greatest number of pupils at any one time, was 135. The terms of the school, at that day, for board and tuition, were $175 for the Academic year, and for day scholars, $50, with six weeks vacation in the year. But the apparent prosperity of the school, in point of numbers, was, in reality its greatest danger. The Institute at Flushing, which Bishop Ives had had in view as the pattern of a Church School, prudently restricted the number of its pupils to a small select band of boys, during the first year of its existence.
The object was, to introduce and firmly establish beforehand the discipline and drill of the school ere it should be tested too violently, by enlarging the number of pupils. After that the discipline was established, judicious and parental as it was, it became as easy a matter to govern one hundred boys, as twenty boys. The result was, the model Church School in the United States, out of which were sent forth not only christian gentlemen of the highest grade of character and scholarship, but a succession of the best Church Educators of youth in the land. But unfortunately, our School Committee, animated by the full glow of success, was bent upon accommodating, at the outset, an indefinite number of pupils, and at any venture of debt. But very soon the numerous scholars got the upper hand of the Masters, who, it must be confessed, were not masters of the situation, and the school became unmanageable. As a consequence, the tide of patronage as rapidly ebbed. By a resolution of the Trustees in July, 1838, the exercises of the school were suspended. The debt, about this time, amounted to $14,508 which it was proposed to pay off by selling a greater part of the land, reserving only some 20 acres with all the buildings; by selling the furniture of the school, and then mortgaging, for the balance due, the 20 acres of land reserved with all the school buildings.
The debt being thus paid or provided for, it was then proposed to await better times for the revival of the Literary
and Classical Department of the school. For the Committee well doubted whether, under its former organization as a Literary Institution, the patronage of the Diocese could be sufficiently commanded.
Some time and great caution will be necessary, they argued, to re-establish confidence amongst those who have been disappointed. Meanwhile it was thought, that the Theological Department which had hitherto been of secondary consideration might be brought to the front. In the experiment thus far, the education of ministers had been contemplated, but not undertaken; might not now the Theological Department be made the primary and leading design of the enterprise? And if that could be done, might it not be possible to secure the neighboring Diocese of South Carolina for a partner in that enterprise, by placing the revived school under joint control of the two Dioceses, mainly as the Theological School? But on making the effort, it was found that there was no inclination on the part of that Diocese (which had recently lost its Bishop), to come into any such arrangement of jointly establishing a Theological School.
The upshot was that the property (land and buildings) was sold at auction and passed out of the ownership of the Diocese, and The Episcopal School of North Carolina ceased to be, after struggling through a period of some six years. Its Masters successively were Dr. Cogswell, afterwards Librarian of the Astor Library in New York, and better fitted perhaps for marshalling books than boys; Dr. Empie, Mr. DeBerniere Hooper and Dr. Curtis.
The shock of the failure of our first Diocesan School has not ceased to be felt to this day. It spread a wide and general distrust throughout the Diocese, as to the ability of this Church, in its Diocesan capacity, to manage schools.
Without presuming to express an opinion on that point, we lay down two indispensable conditions of the success of any Diocesan Church School, as proved by all experience.
The first is, that you have the right man at the head of it. Given a Muhlenberg, a Kerfoot, a Coit, or an Arnold of Rugby, and it will not be difficult to achieve educational success. There is required, withal, in the Head Master, a tact and knowledge of human nature in general, a sympathetic touch with boyhood nature, in particular, joined to fearless and unflinching manhood, that alone can mould the plastic, wayward natures of youth into willing obedience and cheerful submission.
The second condition of permanent success for such a school, is the possession of adequate endowment. Endowment will enable the Church school to tide over a want of patronage at any one time, from any cause affording time to correct mistakes, means to employ the best instructors, and opportunity to rally its friends to its support. There is an obvious advantage gained also, in the ability thereby created, to reduce board and tuition to as low terms as might be desirable. “Reason would lead us to believe what experience tends to confirm (observes Bishop Atkinson) that without endowments, that is, without some permanent provision for institutions of an educational nature, these can scarcely have a vigorous and durable existence.”
II.ST. MARY'S SCHOOL.
The school for girls, now so widely known as St. Mary's School, a quasi-Diocesan School, rose upon the ruins of the Episcopal School of North Carolina. It was founded by Rev. Dr. Aldert Smedes, and opened for the reception of pupils in May, 1842.
Dr. Smedes found ready for use land and buildings that had passed out of the ownership of the Church, but which were admirably adapted to the purposes of a school for girls, of which he availed himself and by prudence and tact and management, and his high personal qualities and
accomplishments built up a school which has proved of incalculable worth, to the Diocese, and to Church female education through the South. Through peace and war, thro’ sunshine and the cloudy storm, the school has kept on the even tenour of its way, diffusing blessings through this land and morally and spiritually fashioning the daughters of the State, entrusted to its care, into the polished corners of the temple. Indeed the entire mental furnishment of St. Mary's, at the present day no less than in the lifetime of its revered Founder, is equal to all the requirements of Christian learning, and its curriculum of studies is abreast with the advanced modern idea of female education; while, in addition, it aims to secure the training of a complete womanhood in body, mind and spirit, including the affections, the conscience and the will.
TRINITY SCHOOL, NEAR RALEIGH.Dr. Smedes, the founder of St. Mary's, in his zealous devotion to the cause of education, in the year 1847, established a new classical school for boys under the patronage of the Diocesan, about 7 miles from Raleigh, under the name of Trinity. Its aim was to combine thorough instruction and the highest attainments in learning with strict discipline and careful training in the doctrines and duties of religion. Daily prayer was said in the school, with daily examinations in Holy Scripture; fasts and festivals were duly observed with sermons, and catechising on Sundays.
The Rev. Dr. Hubbard was the first Principal. He resigned in his second year, having accepted the Professorship of Latin, in the University of North Carolina. His last report in the Journal ends with the ominous remark—“It is for the Diocese to say whether the school shall be sustained or be allowed to perish.”
He was succeed by the Rev. Mr. Babbitt, who himself vacated the office of Principal, the third year afterward—and
Trinity School ceased to be, after about five years of existence. The greatest number of pupils it had at one time was nineteen. A remark of Mr. Babbitt's, in one of his reports, explains the secret of its failure—“Trinity School is in much need of the sympathy and support of the Diocese.”
III.ST. AUGUSTIN'S SCHOOL.
Before leaving the City of Raleigh, for other fields of survey of Church Education in the State, we will notice next St. Augustin's Normal School and Collegiate Institute, situated on a tract of land one mile east of the Capitol. This Institute, under the advocacy of Bishop Atkinson, was incorporated July, 1867, and opened January, 1868. It has for its peculiar province the educational interest of the colored people not only in this Diocese, but throughout other Dioceses, especially at the South. Its visitors and patrons are the Southern Bishops at large. The Trustees are eleven in number, consisting of the Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, five Clergymen and five Laymen who have power to fill vacancies in the Board. The amount of its endowment, securely loaned, is now estimated at about $35,000. Without this aid, procured by the Rev. J. Brinton Smith (whose zealous labors were so largely instrumental in the foundation of the school) enabling the charges of the board and tuition to be put at a very low figure, and these too reducible by manual labor, the success of St. Augustin, for any length of time, would have been impossible.
But thus aided, it has had and still has, a remarkable career of prosperity. The engrafting of a special Theological Department upon the school in 1882 is due to Bishop Lyman. In the prosecution of its work, St. Augustin has graduated 150 of its scholars in a four years’ course of study. Two hundred and seventy-five have been engaged
as teachers in public schools in different parts of North Carolina and other Southern States. Eighteen have been ordained, the majority of whom had their entire training and preparation in the school, academic as well as theological. Others of the students, in various parts of the South, have gathered congregations and become Lay-Readers. The Principals of St. Augustin have been Rev. Dr. J. Brinton Smith, Rev. Dr. John Smedes, who was succeeded by Rev. Dr. R. B. Sutton, the present Principal.
IV.TRINITY SCHOOL, CHOCOWINITY, EAST CAROLINA.
Turning Eastward, in our survey of education within the Church, our eye lights upon a modest, unpretending Church School, inclined to shrink from observation, but whose merits are of the most substantial order and deserve recognition. It is situated about four miles from Washington, Beaufort County, and known as Trinity School, founded by Rev. Dr. N. C. Hughes, a man of science and scholarship, well and long experienced in teaching the young. Though not strictly a Diocesan School, yet it has discharged, in a great degree, the offices of such a school, in the Christian education of boys and young men. In consequence of such training a goodly number of its pupils, some 15 or 20, have had their minds turned to the Holy Ministry, as their calling in life, and been liberally aided in their tuition, and other ways, while prosecuting their studies in the school.
V.VALLE CRUCIS.
We come now to the Educational and Missionary Institute that was founded by Bishop Ives at Valle Crucis in the West in the year 1844. It was intended for Associate Missionary enterprise, also, for a training school of candidates for the Holy Ministry. The classical school was
intended only for an aid to the foundation. That this design, from the first and for some years afterward, commended itself to the judgment of the Diocese, is clear from the repeated favorable testimonies on record in the Journals. So late as 1848, the Committee on the State of the Church declare their opinion—“That the importance of this Institution to the Diocese is immense, as the nursery of a future ministry,” and appeal to the Churchmen of the Diocese for their co-operation and support.
Valle Crucis, therefore, was no quixotic scheme of Bishop Ives, but commended itself to the deliberate approval of the whole Diocese. But in the turn which events took in the Diocese, occasioned by Dr. Ives’ erratic course, which it is not our part to follow, the Institution he had founded at Valle Crucis, was doomed to failure. Up to the time, however, that its original idea and purpose had fair play, it was a remarkably successful example of an Associate Mission and Training School for the ministry. Never was mission work more indefatigably and enthusiastically pursued than it was by those men whose names stand out most eminent on the page of its history, from among these, it will not be deemed invidious to select the names of the Rev. Mr. Prout and Rev. Mr. Skiles, the first a Priest, the latter a Deacon of the Church. Of Mr. Skiles, a reviewer of the sketch of his life by Miss Cooper, declares, “that if Valle Crucis had done nothing other than give this man to the Church, it had been enongh to justify all the cost of suffering and sorrow which were expended there.”
There was no mystery in his methods of working in his Master's service. Mr. Skiles was only a plain man, in deep earnest to save the souls of his fellow men around him. He was conscious of no special personal gifts and had no might save that of the Spirit. His preaching was plain, earnest and practical. His life was self-denying and given to others. He visited the sick, at any distance, if
summoned, and prayed with them and nursed them. His knowledge of medicine and of the diseases of the country that had been gained by observation, and the necessity of medical practice, was made useful in furthering the ends of his ministry. It was this close, sympathetic contact with the needs and cravings and sorrows of suffering humanity that was the secret of his power and influence over others. They felt that they had in him a friend and brother.
His friend and fellow laborer, the Rev. Mr. Prout was a profound thinker, as well as a zealous and devoted Missionary. Such metaphysical works as Mansell's Bampton Lectures on “the Limits of Religious Thought,” were his keen delight, yet his mind, profound as it was, was simplicity itself. Though his sermons were argumentative, in the main, yet he made himself easily understood by his simple minded hearers. He, too, was fond of visiting and ministering to the sick and poor. With the instinct of a native woodsman, he followed, all alone, the tracks in the forest hardly noticeable by others, which led to their humble homes in the mountains, and retraced his steps, perhaps in the late evening. The Convention of 1857 ordered the publication of his sermon on “Gifts in the Treasury”, moved thereby, it asserts, “to a deeper sense of the duty of the Church to diffuse the knowledge of the blessed Gospel it holds in trust, throughout the whole Diocese.”
One part of the idea and intent of Valle Crucis was to train up, in study and practice, a native ministry on the soil especially for the destitute regions of the Diocese. This was a favorite idea of Bishop Ives, in his palmy days. There were not many of his Episcopal Addresses in which he did not touch upon the subject, and with ever increasing urgency. “It is a truth”, he says in 1837, “I have reiterated again and again, that upon a native ministry alone can we depend for a permanent ministry”. By the
mysterious dispensation of Providence, when this object, so dear to Bishop Ives’ heart seemed to be on the point of being realized in the success of Valle Crucis, and by great self-sacrifices he had planted what promised to be a nursery of future ministers, and the whole Diocese, in response to his appeals, was ready to rally around him, in its support, all the glowing expectations of man were dashed to the ground, by the course of the Bishop himself, owing to the combined effect of bodily disease and Roman malaria which his mental health was too weak to resist.
Yet it is a fact that the seed sown and nurtured by by Bishop Ives, during his faithful days of service, were not lost to the Diocese; for out of Valle Crucis, though now in ruins, as another Iona, has gone forth the sound of the Gospel in the Church, by one instrumentality or other, immediately or remotely, throughout the length and breadth of the mountainous region of North Carolina. (See further notice of the Valle Crucis Mission in Part II.)
VI.RAVENSCROFT.
The Institution at Asheville remains to be noticed, consisting of two independent departments, provided for in separate buildings, some distance apart, viz: the High School for boys, and the Training School for the ministry.
The fact may not generally be known that the region in which Ravenscroft is situated, competed for the location of the University of the South and was favoured by Bishops Atkinson and Otey, but Sewanee prevailed.
The land on which the buildings of Ravenscroft are situated, contains 13½ acres. As far back as 1855, the Convention resolved to establish and locate a High School for boys in Pittsboro’. The Committee in charge afterward changed the location of the school to the town of Asheville. The previous circumstances, however, which led to this, it is not necessary for our purpose to detail. In
1856, it was formally announced by the Headmaster, who was also Rector of the Parish Church at Asheville, that the doors of the Institution were opened for the admission of pupils, and that its aim and purpose was not only to furnish facilities of study to older youth who might have the ministry directly in view, but also to educate the boys of the Church in the method of the Prayer Book and in all Christian culture. These two objects, Classical and Theological, have been combined in idea in every educational effort that has been put forth by this Diocese, from the beginning to this day. Bishop Atkinson was equally strenuous as his prodecessor in his sentiments on the importance of training up a native ministry. He says in his address of 1856, “In providing ministers we must look principally homeward, for a supply. To raise them from among the people themselves, permanently and effectually, we must have schools at home under the care of the Church, parochial and diocesan schools.”
But the Bishop, while he was far from depreciating the value, and still more from denying the necessity of a learned class in the ministry, yet maintained that “if the Church is to reach and mould the whole community, to carry the Gospel to the hovel on the roadside, as well as the stately mansion embowered among groves and lawns, then it is impracticable to have all the Clergy of the learned class, and not desirable if it were practicable. It is by drawing recruits to our ministry from the laboring classes, and never breaking off their sympathies with those classes that we may most reasonably hope to bring those classes into union with the Church.” In confirmation of these sentiments we may quote the Church Review's estimate of the Rev. Mr. Skiles, a fair sample of the kind of characters he had in view. “The lesson of the life of William West Skiles is, that simple earnestness and devoutness of life, talents, in a word, which the humbly endowed of men can, by prayer, possess—will achieve results, which
the most highly gifted, would despair of attaining.”
The Bishop believed also, there was room and demand for Diocesan Theological Seminaries of a lower grade than our existing high Seminaries, where a native ministry sprung from the people might be adequately trained and instructed, to fill a want in the Church and to do a vast deal of good to the souls of men.
At the close of the civil war, and on the restoration of peace, the Ravenscroft Institute was re-organized by Bishop Atkinson, solely into a Theological School, that is, a school where postulants and candidates only for the Holy Ministry, were received and instructed.
As a school for boys, in general, it fell in abeyance, till of late years. In a printed document, without date, intended to interest persons in his enterprise, he again explains his purposes in the use of the Ravenscroft building: “The wish and the plan of Bishop Atkinson is to raise up young men from among these interesting and much neglected people (for thus only can a sufficient supply be obtained) and to instruct them that they may be able to teach others also, not aiming at a thorough Theological education, but yet at such a measure of knowledge, as, by GOD's grace, may make them able Ministers of the New Testament.”
The plan of making this school the centre of an Associate Mission for the benefit of the mountain country, was also designed and added on by Bishop Atkinson. The Rev. George Wilmer was the first Principal under this new regime; Dr. Wilmer was succeeded by Rev. F. J. Murdock and he, by the Rev. Dr. D. H. Buel in the Fall of 1872. Unfortunately for the Theological School, the Principal of Ravenscroft left solitary and alone, has been made to centre in himself, the contrariant and incompatible offices pertaining to an Associate Mission that covers an extensive field, with those pertaining to a training school for the ministry that demands a constant presence; or as the
case is pathetically presented by himself in his report of 1881—“The Principal of Ravenscroft, feeling as he did the weight of the great Mission work which the Bishops have felt compelled to lay wholly upon him for the want of other laborers, and how it utterly prevented the requisite devotion of time and effort to the training school, has for several years not encouraged the many applications from candidates that have been coming to him.”
No other reason for the lack of full success of the Theological School, the great desideratum of the Diocese, need be assigned.
Since the foundation of Ravenscroft, 15 persons have been wholly or partially trained in the Divinity School, and entered the Sacred Ministry.*
In the year 1886, it was decided by the Convention to revive the plan of a Diocesan School for boys, (the proposed one to be located near Morganton, having miscarried) and to fit up and use for that purpose the Ravenscroft building. The erection of a separate building for the Training School for the Ministry, was postponed to a future day. What the final outcome of this change of plan might have been, in the uncertainties and mutations of times and human purposes, it would be difficult to forecast. But a kind Providence came to the rescue, in the generous aid of the late Mr. Schoenberger, a warm personal friend of Bishop Lyman's who, at the cost of $11,000 erected a substantial brick building, known as “Schoenberger Hall,” on the grounds of Ravenscroft, for the Training School. This school has an Endowment Fund of $7,086, collected by Bishop Atkinson; also, an interest in the Hick's Fund of $5,708, till it shall be otherwise endowed. It has a library of 1,500 volumns, valued at $3,000,
*The Principals of Ravenscroft have been, Rev. J. Buxton, Rev. Lucian Holmes, Rev. George Wilmer, Rev. F. J. Murdock, Rev. D. H. Buel, now at the head of the Training School for the Ministry.mostly bequeathed by the same Bishop. It has also one scholarship worth $300 per annum.
Within the last year (1889) the original Ravenscroft building, used for the High School for boys, has been leased to Mr. McDonald, Headmaster, for a term of five years, free of rent. All that it needs for success under such a Master, is the sympathy and support of the Diocese.*
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.Of Parochial Schools, we have said nothing, beyond referring to the judgment of Bishop Ravenscroft, strongly in favour of early catechetical instruction, which is a marked feature of them—not that we undervalue their usefulness or that other testimonies in the Journals, in their favour, could not be adduced, but for lack of time for their consideration.
The last Journal of the General Convention (1889) reports 11 Parochial Schools within the limits of the Diocese of North Carolina, and 7 in the Diocese of East Carolina, with 916 pupils in both Dioceses.
PART II.MISSIONARY WORK IN NORTH CAROLINA SINCE 1831.
The State of North Carolina is larger than New York in extent of territory, but it is without any large and populous city within its borders, to whose wealth and prosperity all the rest of the State is tributary and from whence in turn, as a centre, wealth and the commanding influences belonging to large cities, are diffused abroad. It may be questioned however, whether a population dwelling, like our own, apart in prosperous towns with rural cultivated districts around them, and all interlinked by Railways, be
* The Head Masters of Ravenscroft High School for boys have been Mr. Henry A. Prince, Mr. Haywood Parker, Mr. Ronald McDonald, now in charge.not more favorably situated in point of purity, morality and religion. This State is now and always has been a field of Missionary labour to this Church. Though this labour has been prosecuted for so long a time, it is yet a startling fact, that there is no County in any part of the State but is still Missionary ground, in the rural districts at least, and even in whole Counties, including their County seats. There is this difference to be noted between the Eastern and Western parts of the State—that the former was Colonial ground and was traversed once and for many years by the itinerant Missionaries of the Church. Missionary work therefore, in these parts, upon the revival of the Church in 1817, was largely a work of restoration. It was building up anew the old family mansions out of ruins. But such was not the case in the West, at large. It was new ground, virgin soil for the feet of him that brought glad tidings of peace, as proclaimed by this Church. That part of the State, in particular, West of the Blue Ridge, was a sort of “Ultima Thule,” which the Missionaries of the Church, for a long time made no effort to reach.
The method adopted for the support and spread of Missions, before as well as after the date of our period, was through “a Missionary Society.” This Society either employed Missionaries more or less itinerant or made use of the settled Parochial Clergy, whose duty it was made to devote one Sunday in every three months to Missionary labour; but, in fact, the Parochial Clergy have ever devoted much more time, to purely Missionary work. The funds of the Society were derived from the voluntary offerings of the Parishes, and Congregations to which the Missionaries ministered. Subsequently, in 1847, the voluntary offerings gave way to the plan of assessment for the support of Missions; but this, in turn, not proving satisfactory was abandoned.
The present plan, adopted in 1884, of raising Mission
funds by apportionment among the several Parishes and Mission stations of the Diocese (the sum of money required by the Missionary wants of the Diocese for the current year having been previously determined) is commended by the experience, for many years, of the great Missionary Societies in England, in the support of their widely extended Mission work.
One feature of the early Missionary Society of the Diocese, has been dropped out, with loss to us, and with no provision as yet to take its place. By altering its title in 1830, so as to embrace other important objects, the Society was entitled—“The Episcopal Bible, Comon Prayer Book, Tract and Missionary Society.” Three Depositories of Books and Tracts were established, one at Raleigh, another at Fayetteville. and the third at Edenton.
The increasing demand for Missionary services and the failure of the sources by which the treasury was supplied, were the cause of this great loss which has been keenly felt ever since throughout the Diocese so that one is moved to ask, can nothing be devised to remedy the loss?
To the labours of the Society's Missionaries different Parishes in the State owe their organization as Parishes; in the West, since 1830, those of Charlotte, Lincolnton, Pittsboro’, Morganton, Lenoir, Asheville and others; in the East, those of Kinston, Scotland Neck, Goldsboro’ and others. To show how largely dependent the Church in this Diocese was upon its Missionary Society in those days, we quote the following from the report of the Committee on the State of the Church. in 1835, when the Society was threatened with insolvency: “By its failure, we shall lose a Society on which the destitute portions of the State entirely, and three-fourths of our organized Parishes more or less rely for the ministrations of our Church.”
The office of Evangelist or, Missionary at large, is not a strange one to this Church, either in its Colonial times, when the Missionaries of “the Society for the propagation
of the Gospel in foreign parts,” traversed the large Eastern counties of that day, or in times subsequently to our formation as a Diocese. Indeed the itinerate system was long the Church of England's method in this country, before the Revolution, of reaching a scant and sparse population. But since the Revolution the office of Itinerant has been known to us rather in idea, than by practice.
In the Report of the Committee on the State of the Church of 1852, the idea is fully developed. We quote it at length: “Let a large tract of one of our most destitute regions be committed to a Missionary at large. Let him traverse the length and breadth of it once or twice or more times in a year; let him visit lonely families at whose doors no ministrations of religion are now offered; let him go to the many villages and settlements where the voice of our Church has never yet been heard; let him seek out and reclaim the baptized ones who have wandered from our folds or have been lost in the wilderness of the world; let him baptize the multitudes who are longing for that sacrament, and will seek what others can give if no authorized minister of Christ brings its blessings to them. It would be no easy task to estimate in how many hearts and places, by public preaching, by private conversation, by the silent yet perpetual witness of Bibles and Prayer Books and tracts, such an Evangelist may awaken the hope of everlasting life and plant the seed of prosperous Churches.” But whether from the want of the proper man, or of means of supporting him, nothing was done, beside the repeated endorsement of the plan. But in the year 1882, the Rev. Wm. P. Bynum was appointed Diocesan Evangelist at a salary of $1,000. Most faithfully and diligently he executed the trust committed to him; but the ground attempted to be covered was too much, and utterly precluded a second or third visitation, so indispensable for permanent results. In his own words, “I have done duty in 45 counties, and in almost every quarter of the Diocese. I have
literally gone from Cherokee to Currituck.” The first visitation through a circuit is but part of a true Evangelistic system, and largely in the nature of an exploration; it must be followed up by other visitations, in order to secure lasting benefits. Very apt on this point, is the quotation made by the Evangelist from Bishop Wordsworth's Church History, in the Report of his Labours to the Convention of 1883—“The following phenomena are observable in St. Paul's method of evangelizing the world. (1) He did not attempt to take in too large a field at once in his Missionary Journey. (2) He proceeded slowly and carefully, and made his ground good and enlarged it by degrees. (3) He left persons behind him to continue and consolidate his work, and he visited them from time to time to see in what condition they were.”
The office of Diocesan Evangelist seems to have been discontinued, at the end of the first year, for lack of means for its support.
The system of Convocations first adopted in 1868, seems to be admirably adapted for missionary purposes. By means of them the clergy within a certain district, together with representative laymen, may be brought together, two or more times in the year at different points in the country, or within some parish as yet weak in numbers, and services be continued for a number of days to the great benefit of the people. Abundant opportunity is thus afforded (and with a force and effect proportioned commonly to the number of attending ministers) to preach the Gospel, to proclaim the Church or the Kingdom of GOD, to strengthen feeble parishes as centres of work and influence, and generally, in the course of the year, to perform many of the duties of the Evangelistic office. The possibilities for good of this arm of Missionary work, doubtless, have not yet been fully tried; neither have the varied gifts of preaching the word, in the extension of Missions, that lie dormant in our laymen, been scarcely at all as yet
brought out into action. But the subject has begun to attract thoughtful attention.
Any survey of the Missions of this Church in the Western part of the State, would be incomplete without mention of the labours of Parson Miller, of Burke County, by which title he is best known. It is true that his race was well nigh run, at the date of our Period, but he yet lived three years (having died in 1834) within the Period allotted for these notices. He was a Missionary of the Pauline stamp, accustomed to long journeys, and perils by the way, in preaching the Gospel, and he was faithful to the work, unto the end of his life. To him is due principally the foundation of St. Luke's Parish, Salisbury, of Christ Church, Rowan, and other Parishes in the West. His early history is well known as a laborer among the Lutherans, and a co-laborer with them where they prevailed, even after he had obtained Episcopal orders. But the results of such ecclesiastical amalgamation with old and dear friends, were not satisfactory to him on looking back. In a letter addressed to Dr. Empie he bewails the mistake he had committed in practically neglecting the distinctive principles of the Church, which he yet firmly held; and that others, in consequence, had largely entered upon his labors. This religious amalgamation even with so estimable a body as the Lutherans, it need hardly be said, met with no favour from Bishop Ravenscroft. The effect, in his judgment (to use his own words), was “paralyzing on the Church.”
In concluding these notices, we will extend our view of Missions over that region of country west of the Blue Ridge, where lay the scenes of the Valle Crucis and Ravenscroft Missions.
In the year 1847, the school for boys at Valle Crucis was discontinued, and the work, henceforward, devoted to Missions and the Divinity School. The Rev. Wm. French was at that time the head of the institution. Associated with him were the Rev. Messrs. Prout, Passmore and Skiles.
There were eight Divinity students. At that date there were three services in the Chapel every week day—morning and evening prayers, and also a short noon-day service in which all took part. Great attention was paid to the instruction of the Divinity students in Church music, who devoted themselves to Sunday schools, and day schools on certain days of the week. The Missionaries, each one, had his own appointments through the surrounding region, not conjointly, except when sacramental occasions might bring them together. Their sphere of labor extended some thirty-five miles around, though they would answer appeals for help to a much greater distance. The impression made upon the public mind by their labours and personal characters was most favorable to the Church; prejudices abated or vanished altogether. The Mission was a recognized power in that region, particularly as at that time there were few or none other religious ministrations. In 1852, Mr. Prout and Mr. Skiles were the only laborers in the Watauga country, Mr. Skiles, only, resident at Valle Crucis. The class of students was dispersed and the Divinity school broken up. There had been three ordinations (one Priest and two Deacons) performed at Valle Crucis during its existence, and at least eight young men prepared for the ministry.
If it be asked, whether “the Order of the Holy Cross” introduced by Bishop Ives in 1847, and which survived two years, was useful at all toward the Mission work done by Valle Crucis, it may be confidently answered that the Order was not of the slighest use; most of the members, at least, joined it out of deference to Bishop Ives, though without a spark of sympathy for the Romish spirit of its vows But the Order was rather destructive to the Mission. It excited suspicion and distrust, while every benefit of an Associate Mission, so well adapted to that kind of region, had been obtained without it, as had been done before at Nashotah.
Asheville, the seat of the Ravenscroft Institution, was visited once by Bishop Ravenscroft, in the year 1828. He also visited the Warm Springs in his journey to Tennessee. While at Asheville he preached in the old Court House of that day. An old inhabitant, who was present on that occasion, said, that the Bishop, with some heat, bade the congregation who were keeping their seats at the recital of the Apostles’ Creed, “to stand up and say the Creed, like Christians,” which they did.
Trinity Church, Asheville, consecrated July, 1851, was the first consecrated Church building west of the Blue Ridge in North Carolina. With this Church, from its beginning, has been connected Missionary work by its minister, outside of the Parish, at first in a wider field, afterward, in Chapels built within a few miles of the town.
As the result of Missionary labour from Ravenscroft, within the last seventeen years, Church buildings have been erected at the county seats of Transylvania and Haywood counties, and a chapel and school house at Mica Vale, near Waynesville; also a church building at Cullowhee, in Jackson County. The great want of these and other counties is resident Missionaries and Ministers, without whom no aggressive work can be done nor hardly any impression made upon the minds of the people at large, toward the Church.
In Macon County, farther west, two Church buildings have been erected under Rev. Mr. Deal, and one at Cashier's Valley, Jackson County.
In the extreme Western County of the State, Cherokee County, it may be mentioned, as a matter of history, that in the Fall of 1855, the Rev. Mr. Prout visited Cherokee and preached at Murphy, the county seat, about four months, and at various stations in the county. He bought and fitted up a House of Worship in Murphy, which still belongs to the Church. He remarks, in his report—“that
the itinerant plan of preaching from house to house, and from one neighborhood to another, would perhaps be most advantageously adopted.
In surveying the vast Missionary field spread throughout the State, may we not profitably revive the memory of a passage of the sermon of Rev. Mr. Prout, “Gifts in the Treasury,” preached over thirty years ago before the Convention of North Carolina, and published by its order: “Should one of us consecrate his property to the founding and endowment of a Mission in this home territory amongst his home-people, would he be casting in too much into the Treasury of GOD? Should he make it adequate as a perpetual endowment to carry the means of grace to those who are likely to be ever poor, would he regret it? Or would you consecrate means and time to GOD in the way of charity to Brethren? A Depository of Bibles, Prayer Books and other good books (with tracts) in many a secluded portion of the State, to be distributed on certain defined rules, would be a means of very great good. This is a noble work and greatly needed. Carried on intelligently and widely, it would do much toward the sound improvement of both the mind and heart of the people.”
X.THE WORK OF THE CHURCH IN HOSPITALS,
HOMES, SISTERHOODS AND ORPHANAGES.
BY THE REV. T. M. N. GEORGE.
It is proper for me to state at the outset that the work of preparing this paper was assigned by the Committee to one* much better qualified for the task than the present writer. The burden which he was prevented from taking was laid on shoulders less broad, but not unwilling to bear it. For the work of the Church in Homes, Hospitals and Orphanages is the most blessed because the most Christ-like of all her work, and the self-devotion shown in Sisterhoods and in other associated agencies in doing the work of the Church is worthy of all emulation. To record what has been done by the Church in this State is most inspiring, and to say a word which may incite the Church to multiply and extend her works of love and mercy is indeed a privilege. And I desire here to gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to those connected with the various institutions here spoken of, and others who have furnished me with material for this account.
The surest testimony that the love of Christ and spirit of Christ still dwell in His Church is borne by the institutions of mercy and benevolence which spring up wherever she goes—institutions which have for their object the alleviation of the physical sufferings and wants of men.
The human body as well as the human soul claims its share in the redemption.
*The Rev. Mr. Strange was appointed for this subject.1. The Son of God took the whole nature of man, spirit, soul and body, that He might redeem the whole.
2. When He was on earth He manifested forth His glory by miracles of mercy wrought on the bodies of men.
3. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body teaches the same truth. “The adoption” will not be realized to the full until the body is raised in incorruption and glory.
4. The bodies of men assume a special importance when we remember how closely they are allied to the indwelling soul, and when we remember that they are designed to be “temples of the Holy Ghost.”
The sending of Christian physicians to the heathen does not find its highest reason in the fact that thus prejudices will be removed so that the strictly missionary work may be done, but in the fact that this is an essential part of the work itself.
The Gospel cannot be truly preached if the physical wants of men are ignored. All efforts to relieve the poor, to nurse the sick, to shelter the destitute, to reclaim the fallen are so many ways of revealing Christ to the world, and imitations of His own example.
And as work for the suffering is in a peculiar sense a Christ-like work, so it must derive its highest inspiration from the thought that it is done as unto the Lord Himself. Most solemnly and clearly will the Master's own mind on this kind of service be proclaimed, when at the last day He shall say, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. xxv, 35, 36, 40.)
The commission and the command to “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils,” (Matt. x, 8) is still in force; and the Church can do no nobler
work than that of establishing Hospitals, Homes, Orphanages, Asylums, and Houses of Mercy.
HOSPITALS.The Church in North Carolina has not been unmindful of her calling to preach the gospel of love to the poor in this way.
There are at present in the State three Hospitals under the auspices of the Episcopal Church. St. Peter's Home and Hospital, in Charlotte; St. John's Hospital, in Raleigh; and the Good Samaritan Hospital for Negroes, in Charlotte. The first two have been in active operation for more than ten years, and the third will soon be opened for the reception of patients.
ST. PETER'S HOME AND HOSPITAL.The honor of founding the first of these belongs to the “Church Aid Society,” of St. Peter's Church, Charlotte. Touched by the needs of the sick poor in their midst, these faithful women waited for no other argument to favour their undertaking.
With a subscription list and donations amounting in all to only $160, “under discouragement and opposition, prophecies of failure, and plentiful showers of cold water,” they began their work of mercy. A house with two small rooms was rented Jan. 20th, 1876, and the Hospital was opened, with one poor old Methodist woman as its sole inmate.
But prayer, perseverance, and constant, steady labor and self denial combined to insure the success of the venture. The most eloquent appeal for support came from the work itself, as is the case with every such effort, and the blessings of GOD rested upon it.
The rector of the Parish, Rev. B. S. Bronson, as well as Bishop Atkinson, took a warm interest in the establishment of the undertaking. “Designed to combine a Home
for helpless and destitute persons, with a Hospital for the treatment of the sick, it was not intended to be purely local, but by providing a Home for our Church people and others in distress and old age, hoped to be of use to the Diocese and State.”
The young girls of the Parish presented a lot for the purposes of the Home and Hospital.
The lot, 100×200 feet, is on the corner of Sixth and Poplar Streets, and cost $270. A copy of the deed, with the names of the young girls composing the “Busy Bee Society,” which gave it, now lies in the corner stone.
Friends at the North came to the rescue, and the corner stone of the present convenient and substantial brick building was laid by Bishop Atkinson June 4th, 1877, eight of the clergy in their vestments being present The building, partly completed, was occupied the next year (May 30th, 1878).
It was found necessary to push on the work to accommodate the increasing number of patients desiring its benefits, and the building was completed, and the addition was opened for use March, 1882.
The whole building having cost $2,150, contains eight large, airy rooms, and two smaller ones, six for patients, with wide halls, in part at least finished, and four for use of matron and servants, and for dining room and kitchen.
Since this Hospital was opened, in 1876, no less than five hundred persons have had cause to thank GOD for the blessings, temporal and spiritual, which it has bestowed. Only a few of these were able to contribute to their own support while there. Fifty to seventy sick people find treatment here every year.
Although the Home and Hospital depends for its support solely on small monthly subscriptions, and donations of money and in kind, its managers have raised for its work as much as $10,000 ($9,864 50 up to Jan. 1, 1890), and
its annual income from the same voluntary sources is over $1,000 ($1,097 98 in 1889).
Women's Auxiliary Societies within and without the State help with boxes of valuable and useful articles. The citizens of Charlotte have very generally shown their appreciation of the good work being done by giving it their sympathy and help.
PRESENT PROPERTY AND MANAGEMENT.The management of the Home and Hospital was, in July, 1880, by a charter from the Legislature, placed in the hands of nine women, communicants of St. Peter's Church, with the Rector and Wardens as an Advisory Committee.
The property is in the hands of the Vestry of St. Peter,s to hold in trust for the use of the Home and Hospital.
By permission of the Managers’ a building, designed for an Industrial School, was, in 1882, erected on the hospital lot by a member of the Parish as a Memorial to her two children. This building has since been given to the Hospital and moved up to it, and is used as part of the Hospital property.
The property now consists of the lot and buildings, and is valued at $3,500, and is entirely free from debt.
The Board, as at present constituted, consists of the following persons:
Mrs. Julia Fox, President; Mrs. John Wilkes, Secretary and Treasurer; Miss Hattie Moore, Mrs. H. C. Jones, Mrs. E. A. Osborne, Mrs. T. R. Robertson, Mrs. R. J. Brevard, Mrs. T. S. Clarkson, Mrs. W. R. Taliaferro.
ST. JOHN'S HOSPITAL, RALEIGH.The story of St. John's Hospital, in Raleigh, shows a like degree of faith in its inception, and a like perseverance in bringing it to its present position of usefulness and honor.
This Hospital now stands at the foot of Salisbury Street,
in the City of Raleigh. The building was formerly the mansion home of Governor Manly. Its appearance is that of a retired and comfortable home.
The St. John's Guild purchased this property in 1882, March, 31, to which, in 1888, they added a vacant lot adjoining so that the Hospital's real-estate consists now of 1⅓ acres of land in a very desirable part of the city, and conveniently located. The cost of the whole was $4,450, and is all paid for except $1,100.
There are for patients two wards amply large for six or eight beds each, one of these is for males and the other for females.
In 1887, was erected by Dr. R. H. Lewis along a broad side piazza, the “Nellie Battle Lewis Memorial Room,” for poor sick women.
The “Messengers of Hope” Children in all parts of the State have contributed $1,825 to the endowment of the Bishop Atkinson Memorial Cot, and with this, permanent provision is made for a sick child.
Every month, ten to fifteen patients, the majority of whom are too poor to contribute to their own support, find here a home, kind attention, skilful treatment, and spiritual consolation. The sick worthy poor of Wake County are admitted free of all charge.
Six hundred and eighty-two persons have been recipients of the blessings of this Hospital.
It is an institution in which not only the citizens of Raleigh, but of the whole State take pride, and it is liberally and cheerfully sustained by members of all communions.
Yet this work began in 1878, (preliminary steps were taken in 1877) in a little house with four rooms, fitted up at an expense of $100, and opened its doors with only $67 25 in its treasury. And the first matron served for her home and board.
To the Rev. E. R. Rich, then Rector of the Church of
the Good Shepherd, belongs the chief credit of starting this beneficent enterprise, and he was the first President of the Guild.
MANAGEMENT.The Hospital is under the control of St. John's Guild, of which the Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D., is President, the Rev. B. Smedes, Vice President, and the Rev. Wm. M. Clark is Chaplain of the Hospital. Its immediate management is in the hands of the Hospital Committee, composed of five members of the Guild, together with the Chaplain, Matron and head nurse, and the five attending physicians, of whom Dr. P. E. Hines is the senior.
The shares which the attending physicians have contributed to the good done by these hospitals, is beyond computation. Their services have been faithfully, cheerfully, and gratuitously given. Without their co-operation, the doctors, all such institutions are doomed to failure. But experience has shown that their assistance may with certainty be relied on.
Since 1878, $14,823 31 have been raised for the Hospital and it now has an annual income from voluntary sources of over $2,000 ($2,214 15 in 1889).
In both St. John's Hospital, in Raleigh, and St. Peter's, in Charlotte. members of all denominations, and those of no creed are, without distinction, cared for, and only a small proportion of the inmates have been Episcopalians. And not only have the diseased bodies had tender and skilful treatment, but souls to whom the love of Christ has been thus manifested, have been reached and comforted. “Instances are thankfully recorded when the ignorant, the irreligious and degraded have been led to a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, and brought to confess Him before men, and to show forth the fruits of the Spirit in their daily lives.”
Others have had their pathway to the grave made easier,
and the chamber of death transformed into the gate of Paradise.”
The officers of St. John's Guild are:
President, Rev. M. M. Marshall, D. D.; Vice President, Rev. Bennett Smedes; Secretary, Mr. Hugh Morson; Treasurer, Mr. A. P. Bryan. The Guild has thirty members at present.
The Hospital Committee having immediate charge of the work is as follows:
A. P. Bryan, Chas. E. Johnson, R. H. Battle, Wm. Woolcott, C. G. Latta.
Rev. W. M. Clark is Chaplain; Miss Maggie McLester is Matron; Miss Jennie Coffin, Head Nurse.
The attending Physicians are: Drs. P. E. Hines, James McKee, A. W. Knox, R. H. Lewis and K. P. Battle, Jr.
The first officers of the Guild were: Rev. E. R. Rich. President; Rev. M. M. Marshall, Vice President; Dr. A. W. Knox, Secretary; Mr. A. P. Bryan, Treasurer; Mr. Sherwood Haywood, Librarian.
There were also heads of committees, or departments, which were formed for carrying on the work of the Guild.
THE GOOD SAMARITAN HOSPITAL FOR NEGROES.In the City of Charlotte, which is the centre of so many agencies for good, there is nearing completion a comfortable brick building known as the Good Samaritan Hospital for Negroes. It was hardly to be expected that in this work of mercy the wants of the most needy part of the population would be overlooked. This Hospital is the result of appeals made to churchmen and women at the North, and has thus far cost about $2,500, and when finished will accommodate 25 patients.
The first appeal for funds was made in 1881, The corner stone was laid by the Charlotte Clergy, with the colored Free Masons, Dec. 18, 1888. It is hoped that sufficient
progress will be made in finishing the interior to admit patients in the fall. When completed and furnished it will be an inestimable blessing to the bodies and souls of that class to whom sickness so often means death, for lack of ordinary attention to common sanitary precautions.
May it prove indeed a Good Samaritan to all who seek its shelter, and may GOD's blessing rest upon every such effort for the relief of the sick and needy.
$2,500 is needed to complete the plan.
MANAGEMENT.The management is vested in a board of women, communicants of St. Peter's Church, with the Rector and Wardens as Advisory Committee. The names of the present Managers are as follows:
Mrs. John Wilkes, Mrs. Annie L. Lardner, Mrs. Wm. E. Holt, Mrs. Simons Clarkson, Mrs. Richard L. Jones, Mrs. Julia Fox.
ORPHANAGES.THE THOMPSON ORPHANGE AND INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTE.
In the suburbs of Charlotte is beautifully situated what has been called the noblest charity of the Church in the Diocese of North Carolina.
On a farm of seventy acres is a group of buildings of various sizes and material. And as you move in and out in your tour of investigation the bright faces of happy children greet you at every turn. Some are busy helping the farmer, some engaged in the laundry, and some in the kitchen. Others are found in the school room, others still on the play-ground. All are contented and happy. They are of all ages and sizes, and of both sexes, and they number thirty-nine.
This is the Thompson Orphanage and Industrial Institute.
Within the past three years these children have been gathered together. From poor-houses, from poverty-stricken homes, from neglect; some of them from unwilling, or careless, or even from cruel protectors, these little waifs have been taken. They have been rescued in some instances from dens of infamy and vice.
Now, cleanliness, kindness, gentleness, and above all, the pure atmosphere of Christ's religion and the light of GOD's love surround them, and Lo! what a change! in body, soul and spirit.
When, on Easter Day last, ten of these children reverently knelt to receive their first communion, wonder and gratitude filled the hearts of the beholders.
The Rev. Mr. Bronson, while Rector of St. Peter's Church, received from the widow and daughter of the late Lewis Thompson, Esq., of Bertie county, the property now occupied by the Orphanage, and hence the name of Thompson Orphanage. This was added to by the people of Charlotte and persons at the North.
The Rev. Mr. Bronson offered this property upon certain conditions to the Diocesan Convention of 1886, “to be held by the church as an Orphanage and Industrial Institution.” His proposition was accepted by the Convention and a vote of thanks was extended him.
The Rev. E. A. Osborne was, on August 10th, the same year, elected Superintendent of the Orphanage. He immediately took measures to enlist the support and sympathy of the Church in the whole State, and especially in the Diocese of North Carolina. And before the assembling of the Convention in 1887 the Orphanage was opened with a most competent lady as matron, with six children in charge.
From the very first the Church has recognized in the Superintendent the rare combination of the many good qualities which are desirable in the head of such an institution. His earnest and capable efforts have met with a
united and hearty response from the Diocese and State. Guilds, societies, associate managers went to work in various parishes and systematic offerings were begun.
The women of the Diocese, and branches of the Woman's Auxiliary elsewhere, have kept the institution supplied with all needful articles and clothing. The supplies in kind from all sources for one year alone were estimated at $1,000.
For the first twenty months $4,212.92 were contributed for this work. In the twelve months following $5,001.63. (Journals 1888 and 1889.)
A comfortable Superintendent's residence was built. Farming operations were organized and equipped, and the farm has proved profitable both financially and as a training school for the children.
There are now two departments, one for larger children called Thompson Hall and one for smaller called Bronson Hall. A matron has charge of each. A teacher for the older children, and a foreman for the farm, complete the corps of workers under the Superintendent.
The property is valued at $10,000, and the expenses for the year just closed were $3,325.02, which were all met, and a balance of $700 is now in the treasury.
Who can estimate the value of such a noble work? To the Church people in the State it has been of great benefit in drawing them closer together in kindly Christian endeavour for the destitute orphans of the State. To the orphans themselves it has been as “life from the dead.” Each child will moreover become a centre of continual good and a leaven be thus formed to leaven the whole lump of the class from which he came, and the good work will thus be indefinitely extended.
The Thompson Orphanage is in the hands of a Board of Managers, of which the Bishop of North Carolina is ex officio chairman, elected by the Convention in accordance with the provisions of the deed of Rev. Mr. Bronson. Besides
the Bishop the board consists of three clergymen and three laymen. (Journal N. C. 1886, p. 51.) The first meeting of the Board was held in Charlotte August 10th, 1886, (Journal 1887, p. 34) when measures were taken to begin the work and the Rev. E. A. Osborne was elected Superintendent. The Board of Managers is at present composed of the following persons:
The Rt. Rev. Theodore B. Lyman, D. D., ex officio member and president of the Board.
The Rev. William R. Wetmore, Rev. Edwin A. Osborne, Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr., Mr. Baxter H. Moore, Mr. Wm. A. Smith, Mr. Wm. Alex. Hoke.
ST. JAMES’ HOME, WILLIMINGTON.I have reserved, for the last, the mention of the work of St. James’ Home, Wilmington, because the agency employed in that work is sui generis, in this State, and because the wonderful success which, under GOD, has blessed the work, teaches lessons which ought not to be overlooked at this time.
In 1867 a large dwelling house, the only building on one of the city squares was, together with the entire square, presented by Dr. A. J. DeRosset to St. James’ Church, to be used for charitable and religious purposes. A day school and Sunday school were here successfully taught, for ten years, by ladies of the parish.
In 1878, with the consent and co-operation of Bishop Atkinson, workers from the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd were sent by the Bishop of New York, who organized this Sisterhood in 1869, its object being “to minister to the poor, the sick, the homeless, and the outcast, and to care for little children.”
A lady who had been for some time in the work at the school was made a “Probationer” of the Sisterhood and in 1878 she, with a full Sister, were sent to the work in Wilmington.
Under the Sisterhood the school flourished and grew. To accommodate the work, additions were made to the building, first a large room and school room, to which was added, in 1882, another school room.
In 1880, as many as four members of the Sisterhood were engaged in the Home, in which year a lady of North Carolina was received by Bishop Atkinson, in St. James’ Church, a full Sister, (Feb. 22,) and she is the present head of the Home. Dr. Watson, then rector of St. James’ Parish, says in one of his annual reports: “The work of St. James’ Home Mission has gone on as usual, but we think with increased success, three members of the Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd having charge of it. Since their coming we have had perpetual reason to be thankful that in GOD's Providence this arrangement was made possible.”
At one time the day school numbered 135, and the Sunday school 193 pupils, all of the poorest class. The children of the poor have thus been taken into the arms of the “Home,” and “trained for their work on earth and their home in heaven.”
“Its instruction has been entirely free. It has not aimed at teaching the higher branches or accomplishments, but only the plainer and more necessary parts of a sound English education.” Since its beginning nearly a thousand children have received their entire education from the “Home.”
Along with its intellectual has gone its moral and religious training, inculcating the principles of religion as understood by our Church.
It has in addition done, and is still doing, the great work of an associate lay mission. The poor, the sick, and the penitent have been visited in their homes.
This house to house visiting is a most important part of the work. In one month alone, when there was an unusual amount of sickness, 235 visits were made.
Cottage readings are held at the houses of the poor.
In addition to this outer missionary work, industrial training is given in the “Home” itself. A large sewing class has been successfully taught, and many girls not only made capable of doing their own sewing, but of filling places where skilled needlework was demanded. A cooking school, together with training for the dining room and for general house work has been a source of great benefit. Night schools have been taught.
Nor have the boys been neglected. More than forty have been given lessons in wood-carving by the Sisters—whose own multifarious accomplishments seem marvelous—and who have been rewarded by seeing many of the boys attain proficiency and skill in carving wood.
The full work of a “Home,” strictly speaking, has not yet been entered upon, but much has been done from time to time. For one winter and spring a day nursery was opened by the Sisters, where the working mothers could leave their little ones in tender and careful keeping, and go about their work of gaining a livelihood. The “Home” has also been a refuge for the aged, the sick, the dying, for penitents and orphans. The rescue of the fallen, and of those anxious to escape lives of temptation, has been a blessed part of the Sisters’ efforts.
No little hospital work has been done at the “Home.” The late Dr. W. G. Thomas who was chairman of the Home Committee will be greatly missed in this, as in all other work of the institution.
The spiritual fruits are gratifying and abundant.
Within the last five years 106 children and adults have been baptized and 56 confirmed, and it is safe to assume that in the twelve years of its existence 250 to 300 have been admitted into the ark of Christ's Church, and 150 to 200 confirmed. During the year following Dr. Watson's consecration to the Episcopate, when there was only a rector pro tem., the work increased, and at the end of the
year 40 were baptized and 21 presented for confirmation. In that part of the city, where the “Home” is located, the whole moral tone has been raised and even the appearance noticeably improved.
MANAGEMENT.This “Home” is a part of the work of the parish of St. James, from which it draws its entire support. The rector is its head, the Bishop's consent to the employment of the Sisters being requisite, and this has always been cheerfully given. A sister and visitor at present reside in the “Home,” and with them is associated a teacher from the parish.
The cost of maintaining the work is a little under $1,000 per annum. The property is valued at $6,000.
Bishop Watson, in more than one of his Episcopal addresses pays a just tribute to this work, noticing especially its strict subordination “to the rector in his parish and to the Bishop in his Diocese,” and its freedom from “wilful peculiarities which so often mar work undertaken by similar organizations.” He says, “If the parish of St. James were not a part of itself, the Diocese might almost envy that parish its possession of such an agency.”
We may well pause to ask ourselves whether it is not possible, in our State, to extend the services of women, specially separated unto GOD from the ordinary life, to do the work of the Church.
It goes without saying, that a devoted woman is gifted by GOD for a work among the sick, the degraded, the orphans, which she alone can do. It is hers, also, to manifest in a peculiar manner the compassionate side of our LORD's character. To use the forcible expression of the late Bishop Lightfoot, the Church that neglects her devovoted service is “maimed in one of her hands.” The General Convention has since 1871, “recognized the tested value of organizations of Christian women in prosecuting the work of the Church.” Notably, in the last General
Convention, the primitive and scriptural order of Deaconess was given special recognition. If men consecrate themselves wholly to the ministry, why should it surprise any one when a woman consecrates herself wholly to that work which she alone is fitted to do?
The great army of women in the Church who are called by Providence to what should always be considered the paramount duties, of wives and mothers, daughters and sisters, or whose spheres of work are otherwise pointed out by circumstances, are, in addition to these duties, accomplishing a vast amount of work for the bodies and souls of men. Not to supersede their work, but to render it a hundred fold more effective, we need women, who, freed from the calls of society and the cares of the family, can give themselves wholly to the work, women specially trained, technically and spiritually. Women who can go and live as poor among the poor.
And behind them, they need the prestige and the power, which come from a recognized office. Their separation, like the office of a clergyman, tells directly upon their work, giving it a distinctly religious character.
All of these advantages are obtainable both in Sisterhoods and in the office of Deaconess.
It cannot be denied that special advantages, both to the work and the worker, are found in the associated life. Associated and organized work, such as that of Sisterhoods or Associations of Deaconesses, has “the strength of a tradesunion with the perpetuity of a company.”
New workers are here trained and the work continued. “Unsystematic, isolated efforts can never succeed like organization.”
Again from association come mutual sympathy and help to support and guide the worker. And together with united labor goes the strength of united prayer.
When such organizations of women are in strict subordination
to the Bishop, and the rector of the parish where they work, they are capable of untold good.
ASSOCIATE MISSIONS.Whatever we may think of the strange ideas and practices which Bishop Ives engrafted on to the associate work which he established at Valle Crucis, his conception that this was the most practical and efficient way to reach the scattered populations of the mountains was fully justified in the results, which remain even to this day.
It was Bishop Atkinson's purpose to establish a work at Ravenscroft on this same principle of associate life and work. And it is hoped that his design will one day be fully carried out.
The weak missions of the East call aloud for some such agency to strengthen and supplement the faithful and scattered labors of the devoted missionaries now working in that field.
CONCLUSION.To the work of GOD both in city and in country the first need is self-sacrifice and self-devotion on the part both of men and women. We need women, set apart, trained, devoted, call them Sisters or Deaconesses, or matrons, or nurses, or simply church-workers, working singly if need be or in organized life, who will be ready at the call of Bishop or Pastor to preach Christ by deeds of mercy and love. Crowds of illiterate children, both black and white, call for their work in schools and in Homes. The orphans of the poor need their motherly attention. The sick silently plead for their tender ministries in humble homes and in hospitals, which ought to be established in all the larger towns of North Carolina. The prisoners wait to be visited.
Dens of vice cry aloud for houses of mercy where the penitent can find a refuge from temptation.
And all such works claims liberal support and endowment from those whom GOD has blessed with means. “Blessed be the man that provideth for the sick and needy.”
On the mountains and in the level country the hungry and scattered sheep await the care of shepherds, who can go with little else besides their staff in their hand, and shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace, to preach to the poor and the unknown.
Work on this forbidding material will not be in vain. We may well apply to all effort for the helpless and degraded, the illustration which Cannon Farrar recently used with reference to the degraded and neglected parts of English cities. In moving in the lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury the adoption of a resolution, “That in the opinion of the House the time has come when the Church can with advantage avail herself of the voluntary self-devotion of brotherhoods, both clerical and lay, the members of which are willing to labor in the service of the Church without appealing for funds to any form of public support,” he closed his speech with these words: “Let us learn the parable from nature which a great living writer has pointed for us. Take the blackest mire of the city streets, of what is it composed? Of clay and sand and soot, all mingled in dire confusion and degradation. But under better conditions the degradation can be repaired, and the clay becomes, first, porcelain and then a sapphire; and the sand be transformed into an opal, and the water into a drop of dew, or a star of snow, or a translucent crystal, and the soot into a diamond such as
On the forehead of a queen,Trembles with dewy light.And let us not despair that a transformation yet more glorious may be wrought on human souls now thwarted and blackened by the fraud and malice of the devil, when through the agency of those whom faith inspires, they are
subjected to the divine alchemy of the Holy Spirit of GOD.”
Many souls in North Carolina, like the costly stones and precious metals hidden beneath her soil wait to be gathered and to be purified and polished and brought to adorn the bride the Church of GOD at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Who is willing to consecrate himself to this work?
XI.
THE CHURCH IN NORTH CAROLINA: ITS PRESENT
CONDITION AND PROSPECTS.
BY THE REV. MATTHIAS M. MARSHALL, D. D.
It was Virginia's Revolutionary patriot and orator—Patrick Henry—I believe, who said that “he had no way of judging the future except by the past;” and in so saying he gave expression to a very profound principle of philosophy and of history. And this principle applies generally. Even in the matter before us, it is impossible to form anything like a just estimate of the present “condition and prospects” of the Church in this State without some reference to certain data in the past which may serve to indicate its growth up to this time and its outlook for the future.
Just a hundred years ago (June 5th, 1790,) and in this hospitable old borough, “the first Convention of Churchmen ever held in North Carolina,” was composed of only two Clergymen and two Laymen.
Four years later, (May 28th, 1794), and in this same old town, five Clergymen and eight Laymen constituting, with the Bishop elect, the Convention then and there assembled, signed the testimonials of the Rev. Charles Pettigrew. Mr. Pettigrew was never consecrated, and the Diocese of North Carolina was not actually organized till 23 years later; its organization having been actually effected by the Convention of 1817, which was held in Newbern on the 24th of April of that year.
The records up to this time are very scant, but, from
such statistics as we have, it appears that during this period of more than a quarter of a century, as in the Province of North Carolina in colonial days and after the Revolution, the Church not only made no progress but actually lost ground. For whereas Mr. Pettigrew's testimonials were signed (in 1794) by five Clergymen and eight Laymen, at this Convention of 1817—twenty-three years later—the Constitution of the Diocese then “unanimously adopted and signed,” to quote the words of the minutes, had appended to it the names of only three Clergymen and five Lay delegates. But at this Convention (of 1817), when the Diocese was organized, Bishop Richard Channing Moore, of Virginia, was “invited to visit and perform the Episcopal offices in this State.” This he did for several years; and from this time on to the present, the annual journals of the Convention are uninterrupted and the growth of the Church is seen to have been steady and sure.
When Bishop Ravenscroft in 1823 (six years later) took charge of the Diocese there were reported 480 communicants, seven clergy and 200 baptisms (for that year) in the State. His salary—it may be of interest to note—was “fixed at $750, to be paid semi-annually” and exclusive of what he might receive as the rector of Christ's Church, Raleigh.
Bishop Ravenscroft died on the 5th of March, 1830, and was succeeded by Bishop Ives in 1831, who found in the Diocese fifteen clergy and eight hundred and nine commnnicants.
During the 21 years of Bishop Ives’ Episcopate, notwithstanding the troubles of the last few years of this time, incident to his vacillating course and subsequent defection, (Dec. 22d, 1852), the number of clergy increased from 15 to 40 and the communicants from 809 to over 2,000.
Bishop Atkinson was consecrated on the 18th of October, 1853, and began his work as Bishop of the Diocese the following month.
Twenty years later (May 30th, 1873), the Bishop's health having become impaired and the care of so extensive a Diocese being manifestly too much for any one man, however vigorous, as he often said, Bishop Lyman was chosen Assistant Bishop of the Diocese, and shared with his senior the enerous duties of the Episcopate till 1881, when on the death of Bishop Atkinson (Jan. 4) he became the Bishop of the Diocese.
During the 20 years of Bishop Atkinson's sole Episcopate, notwithstanding the disastrous effects of four years of civil war, the clergy had increased to 50 and the communicants to 3,742 while the reported contributions for this year (1873) were over $55,000, ($55,381.58.)
In the next decade 1873-1883, or from the consecration of Bishop Lyman to the division of the Diocese, during eight of which ten years the State had the services of two Bishops, the number of the clergy increased from 50 to 76, the communicants from 3,742 to 5,889 and the annual contributions from $55,381.58 to $61,817.69.
And in the last seven years, or from the division of the Diocese to this time, the whole number of the clergy in the State has gone up from 76 to 85 and the communicants from 5,889 to 7,500 (about 4,400 in the Diocese of North Carolina and 3,100 in East Carolina).
It is impossible, owing to the varied character of the reports of the Committees on the State of the Church and the irregularities of the parochial reports, to calculate with even approximate accuracy the average ratio of Church growth year by year; but during the Conventional year which has just closed there lacked only 93 of being as many confirmations in the present Diocese of North Carolina alone as there were in the whole State in 1883. That year there were reported in the undivided Diocese 513, this year in both Dioceses 639, (420 in North Carolina and 219 in East Carolina). In 1883 only three Churches were consecrated in the State; this year there have been eleven (6
in North Carolina and 5 in East Carolina), while in East Carolina alone not less than 42 lay readers have been licensed.
In 1883 there were only 108 parishes and mission stations in the whole State; now there are 165, (100 in North Carolina and 65 in East Carolina) an increase of over 52 per cent since the Diocese was divided.
If these and other like statistics that might be added, carefully compiled from our Journals, and from other sources that have been accessible only in the last day or two, do not conclusively show that much more has been accomplished in this large State under two Bishops than under one, and do not triumphantly vindicate the policy of division inaugurated seven years ago, then Mathematics has ceased to be an exact science and figures mean nothing. And this testimony is made much more emphatic when we reflect that, in a State almost wholly agricultural, we have had, in immediate succession, four most disastrous crop years. And yet in the Diocese of North Carolina our efficient Treasurer, to whose indefatigable efforts and faithfulness, I am persuaded, we are largely indebted for such a satisfactory state of things, reports very considerable balances to the credit of every fund in account with the Diocese; in a year, too, when we have had less than half the usual income from the Mary Smith legacy for Diocesan Missions, when the expenses of the Deputies to the General Convention were paid, and when our faithful Missionaries have received increased stipends; while in East Carolina, where the crop failures have been even more generally and seriously felt, the same state of things exists, though in somewhat less proportion.
The Committee on the State of the Church of this Diocese (East Carolina) has just said to its Council: “Most cheering evidences of the zeal of the laity in extending the Kingdom of Heaven are found in the amount and nature of the contributions as compared with those reported a year
ago * * * The aggregate amount given for Diocesan purposes being an increase of $670.52 over last year. Your Committee note with peculiar pleasure the unprecedented amount contributed for Missions in our own Diocese, which aggregates from all sources $1,970.03, an increase of $1,041.58.”
“On the whole your Committee believe that the signs for growth along all the lines of the Church's work call for gratitude for the tokens of Divine favor in the past, and encourage us to ‘go forward’ in the name of the Lord.”
The same committee—that on the State of the Church—of this Diocese of North Carolina have also just reported “that having reviewed the parochial reports and other papers placed in their hands they find ample ground for thankfulness and encouragement in the evident indications of the Divine blessing on the work of the Diocese every where prevailing.”
And there are other things to be considered, in estimating the present condition of the Church in the State, whose importance, I believe, is often understimated.
We have at Asheville, in Charlotte, at Raleigh, in Wilmington, at Chocowinity and elsewhere in the State, Schools, Institutes, Missions, Homes, Hospitals, Guilds, Brotherhoods and other churchly and charitable institutions on good foundations and of high character; of quiet and sure growth and of constantly increasing usefulness whose good work no statistics can adequately measure or forecast. So that while we are still weak, as compared with many of the populous and wealthy Dioceses in the North and West, yet the growth of the Church, especially of late years, and its present condition in the State, is full of encouragement. The character of the people among whom we live and labor, than whom none are more industrious, law-abiding, generous and kind, should encourage us; and the condition and manifest future of the State should especially encourage us. No more genial, healthful
and delightful climate is to be found on this continent than North Carolina has the year round. Everything—it is scarcely too much to say—combines to invite immigration of the highest character, and capital. Not one of the original thirteen States has a more honorable record. No where else in the same area of territory can there be found such varied resources and possibilities whether for agriculture, or manufacturing, or mining, or what not, as North Carolina abounds in. As has been often said, no other of the 42 States fills up the census blanks as North Carolina does. Already, as the secular papers daily remind us, the old Old North State is waking up as never before. Her many attractions and advantages are becoming year by year better known; and the census to be taken next month will probably show her population to be little less than a million and a half. Manufactories and other industries are springing up in every quarter, not a few of them with invested capital of such proportion as to promise permanency, large profits and regular employment to industrious multitudes. To take but a single illustration—in 1883 there were but sixty cotton factories in the State. In the last seven years these figures have been doubled. To-day there are one hundred and twenty. There are very few towns and villages in the State that do not show unmistakable evidences of marked growth and improvement, especially in the last ten or fifteen years. Railroads are being built and extended in every direction, and everywhere evidences abound of our increasing prosperity as a people. These things mean encouragement certainly, in our work for Christ and His Church, but they also remind us of increased and increasing opportunities for good, and consequent responsibilities. Then besides these attractions of this peculiarly highly favored region as a State so well calculated to bring to us co-laborers, there is a feature of the Church in our two Dioceses that is even more inviting. I mean the entire absence of any thing like party
spirit. No Diocese in the country can boast of greater harmony or of more sincere, cordial and even affectionate relations and co-operation than that which has always characterized the clergy and people of the Church in North Carolina. We want more clergy, more laborers in a field so full of promise and ripe to the harvest, but to this end, I respectfully submit, we need still another organized centre of Diocesan life and influence and work. GOD forbid that I should utter a discordant syllable to disturb, by however little, the harmony of this centennial celebration, but I stand before you not of my free choice, nor was I consulted about the topic assigned me for discussion, and I shall not be false to my convictions. The time is perhaps not yet, but if the issue were presented—the necessary consent of the Bishop having been obtained—I should esteem it a privilege to vote to-morrow to divide the present Diocese of North Carolina, making three in the State of about equal territorial extent. The hope and belief that this would be done some day, I need scarcely remind many of you, was the chief consideration that reconciled the friends of division, seven years ago, to the present line that so unequally apportions the area of the State between East and North Carolina. The Church will never be at all adequately equipped for the great work that lies before it, clamoring to be done—if I may so say—in this magnificent and extensive Commonwealth, till we have the See and Bishop of Asheville, of Raleigh and of Wilmington, three Dioceses, constituting—according to primitive principle and practice—the Province of North Carolina.
Any one who has looked in on the proceedings of our General Convention during either of its last three or four sessions can scarcely fail to have observed this more and more marked trend of thought, not to say of growing conviction, towards the Provincial system as a necessity for the Church in this country.
Aside from its being confessedly Catholic and primitive,
our rapidly increasing population as a nation and our growth as a Church seem absolutely to demand its adoption.
In a country with a population already numbering over fifty millions and rapidly increasing, and in a Church with more than 4,000 clergy and about a half million communicants, is it any wonder that our General Convention is becoming at every session more and more unwieldly as Dioceses multiply, (we have already 64 Dioceses and Missionary jurisdictions) and that thorough discussion and legislation upon any matter brought before it, however important, should be, session after session, more and more difficult?”
To adopt the Provincial system would be to solve many practical difficulties in our Church polity and legislation, that are now only increasing with our growth. If to the Provincial Synod were relegated much of the legislation that now goes to General Convention, and is there necessarily less advisedly considered (as being of local nature) than it would be in a smaller body nearer home, then the General Convention need meet less frequently, and could accomplish much more when it did meet, being relieved of unnecessary burdens, and so too might the number of its deputies be reduced, making the Province the unit of representation, without infringing upon the rights of the Dioceses constituting the Province.
The demand for proportionate representation in our General Convention is heard at every triennial session with augmented force and earnestness, and it will continue to be heard; and I believe that the smaller and weaker Dioceses at the South, and elsewhere, are in danger of being dominated by the larger and more populous Dioceses of the North and West, unless some such relief, as the Provincial system would afford, is secured. Nor is this proposed remedy, for these and such like practical and increasing difficulties that the Church must needs encounter, as it
grows in a vast country like this, anything new or untried. Several of our Dioceses—notably that of Central New York—are moving in the matter. One of the standing Joint Committees of the General Convention, composed of the Presiding Bishop and fourteen other of our most learned Bishops, Priests and Laymen, is a Committee on the Provincial System distinctively. Our Canons already authorize the formation of a Federate Council of the Dioceses within any State, which is a long step in the right direction, and Illinois with its three Dioceses has already become a Province, name and thing, with its Provincial Synod and Court of Appeal. And this is another cry that becomes louder year by year in the Church, this righteous demand for a Court of Appeal, a right and privilege that every citizen in this broad land enjoys, except a Clergyman of this Church—as a clergyman. The Provincial Synod, constituting such a court, is confessedly the best solution of this vexed question also.
But granting the importance of all these things, admitting the greatly increased efficiency (which I suppose hardly any one would question) that would be given to the work and growth of the Church in this State by the setting off from the present Diocese of North Carolina of still another Diocese in the West, and surely all that magnificent and rapidly developing mountain region for miles and miles around, of which Asheville is the centre, is as much as any one Bishop however active or vigorous could possibly oversee: admitting, I say, the force of these and many other like considerations and advantages, there will be heard of course the usual objection that is ever ready to be thrown in the way of all proposed progress and growth in Church or State, in things material as well as in things spiritual—Where is the money coming from?
It is the same old cry that we have heard from the first and will hear to the end.
In the very first history that we have of the Christian
Church, in the Book of the Acts, we read of a certain Ananias with Sapphira his wife “who sold a possession and kept back part of the price,” and their covetousness was unmasked. They were neither able to deceive GOD, nor excuse themselves by pleading their exclusive right of ownership to what they held only in trust. And so there have been such obstacles in the way of every good work ever since. Counterparts of these two covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth, alas! are to be found the world over and in every age and enterprise.
But thank GOD, they may stop neither the progress of the world nor of the Church of GOD.
If all the fourteen Southern States were consolidated into one Diocese, with but one Bishop to support, does any body think for an instant that the people of the various parishes in those States would give any more to the support of their respective ministers or for Missions, or for any other Church or charitable object than they do now? Would exemption from the necessity of supporting in each separate State or Diocese their own Bishop, make them either more able or willing to give to other things? Have we not reason to believe that directly the contrary would be the result. What costs us nothing, we value accordingly. It is an axiom that within reasonable limits, the more you require of men the more they will do; and the less that is required the less will be done.
I have attended (with only two exceptions I think) every Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina for the last 29 years, and on every such occasion—I think I may safely say—I have never failed to hear something, generally a good deal, about the general pecuniary pressure, hard times, and the impossibility of doing this, that or the other necessary thing for want of the money.
But some how or other, many of those necessary things as they seemed to us were done just the same, and the Church has gone on and grown and prospered, and GOD
has taken care of His own and will, we may be sure, to the end. He will be no man's debtor. Nor can we improve on his methods—a truth that we, in our selfsufficiency, seem slow to learn.
We want especially for the Church in this State, it is true, Missionaries and Missions, and Missionary activity and zeal and they and theirs must be fed and clothed.
But what is GOD’s plan? Who were the first Missionaries? Were they not the Apostles themselves? Were they not first sent forth as the leaders and pioneers to make disciples of all nations? Were they required to hold themselves in reserve till a company large or small of elders and deacons were gathered about them? Were they not themselves sent forth to seek such out and ordain them and set things in order? Still less did they wait for endownments or certain guarantees of assured support. On the contrary the command was: “Provide neither purse nor scrip”—“the laborer is worthy of his hire,” and from that day to this that promise has never failed, and it never will—for it is of GOD.
It were nothing less than a libel on our Bishops to say that they are unwilling to make the same sacrifices, to run the same risks—as the world would say—but in reality to trust to GOD’s providence and promises to take care of his own, in the same way that they expect their Clergy to do.
A more active, laborious and self-denying body of men does not exist than the Bishops of the American Church, and they were never in labors more abundant than now.
Never in this State in any year has there been reported such a measure of service on the part of our Bishops—so many sermons and addresses and visitations, or so many confirmations, ordinations and consecrations of Churches as has just been reported to the two Conventions just risen.
Our Bishops as a class are ever ready to spend and be spent and no Diocese however small or poor, has ever failed to find some one to share its trials and labors and
joys as its Bishop and leader in the work for Christ and His Church.
This plea of poverty will not hold, at least till we show more signs of self-denial in our luxuries and apparel and amusements, etc.
We make much less of it in our other relations.
We do not wait for endowments nor an accumulation of capital for the purpose when we want to improve the city or town in which we live with water works, a sewer system, gas or electricity, paved streets and street cars. We are satisfied to bear regularly and continously our share of the burden of necessary taxation, and good and growth and prosperity follow, and we are wise and content.
But in spite of this far too common and unworthy plea of poverty heard the world over, and in every age when the self-denying precepts of Christianity are urged, the Church even in our midst has felt the impetus of the general revival of late years.
Time was—and not long since—when our Churches were closed from Sunday to Sunday and many of them from month to month: when the Holy Communion was administered but three or four times a year and week-day services were almost unknown: when our Bishops were hauled about over the State in lumbering coaches and looked upon chiefly as distinguished Dignitaries of imposing presence and appearance in their robes of office and interesting to see and hear at long intervals, but with little appreciation of their true mission as their chief pastors, guides and spiritual fathers of the people of their charge.
But what a change has the last quarter or half century witnessed! The dust and cobwebs have been removed. Church buildings unused from Sunday to Sunday or from month to month resound with the prayers and praises of frequent week-day services. Vested choirs and choristers, bright and airy buildings, churchly and cheery music, beautiful altars adorned and redolent with the sweet fragrance
of flowers, these and other like improved appointments for a more hearty, devout and enjoyable worship have very generally taken the place of the dreary drone and perfunctory services that were too common in other days.
Above all, it is a matter of gratification and thanksgiving that free and open seats in GOD's House of Prayer “for all people” are so generally taking the place of rented or owned pews. According to last year's report of the “Free and Open Church Association” more than 75 per cent. of all our Churches in this country are now free: and this percentage is increasing every year.
In the Diocese of North Carolina; all are reported free but one: In East Carolina all but nine, while in Fond du Lac and Florida all are free.
The time is not far distant—as I verily believe—when no Christian man anywhere will dare claim any right of personal property in GOD's House of Prayer for all people. For—as it is expressed in the report just referred to—“The entire practice of reserved rights in the house of GOD is utterly foreign to the letter and spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is based upon selfishness and the desire for one's comfort and convenience. It is not sufficient that the pew-holder be courteous and allow the stranger to sit in his pew. If it be a Church and not a Club House, it is the latter's pew as much as his, and he asks not for courtesy, but his right.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be truly preached until the rich man be made to realize that in the Church of GOD he has no more right than the man without a dollar, or until the poor man realizes as he treads the floor of GOD's temple that there, as having a soul for which Christ died, he is the peer of the richest of his brethren.”
But not only is the Church of to-day and in our midst discarding the buckram and starch that in years gone by so hampered and restrained her growth; not only is she no
longer content to be chiefly respectable and cultured, dignified and dull, but the signs of the times seem to point to her especially as the chief conservative stay and hope of this country. Her distinctive principles and polity are attracting attention now as never before; and the reason is obvious.
When men substitute for the Apostles’ Creed, Confessions of faith elaborately drawn out in dogma and doctrine—the work of men's minds—they will continue to find from time to time that these statements of doctrine need to be changed to conform to the progressive Christian enlightenment of the age. How different the way of the Church in setting forth the faith once for all “delivered unto the Saints,” in requiring belief only in the Apostles’ Creed in its time-honored simplicity and beauty, and mainly a recitation of facts about which all Christians are agreed. Is it any wonder that a Church of such manifest Catholicity—numbering among her clergy such men as Morgan Dix and Phillips Brooks, the Bishop of Springfield and the Bishop of Virginia, should offer to Christians of this land confessedly the most reasonable and probable basis of organic Church unity; and that the religious world should be looking to her with an earnestness, and anxiety and hopefulness never before known in her history? What means the application for orders in the Church of such men as Dr. Childs, the distinguished Presbyterian Minister of Washington City, a few weeks ago, or of the scarcely less distinguished and learned Dr. Quinn, of Helena, Montana, who made a similar application to Bishop Brewer only last week? And such cases, we know are constantly occurring. Indeed ploding along in our busy way, and occupied with our own Diocesan duties, we have little conception of the marvellous growth of the Church in this country in the last half or three-quarters of a Century.
Take as an illustration these few facts from the March
number of the Spirit of Missions, as given recently by the Rev. William Wilkinson, of Minneapolis, to a Church meeting in Boston:
“The lessons of history have for us been written in vain if they do not produce profound gratitude on the one hand for the wonderful past, and on the other incite us to noble resolve that by grace the future shall be yet more glorious. In the year 1820 there were only 321 clergymen in our Church in the whole United States and Territories of America. To-day there are 4,060, an increase of 1,266 per cent. in sixty-nine years. In the year 1830 the population was nearly 13,000,000 souls, and the Church had less than 40,000 communicants. To-day, in the State of New York alone, with 5,000,000 people, the Church has 114,500 communicants; while twenty-two states have been added to the Union, the Church has created sixty-four Dioceses and Missionary jurisdictions; and in the time in which the population has increased fivefold the membership of the Church has increased twelvefold. About seventy years ago our proportion was one in 416 of the population. To-day we are one in 151. The boy knows his Creed who, if the ratio of increase is kept up which has existed since 1820, will see in our Church 50,700 clergymen, with 5,000,000 communicants. This takes no note of all the institutions of philanthropy, the colleges, theological seminaries and other means of blessing men; but it calls upon us to prepare for the future by endowing schools and churches. The people come like a flood, and if true to our Master there is a future for the Church in this land more blessed than the most optimistic among us can anticipate.”
And what is here said “for the Church in this land,” as a whole, is true also in its measure for the Church in this State.
Let us thank GOD and take courage. As with this joint celebration, we enter upon the second century of our
recognized existence as a Church in this highly favored region of such vast possibilities and promise of prosperity, let us seek with renewed activity to put ourselves more in line with the progressive spirit of the age.
Let us seek to realize and appreciate the more our special and increasing opportunities, privileges and responsibilities.
This far too common over-anxiety about the morrow—“what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or where-withal we shall be clothed,” is unworthy of us and of our heritage and prospects as a Church and as a people in this grand old Commonwealth.
To endeavor earnestly to do the duty that lies next before us—trusting implicitly in GOD's methods and GOD's promises—this it is ours to do, and to bear and suffer, if need be. Results and consequences are with GOD.
And as in the past, so for the future we may with confident assurance trust Him and love Him and “praise Him for His goodness and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men.”
“GOD's time with patient faith expect,* * * * * * do thou thy partAnd leave to Him the rest.”XII.THE DUTY OF THE CHURCH WITH REFERENCE
TO UNITY AMONG CHRISTIANS.*
BY THE REV. FRANCIS J. MURDOCH, L. L. D.
In trying to handle the subject assigned to me, I will first, at some length, discuss the peculiarities both of the situation and nature of our Church, and then briefly point out the conclusions, which are so obvious, that they do not need to be drawn, but come of their own accord.
Peculiar responsibility lies on our Church, first, because she is a Church of the Anglo Saxon people. It is said that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the population of England numbered five million, now the English speaking people number more than a hundred million. Then the Anglo Saxon race was confined to a single island, now it possesses the choicest parts of the Globe. In Europe, it possesses the British Islands; in Africa, all South Africa and Egypt, the most important part of the continent; in North America, the whole continent except Mexico and Central America. In South America English population is flowing to the most flourishing republics, and will soon prevail over weaker people. In Asia, our race owns India, the most populous or next to the most populous empire in the world; while the whole continent of Australia and thousands of the islands of the sea are ours. The possession of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Egypt, with the Suez Canal, has converted the Mediterranean Sea into
*As Mr. Murdoch used neither manuscript nor notes, only the substance of his address can be given.an English lake. Ours are Aden, the Cape of Good Hope, the strait of Mallacca, Hong Kong, the passes of the Himalaya, in fact every strategic point in the world, necessary to the predominance of our race, except Constantinople and the Panama Canal if finished; and it is already settled, that whenever it is necessary, our race will contend for the possession even of these, if any one has the heart to contend with us.
But it is not only by the possession of territory that we are influencing the world. Every State on the continent of Europe has during this century reformed its legislative body after the model of the English Parliament, or the American Congress, except Russia and Turkey, and even these would follow our lead if they could. The republics of Mexico, Central and South America, and others, have all copied the form of our government. Our juries, our methods of administering justice, our laws and customs are penetrating every where. Look at the strange spectacle of British India. At the last census how many Anglo Saxons were there in that Empire of two hundred and forty million? Just one to every thousand. Just one English man, woman or child to every thousand natives. Does it not seem that GOD is offering to our race the primacy of the world, as three hundred years ago it was offered to the Spanish race? The opportunity was lost by the Spaniard, on account of his determination to reign as King, to enslave, to crush, to exercise every cruelty according to his own will. We hope it will not be lost by ours, because we go not to enslave, but to set free, not to depress, but to elevate, to make men know and share our blessings political and social. Because we belong to this race, because our Church is a Church of the Anglo Saxon people, there belongs to us a greater responsibility than falls to the lot of many others.
But there is a second reason for our greater responsibility.
In the reign of Henry the Seventh, the Church of England is acknowledged by all to have been a true branch of the Catholic Church, and the sole Church of the English people. No other Church or denomination or sect divided their allegiance, it was the Church of the whole people. And what it was then it had been for a thousand years, the sole Church of the English speaking people. Now the nature of that Church was that which is described in the Latin maxim “Ecclesia est in Episcopo,” i.e. “the Church is in the Bishop.” I am not undertaking to prove that this was right or according to the word of GOD. I am speaking of the fact, as a matter of fact, that was then, and always had been the nature of the English Church. Now what does this mean? The Church was composed of her laymen and Bishops, Priests and Deacons. Now if she were deprived of her Bishops, Priests and Deacons, her life would be limited to the life of a single generation, because there would be none in her authorized to preach and baptize, none commissioned to admit new members by baptism, nor to govern those admitted. If her Bishops and Priests were taken away and her Deacons left, her life would be prolonged another generation, because as long as her Deacons lived they could baptize. But the Deacons could not make other Deacons, nor authorize other persons to baptize, and so when the Deacons died, baptism would cease, and when the generation of baptized died her life would come to an end.
If her Bishops were taken away and her Priests left, they could not make her life longer than the Deacons could, though they could administer the Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, and exercise all that government, which admission to or rejection from that sacrament implies. But if her Bishops were left, her life could be prolonged from generation to generation, because they could do what the other ministers could not do. They could ordain, and that not only Deacons and
Priests, to help them to baptize and govern christians, but other Bishops to succeed themselves. Thus wherever there were Bishops, both other Bishops and Priests and Deacons could be ordained, and all things could be administered, but without Bishops all ministry and sacraments would cease in a generation or two. So the Church was in the Bishops, her life bound up with the continuance of that order. This being the Constitution of that Church of England as it was in the reign of Henry Seventh, and had been from the beginning; where is that Church to-day? Now as a matter of fact every one of the two hundred Bishops of our own Church, which is sometimes called the Anglican Communion, has received his ordination by succession from Henry Seventh's Bishops. The name of every man ordained by Henry Seventh's Bishops, or by those again, and so on from that day to this, is known, it is as well known as the succession of English Kings or of American Presidents, and every Bishop in our Church to a man has had his office from them. That is the positive side, but there is a negative. There is not another Bishop alive that has his orders from the same Bishops of the Church, in the reign of Henry Seventh, whom I have so often mentioned. Not even in the Church of Rome is there one such Bishop. When the Reformation came on about 180 out of 9,000 clergy refused to accept the changes, that is about one out of fifty. Among these 180 were several Bishops. Those Bishops who approved the Reformation ordained others and continued the succession. Most of those who would not accept the change resided quietly in England, and died without attempting to ordain others. But two escaped to the Continent and sat in the Council of Trent. Why did not these ordain others and perpetuate a line of Bishops that might claim to be the successors of those of the Church of England in Henry Seventh's time? Here Rome's vaulting ambition overreached herself. In order that there might be no Bishops deriving their office
elsewhere than from Rome, she suffered these to die withour ordaining others. So no Bishop has his office from the Henry Seventh Bishops but those of our Church. Wherever Roman Catholic Bishops minister to English speaking people their orders are fresh and hot from Rome. Now the Constitution of the Church of England being such that the Church is in the Bishop, and that succession of Bishops being continued in our Church, and in ours alone, it follows that our Church and ours alone is the Historic Church of the Anglo Saxon race.
So responsibility lies on us, firstly, because we are a Church of the great Anglo Saxon race, and secondly, because we are the Historic Church of that race. A third particular of our responsibility will be found in our peculiar relation to other denominations of Christians of our own race. Here for sake of brevity I must confine my remarks to a few of these denominations, and for reasons which will appear, I shall take the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Lutherans, all our brethren beloved in the Lord.
There was one form of Presbyterianism that prevailed in Switzerland, another form (or modification of it, if you please) in Holland, another in Scotland, and another was framed by the Westminster Assembly. Now that form of Presbyterianism which has grown and spread so wonderfully has not been Swiss, nor Dutch, nor Scotch Presbyterianism, but Westminster Presbyterianism. This form when brought into intimate connection with any other form always supersedes it, its superiority is so apparent. Had it been otherwise, had any other form prevailed, then there had been five times as many points of difference between the Presbyterians and the Church as there are now. Westminster Presbyterianism is much nearer to us. There is a reason for it. Many thorough Churchmen were appointed to sit in the Westminster Assembly. Some refused to come, others were expelled for not taking the Solemn
League and Covenant, and Dr. Featley was expelled for corresponding with Arch-Bishop Ussher. The Assembly after this drew with much care and labor and patience the Westminster formularies. But even of this body a very large part had been bred in the Church of England, and had been ordained by her Bishops. Of these, several conformed to the Church after the Restoration, and one, Reynolds, became one of her Bishops. No wonder that in the Westminster formularies there are so many points of agreement with the teachings of the Church. Surely if Methodists and Baptists may truly claim to be brethren to the Presbyterians, who hold the Westminster formularies, our Church may claim a nearer tie, to that great and glorious communion, a relationship not less than that of mother.
Here, if you will pardon me for making a digression, I will make a remark concerning that most interest interesting movement going on among some of our Presbyterian brethren concerning a revision of the Westminster Confession of Faith, so as to exclude certain parts that are no longer generally believed. If this revision is carried out, the Confession will be still nearer to our own formularies. But another consequence will follow: what remains will be closely examined, and compared with Scripture, and many who hold but loosely its high sacramental doctrines, will be brought to accept them clearly and to hold firmly to the literal meaning of the language in which they are expressed. Those who do this will not be far from the teachings of our Church.
The Presbyterians then may claim the Church as their mother; the Methodists do claim it, their forms of baptism, of marriage, and burial of the dead, their offices for celebrating the Holy Communion, and for ordination, are taken word for word, with certain omissions and a few changes, from the Prayer-Book of the Church of England.
Whatever the feeling may be about the matter, when it comes to a question of fact, the relationship both of Methodism
and of Presbyterianism is nearer to us than to each other. They may be brethren, but the Church is their mother. So I might in turn point out the nearness of the Church to the various other denominations belonging to the Anglo Saxon race, but time compels me to forbear. But the rule will hold with regard to all; near as they may be to each other, the Church is nearer to each of them still.
There is one denomination not originally belonging to our race, but brought among us by immigrants, to which our relation is marvelous. I mean the Lutherans, who number more than a million of communicants in the United States. Very early in the Reformation of our Church, many in authority, and especially Cranmer, were anxious to adopt some confession of doctrine which could be approved both by English and German Reformers, and thus serve as a bond of Union. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 would have contented the German Reformers, but many of its extreme (as it seems to us) expressions could not be approved by the English Bishops. Many conferences were held in England between some English Bishops and delegates from those professing the Augsburg Confession, which resulted in drawing up that document which is known as the 13 Articles, from which all our snbsequent Articles of Religion have been drawn. Now these 13 Articles were designed to approach as nearly as possible to the language and substance of the Augsburg Confession, so that our Articles of to-day come closer to the Augsburg Confession than any other symbolical document in Christendom, and where there is a material variation it is generally such as was agreed on by the English Bishops and German Orators in these Conferences which resulted in the 13 Articles that were designed to be a basis of unity. Where then is there a body of Christians among the Anglo Saxon people that comes so near in its doctrines to our brethren who hold to the Augsburg Confession, as we do? Thus on examination it will be found that our Church is
next of kin to every body of Christians of our race that has an orthodox faith, and so by Providence is designed to be a centre of unity to them all.
Such then being the facts, there lies on our Church a responsibility with regard to unity that she cannot get rid of. We cannot say to our Presbyterian brethren: “we do not want to be the leaders in this matter of unity, and therefore we ask you to be the Historic Church of the race, and take that responsibility which belongs to such a Church.” We cannot say to our Methodist brethren: “we do not want to be the mother, but prefer to be the daughter, and invite you to be the parent, and to have all the parent's responsibility.” No, the responsibility is on us and we cannot get rid of it. Providence is offering to make us the centre of Christian unity in this great Anglo Saxon race of ours, and then to the ends of the earth. But the offer brings duty, and if the duty is not performed we will lose the reward. We may fail as the Spanish Church failed three centuries ago to accept the destiny that GOD offered it. We may look round us and say that in all Christendom there is none that can be the centre of unity but ourselves—but GOD who is able to raise up children to Abraham from the stones of Jordan, can work out his designs without our Church or our race either; and He will do it unless we do our duty.
What then is this duty?
First I would say, we are in duty bound to recognize, to the fullest extent that truth will warrant, the Christianity of our Protestant brethren of our own race, and the relationship that our Church bears to them. There are points of difference that we are bound to see, there are principles about which there must be no cowardly compromise, but then there is a tie that binds us all together ten-fold stronger than all that separates. We know that millions among them do, with all their hearts, desire to do the will of our Heavenly Father, and so are to Jesus Christ as his
brother, and his sister, and his mother, and should be no less dear to us.
Now it seems to me that there is a practical way for us to realize ourselves the love we ought to bear to them, and to make them realize it. In our own State there are thousands who are not, and make no profession that they are, servants of Christ. In my own field of labor, for example, out of a population of 90,000, there is about one-third of the white population, as well as I can estimate it, which is not included in any denomination of Christians. Now when these unconverted, unsaved men are living at our very door, if we make it our main end to bring Christians of other denominations into the Church, is not that saying to them: “we consider you to be as far from Salvation as these heathenish men and publicans.” No, let us show by our works, that we think that there is a world of difference between an humble follower of Christ, who is a member of some of these communions, and an unconverted sinner who knows not GOD. Let us turn our whole effort to reach those who are ignorant and out of the way. If our brethren of other denominations do so too, so much the better, so much the sooner the Gospel will be preached to those who now obey it not; and if our fellow Christians and we labor side by side in rescuing the perishing, no doubt some great blessing will come on us. Heartsick ourselves with the sores of division, while we obey the command to carry the Gospel to every creature, the blessing will over-take us—a blessing like that of old—“And as they went they were healed.”
Again, there is, and has for a long time been, any amount of carping criticism of the Church and her ways. We are spoken against as evil doers. How is this to be answered? Not by Apostolic blows and knocks; not by learned controversies to enlighten those who do not want to be enlightened. The Apostle long ago prescribed how to silence these men; and that is by good works. Good works is the
only effective answer to evil speaking: “Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles, that whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may by your good works which they shall behold, glorify GOD in the day of visitation. * * * For so is the will of GOD that with well doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
Would you see an instance of this, then go to Charlotte, where they have the Thompson Orphanage, and Church Hospitals, both for white and colored folks, good works that every one knows of. Now stop a stranger in the street, and tell him: “Henry the Eighth founded the Episcopal Church,” and see if he does not reply, while he points to those works of charity: “Well, if he did, he founded a Church that is fuller of grace and mercy to the poor and sick and the orphans than any other that I know.” Go to Rowan county and tell a stranger: “Henry the Eighth founded the Episcopal Church,” and see if he does not point to her Mission Chapels among the poorest of the people, and tell you “Well, if he did, he founded a Church that is more like the Master in preaching the Gospel to the poor, than any that had a better founder.” Let the light of good works shine, and the darkness of lies and slander and bitterness will flee away.
Again in these days when the Church is enlarging the place of her habitation, and reaching out after multitudes of men, the Prophet Isaiah gives us a rule for our conduct. “Lengthen thy cords, strengthen thy stakes.” As the cord that held up a small tent is not long enough to hold a large one, so the stake that was strong enough for the little one will not do for the great one. In days when but few people were brought into the Church a weaker apprehension of Church principles would suffice than in these days when numbers are added to the Church. If we are really to hold and teach these, “the stakes must be strengthened,” there must be a clearer and firmer grasp of Church principles than ever before. Our laymen must
study to “know the certainty of the things in which they have been instrncted.” Our own people must be taught, and those who are willing to understand must be instructed, about what we hold to be the truth.
The old days of controversy have I hope departed forever. The end they had in view, i. e. to teach men who were determined not to know, is no longer before us. Truth cannot be beaten into men's brains. Men were beguiled into error, and must be beguiled out of it. If any man will be ignorant, let him be ignorant. Their method too of sharpness and bitterness has I hope come to an end. But men of those days had one merit, they spoke “the truth,” if they did not speak it in love. Our danger is that because we love we will conceal the truth which we fear may grieve our brethren. As our fathers did not shrink from proclaiming the truth when it would provoke the anger and scorn and enmity of those around them, let us not shrink from declaring the whole truth though it may wound the feelings: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.”
Such then are our responsilities and such our duties.
As the late Bishop of Durham showed, in his famous sermon before the Church Congress, the Lord has promised in the latter days to set up some Church as a centre of unity. “He shall set up an ensign for the nations.” The vision is not of such unity as Rome dreamed of, with Rome itself as the mother and mistress of all Churches, but a unity of equals, a union of brethren; it is a standard around which all may cluster, and through which all the nations of the earth may be blessed.
Such is the crown offered by GOD to our own beloved Church—but on condition that we prove worthy of it. But to gain it we need united effort—to gain it there is need of many cool heads and warm hearts and of a zeal that counts not the cost.
Note by the Publisher:—Page 357, Mr. Murdoch's title should read “S. T. D.” Page 359, 12th line from top, a new sentence should begin with—“As a matter of fact,” &c.XIII.
WHITE HAVEN CHURCH
—AND—
THE REV. ROBERT JOHNSTON MILLER.
BY THE REV. JOS. BLOUNT CHESHIRE, JR.
I.WHITE HAVEN.
White Haven Church stood on the east side of the old plank road from Charlotte to Lincolnton, about sixteen miles from Charlotte, and one mile south of the present village of Lowesville. Lowesville is in Lincoln county, but the site of the old church is now within the county of Gaston. An old grave-yard, surrounded by a dry stone wall, identifies the locality, and back of the grave-yard a few scattered trunks, dead and fast decaying, of what were once noble chestnuts, mark the spot where the humble log church stood beneath their shade. A Presbyterian church, called Castania, stands on the other side of the road, a hundred or two yards nearer to Lowesville. A few of the older inhabitants of the country, on both sides of the Catawba, remember when the old church was standing, and a few old men still recall the fact that they were baptized by Parson Miller; but, even its immediate neighborhood, many of the people are ignorant of the sacred associations of the spot.
On the 10th of August, 1885, by the kindness of a friend, Mr. Frank Blythe, I was taken to this interesting spot.
My companion had been baptized in infancy by Parson Miller, and as a boy had been sent by his mother, who had been brought up in that church, to take part with other neighbors in the annual cleaning up of the grave-yard. But for his personal knowledge of the locality, I should have been unable to identify the site of the church, as none of the neighbors could give me any certain information in regard to it. Some who knew that a church had once stood there, were not sure of its having been the original White Haven, since another church of that name had once stood about two miles north of Lowesville.
The grave-yard is still used, as some new-made graves and fresh grave-stones bore witness. None of the stones were of an early date. I was told that the oldest graves were just north of the present enclosure, outside the stone wall. The earliest date discovered was 1804; and the next oldest 1827. None were of any special interest. The earliest was the most curious, and the following inscription on it may possibly have been an effusion of Parson Miller's muse:
HERE LIES THE BODY OF BURCHATT KIMBELLE, WHO WAS BORN MARCH 20th, 1782, AND DIED OCTOBER 17th, A. D., 1804.
Early, not sudden, was her fate.Soon, not surprising, Death his visit paid.Her thought went forth to meet him on his way;Nor gaiety forgot it was to die.Does youth, does beauty read the line?Does sympathetic fear their breast alarm?Speak, dead Burchatt! breathe a strain divine;Even from the grave thou shalt have power to charm.Bid them give each day the merit and renownOf dying well, though doomed but once to die.The young lady whose mortal remains lie buried beneath this stone, was much admired and beloved, and her death caused wide-spread grief. Persons now living can recall the feeling of general sorrow at her death, which lingered long in the community, and which confirmed the testimony of this epitaph to her personal charms and the graces of her character.
We were especially interested in two other stones—simple, undressed pieces of rough granite—at the head of two graves side by side, with only the inscription “C. N., June, 1831,” and “M. N.” These my friend was able to identify by the initials, the date, and the later head-stones near by, as marking the graves of his grand-father and grand-mother, Clement Nantz, and Martha his wife.
The following account of this old church is derived from various sources, printed documents, MSS. and oral tradition.
The Rev. Robert Johnston Miller, a Scotchman by birth, and a Methodist preacher on the Tar River Circuit in 1785—having withdrawn from the Conference, because he found that the Methodists were departing from the Church, settled on the west bank of the Catawba River in 1786. At the request of the people of “White Haven and the lower and upper Smyrna” he began to act as lay-reader, keeping up the public services on Sunday and catechising the children. His congregations were chiefly settled along the west bank of the Catawba River in the county of Lincoln, though much of that region is now included within the later county of Gaston. “They were chiefly emigrants from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia,” “a mixed people, Germans, English, Irish, and some Scotch, originally, but at that time very destitute of any regular religious instructions.” “The most of them and their forefathers were, and had been, members of the Episcopal Church.”
A congregation was organized, a vestry elected, and
application was made to the General Assembly for an Act of Incorporation. Prayer Books could not be obtained. They had a few of the English books, and Mr. Miller procured two copies of the first edition of the American Book published in Philadelphia. He also had printed at Salisbury the Church Catechism, to which he added some explanations of Church principles and usages.
The most numerous religious denomination with which he was brought in contact seems to have been the Lutherans, and their system of worship and doctrine made them more congenial to him as a Churchman than the Presbyterians, his only other neighbors. They were very greatly in need of ministers, and they urged Mr. Miller to accept ordination at their hands, and to co-operate with them. His own congregations recommended the same course, and the Lutherans alleged that the Rev. Mr. Pilmour of Philadelphia, a very eminent divine in the Episcopal Church, had taken this course during the Revolutionary war. Mr. Miller yielded, though he confesses that he was never quite able to satisfy himself that he had acted agreeably to his principles in so doing. But it was distinctly understood on all hands that Mr. Miller remained an Episcopalian, and this understanding was endorsed upon the Letter of Orders given him by the Lutheran ministers. This matter, however, will be more properly considered in connection with Mr. Miller's personal history; we are now more particularly concerned with the affairs of White Haven Parish.
It was soon after Mr. Miller took charge of White Haven, and before his Lutheran ordination, that the few remaining clergy in the East began the effort to organize a Diocese in the State of North Carolina. Though officiating only as Lay-reader, he seems to have been elected a clerical member of the Standing Committee by the Convention of November 21st, 1793; and immediately after his ordination he attended the meeting of May 28th, 1794,
and voted as one of the Clergy in the election of the Rev. Charles Pettigrew as Bishop. His name will be found among the names of the Clergy in the signatures appended to the Certificate of that election.
Although Mr. Pettigrew was never consecrated, he exerted himself to revive the interests of the Church throughout the State, and carried on an extensive correspondence to this end. Among other letters preserved by him is one from Mr. Miller, the most material parts of which are as follows:
WHITE HAVEN, 6th of May, 1795.
Rev. and Dear Sir:
* * * * * * * * *
I have reason to hope that your pious wishes and charitable suppositions will be verified in the Rev. Mr. Dent, although I have not had an opportunity of a personal acquaintance with him as yet; but those who have, assure me that he is generally esteemed as a man of piety and learning, which to us, in our present situation, is, I hope, no small acquisition.*
The situation of the Lutheran Clergy in this quarter, in my opinion, demands immediate attention. They have, since my last to you, lost their senior member, the Rev. Mr. A. Nussman, a truly worthy, learned, and Godly man, although bred a Franciscan. Some of them have expressed a desire of sending forward a number of their body to our Convention, in order to form some bonds of coalescing, and I have reason to believe that, should such a circumstance take place, and the end accomplished with propriety, it would be beneficial to both parties; but of this you would be a much better judge, were you to visit this quarter in your official character; and you will permit me to hope that the period is not far distant.
* * * * * * * * *
As for myself and flock, I have abundant reason to be thankful to GOD for health of body and peace of mind, although my progress in the knowledge, love, and service of Him is far too torpid; but with some of my charge, at least, I hope it is otherwise, and may GOD of His mercy grant that it may soon be generally so.
The returns from the Register of Baptisms, from Easter ninety-four to Easter ninety-five, is eighty-five infants and nine adults; and the deaths are three venerable and Godly old men, from eighty-seven to ninety-five years of age, one woman * * * and her infant, * * * and a man about forty-six. * * * *
We suffer much for a sufficient supply of Prayer Books here, and it is
*For Rev. Hatch Dent: See Note at the end of this Article.a great bar to uniformity in our public assemblies in the outward mode of worship; and I sincerely wish that some effectual means could be devised to remedy this evil.
I am, my dear and Reverend Sir,
Your Son and affectionate Friend in the Gospel,
R. J. MILLER.
The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew, Bishop-elect of North Carolina.
After this letter we have no further knowledge of White Haven for many years. Mr. Miller had extended his labors over a large territory, and in 1806 he removed to Burke county, where he had a plantation about two miles from the present town of Lenoir, now in Caldwell county. He continued to visit his old congregation at intervals, but of the particulars of its history we know nothing.
His age and increasing infirmities together with the distance, soon forced him to give up the charge of White Haven, which was about seventy-five miles from Mary's Grove, his residence in Burke county. He therefore recommended to his people a young Lutheran licentiate, David Henckel. Though organized as an Episcopal church, twenty years without Episcopal ministrations, and under the pastorate of a minister in Lutheran orders, had left very little knowledge of the Church or her principles among the members of White Haven. They therefore accepted the services of David Henckel, and he continued to minister to them for several years. From time to time Mr. Miller would visit his old flock and conduct the public services of the Church for them. Upon one of these visits some misunderstanding arose between the two about the use of the church, both having made appointments for the same day. This resulted in the building of another church by Henckel and his adherents a mile or two north of where Lowesville now stands, which was also called White Haven Church.
David Henckel made a great figure in the history of Southern Lutheranism. He became the leader of a Conservative, or more properly a re-actionary, party among
the Lutherans, who at this time had drifted very far from their standard of doctrine and worship. He was an asserter and maintainer of the conservative and sacramental system held by the old Lutherans and set forth in the Augsburg Confession; and he set himself manfully to oppose the tendency of his brethren towards the baldness and emptiness of Zwinglianism. This gave great offense to all persons outside the Lutheran Communion, and created the greatest division of opinion and the fiercest contention also among themselves. David Henckel was looked upon by Methodists and other Protestant dissenters, as no better than a Romanist, and the most extravagant accounts were given of his teaching in regard to confession and the power of absolution. The controversy among the Lutherans themselves led to a schism which is not entirely healed even now. A large number of Lutherans, mostly in Tennessee, but also many congregations in North Carolina, organized the Tennessee Synod, under the influence of this new zeal for their old doctrines, and were known as “Henckelites.” So bitter was the controversy between the two factions that there was some times danger of bloodshed when the parties met. Upon one occasion, at least, the congregation of St. John's Church, Cabarrus county, went to the Sunday service armed with their rifles, and prepared to use them in resisting an expected attempt of the “Henckelites” to get possession of the building.* This however is a digression: White Haven Church had no connection with these matters.
The story of the old parish is almost ended. It never enjoyed the benefits of regular ministerial services, and it is only strange that it survived as long as it did. Any vigorous or aggressive life was, under the circumstances, impossible. The stubborn loyalty of Parson Miller's Scotch blood, supported chiefly by the sympathy and
* Genl. Rufus Barringer is my authority for this. He remembers the fact himself.co-operation of the Abernathys—of the same Scotch Episcopal stock—made this gallant fight for their mother Church.* They had brought with them into the new country the love of their old Church, and they did all that they could to perpetuate it, but their children not unnaturally fell away to other religious bodies. Some families of intelligence and culture, and also some of the plainer but substantial inhabitants of the neighborhood, adhered in feeling to the Church long after they had ceased to enjoy its ministrations. The names of Forney, Abernathey, Shipp, Nantz, Hager, Robinson, Burton, Fite, are still associated with the memory of the old parish, and indicate both its original Scotch and English elements, and also its curious connection with the German Lutherans.
The revival of the Church in North Carolina under Bishop Ravenscroft and Bishop Ives, came too late for White Haven. After the organization of the Diocese, the Church was too weak and too ill-furnished with ministers to look properly after this distant and scattered flock. The parish of White Haven was indeed admitted to the Convention of the Diocese under the nominal rectorship of Parson Miller in 1822: in 1828 Dr. Wm. Johnson (who however was not a member of the Church,) was appointed by the Convention to solicit among the parishioners funds in aid of the Diocesan Missionary Society; and in 1824 Robert H. Burton and Daniel M. Forney were appointed Lay-readers. Bishop Ravenscroft made two visitations to the Church in 1824, and confirmed sixteen persons, probably the old communicants who had never before had an opportunity of receiving the Laying on of Hands. But
* Mrs. Nancy Johnson (neé Forney) was brought up in this congregation, and she remembered very distinctly that the Abernatheys were Parson Miller's chief supporters; and she connected the final and utter failure of the Church at White Haven with the removal of the principal part of the Abernathey family to Missouri.Bishop Ravenscroft saw clearly, as he intimates in his address to the Convention of 1826, that there was little hope of the continuance of the congregation. Some of the original Church people had been for so long practically identified with the Lutherans, that they had unconsciously become estranged from the Church, of which they had never had an opportunity of knowing much, and in whose practical system of doctrine and worship they had not been trained. Add to this the fact that this was the period of the great exodus from North Carolina to the West and the South-West, many members of this congregation about this time and shortly afterwards having joined the great tide of emigration, and the decay and extinction of the old parish is readily accounted for.
Mr. Miller continued for some years to make occasional mention of White Haven in his annual reports; but in 1833 when Bishop Ives made his first visitation to this part of the Diocese, he could find but three or four persons who still adhered to the Church, though he says he made “diligent inquiry.”
The Rev. Edward M. Forbes began his work in Lincoln county in 1841; but in his report he makes no mention of any parish or congregation as then existing in the county. About 1842 he seems to have begun services at White Haven; and his successor in the Mission field, the Rev. A. F. Olmstead, reports a visitation of the Bishop, made July 26th and 27th, 1843, and seven confirmations: also fourteen communicants. The Bishop in his address to the Convention speaks of this Church as “St. Mary's Chapel, White Haven.” but the name is not known to have been used in any other instance. July 19th, 1844, the Bishop made another visitation to White Haven, and July 15th, 1845, a third and last. In 1846, Mr. Olmstead left Lincoln county, and with him the history of White Haven Church closes. The Rev. Joseph C. Huske had charge of St. Luke's Church, Lincolnton, and
Grace Church; Morganton, from 1847 to 1851, and April 25th, 1849, he held a service at White Haven, baptized an infant, and preached from the text: “Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the Kingdom of GOD is come nigh unto you.”
The ancient services of the Church were heard no more in White Haven Church. It fell rapidly to decay after this. Persons whose memory goes back for thirty years or more, remember the site only as it is at present—a cultivated field. But doubtless there is a spiritual conservation of force, as well as a material, and the work done for GOD in those old walls has gone to add to the power of His truth and kingdom in some other place.
II.THE REV. ROBERT JOHNSTON MILLER.
There is no more interesting character in the annals of the Church in North Carolina than the man whose name is written above. In the course of a long life he had strange ecclesiastical experiences. He himself tells us that in the perplexities of his situation he did not always succeed in making a correct application of his principles to the facts before him; he sometimes felt that he had made very serious mistakes. Yet no one can study his history without feeling that even in his mistakes of judgment he displayed noble qualities of heart. The following sketch of his life is meager, and yet perhaps sufficient to set forth the man as he was, and to preserve the incidents of his life so far as they have a general interest or an important connection with the history of the Church in North Carolina. The principle sources of information are his letter to Dr. Hawks, dated “Mary's Grove, Burke county, N. C., April 15th, 1830,” (which appeared first in the Church Review, and was reprinted in the Church Messenger of October 15th, 1879), and Dr. Bernheim's “History of the German Settlements and Lutheran Churches in Carolina.”
Dr. Bernheim's information was derived from Parson Miller's son, the late Elisha P. Miller, of Caldwell county, whom Dr. Bernheim visited during the year 1862. We owe to this diligent Lutheran historian most of our knowledge of the particulars of Mr. Miller's life.
Robert Johnston Miller, the third son of George and Margaret Miller, was born in Baldovia, Angusshire, Scotland, July 11th, 1758. His parents are said to have intended him for the ministry, and with this view to have sent him to a classical school at Dundee. He was bred up in “the Catholic remainder” of the ancient Church of Scotland, under the pastoral care of the venerable Bishop Raile* so long as he remained in his native country; but when he was fifteen years old his elder brother, then a prosperous merchant in Charlestown, Massachusetts, invited him to make his home with him, and he therefore came to America in 1774. During the Revolutionary war he was in the American Army, and took part in the battles of Long Island, Brandywine and White Plains, in the first of which he received a flesh wound in the face. He was with the army during the memorable winter at Valley Forge. He came South towards the close of the war, probably when Washington made his famous move upon Cornwallis, which resulted in the Surrender at Yorktown; and was in Virginia when he was mustered out of the service. He seems not to have returned to New England, but to have remained in Virginia, in what business or occupation is not known.
At this period of his life he became identified with the Methodists, who were gaining great influence through Virginia and some parts of North Carolina, and who did much during that critical period to arrest the tide of popular
* “Bishop Raile:” the name is so given in the very distinct and consistent family tradition preserved by Dr. Bernheim. It is probable however, that the eame was Rait, “James Rait,” Bishop of Brechin from 1742 to 1777.irreligion and dissoluteness, especially among the lower orders of the people. The Methodists up to this time had earnestly repudiated the charge that they intended any separation from the Church. Both in England and in America Clergymen of the Church were their acknowledged leaders; and even though they admitted the public preaching of unordained men, they made a distinction between these “preachers” and “regular” ministers—these latter being such as had received Episcopal Ordination. The Prayer Book was still looked upon as the standard of public worship on the Lord's Day, though want of books and the ignorance of the people might make its general use temporarily impracticable. When in 1784 Wesley printed an edition of the Prayer Book for the use of the American Methodist Societies, and sent it over to this country, he gave explicit directions that it should be used for Lord's Day services by all of their preachers, though upon week days they were permitted to have extemporized prayers.
Of this Methodist Society Mr. Miller became a member in Virginia shortly after the close of the war. Having left Scotland at so early an age, and having been thereby deprived of proper instruction in church principles, it is probable that he had not very clear and intelligent views upon the subject, though his convictions appear to have been firm at all times. He was very strongly drawn towards the Methodists by the stress which they laid upon the importance of personal religious experience, and by the enthusiasm and christian zeal which characterized the movement. He soon became a local preacher among them. In 1785 he accompanied Dr. Coke from Virginia when he came into North Carolina to hold the first Conference ever held in this State. It met at Green Hill's, in Franklin county, April 19th, 1785. Mr. Miller in his letter to Dr. Hawks says that this was in the Autumn of the year 1784. Mr. Miller wrote from memory after the lapse of nearly fifty years, and he has made a mistake in
the time. Coke came to America in November, 1784, and did not reach North Carolina until some months later. He travelled for several weeks in company with Coke. Their conversation was chiefly concerning Coke's plan for organizing the Methodist Society into “a church.” For the first time the Methodist preachers had begun to claim ministerial functions. Coke at the General Conference just held in Baltimore had “ordained” Asbury to be joint Superintendent with him, and together they had proceeded to ordain a number of their preachers. Mr. Miller says that he found himself unable to give his assent to this scheme, since it had early been impressed upon his mind that to constitute a true and authoritative branch of the Church, there must be an Apostolic Commission duly transmitted through the Episcopal order. Though Mr. Miller acted as a Methodist preacher for several years, we may be sure that he never as such professed to administer the Sacraments. Very few even of their most extreme men had up to this time ventured upon this step; and an attempt made by some of those in Virginia to administer the Sacraments and to ordain ministers, had produced great dissentions among them. In the early part of this same year in which Asbury was ordained by Coke, the Rev. Devereux Jarratt tells us that at the Conference held at Ellis's, in Virginia, he was present, and Mr. Asbury himself was in attendance, “still striving to render an attachment to the Church yet more firm and permanent. For this end he had brought Mr. Wesley's Twelve Reasons against a separation from the Church,” the first of which reasons was “because it would be a contradiction to the solemn and repeated declarations, which we have made in all manner of ways.”
Mr. Miller must have joined the Conference at the meeting at Green Hill's; and he says he preached upon the Tar River Circuit, which is also in Franklin county, during the year 1785; but at the end of his year he withdrew
from the Conference. His intercourse with Coke, and the rapid progress of events at this period opened his eyes to the full significance of the new position taken by the Methodists; and he found himself unwilling to co-operate with them in open and avowed separation from the Church. He testifies to the brotherly affection which had marked his intercourse with the members of the Conference, and he says that on their part they declared publicly that they had nothing against him, but that he had voluntarily withdrawn on account of his “disapprobation of their conduct and rules.”
His health having begun to fail him in the low country, Mr. Miller in 1786 settled in Lincoln county upon the west bank of the Catawba river, and at the request of the inhabitants, who were very destitute of religious instruction, he began to act as lay-reader and catechist, as has already been narrated in the account of White Haven. His ministrations proved very acceptable to the people, and he was soon greatly respected and loved by all the people of the community, and became the religious instructor and trusted pastor de facto, so to say, of many of the inhabitants who had been attached to the Church in the countries from which they had emigrated.
Mr. Miller now found himself in a very distressing situation. There were no ministers of the Church within hundreds of miles of him. He could not baptize nor administer any holy ordinance. His people had to resort to the Luthern or the Presbyterian ministers to have their children baptized, or to let them grow up unbaptized. He does not seem to have felt any disposition to seek a closer union with the Presbyterians, though his relations with them were most cordial. His feelings as a Scotch Episcopalian probably made him averse to such a connection, and he knew that their doctrines, as well as their whole method of worship, and their religious traditions, were too much opposed to his own, to allow such an association to
be a comfortable one. On the contrary, there was much in the old Lutheran teaching in regard to the Sacraments, as well as upon other points, which approximated to his position as a Churchman; and there was no inherited autagonism between his own people and their Lutheran neighbors. It is quite possible that he was aware that many of the Lutheran Churches in Europe had retained the Episcopal form of government, and that the Scandinavian Lutherans are generally believed to have preserved the ancient Apostolic Episcopate. Their liturgical worship, with its familiar Creed, Versicles, Litany, Collects, Epistles and Gospels, and their observance of the holy seasons of the christian year,—all these must have had no little influence in inclining him to a closer union with his Lutheran neighbors who formed a large, and a most estimable portion of the population of Lincoln, Rowan, and Mecklenburg counties.
The Lutherans at this time were in a sad state of destitution themselves on account of the lack of proper ministers. They had only about half a dozen ordained ministers in all this part of the country where the German Lutheran inhabitants were numbered by tens of thousands. They earnestly pressed upon Mr. Miller the advantages to be derived from a friendly union with them in the work of the Gospel. They did not desire that he should become a Lutheran, but urged that he might still remain an Episcopalian, and lead his people in their old ways, and they promised him their hearty co-operation in advancing the cause of the Episcopal Church among the English population, in return for his co-operation with them in their work among their own German settlers.
Mr. Miller's congregations seem to have been equally anxious to have their minister clothed with the additional respect and popular authority which would come from his ordination by the Lutheran ministers, who were men of some considerable force of character, as well as of literary
acquirements. And it no doubt occurred to his mind that if he should yield to this double pressure, his people would at least be in no worse case than they were in already. And when we consider the little prospect at that time of ever seeing the Church in the integrity of its organization and ministrations in this remote corner of the world, we can hardly wonder at his course. In the letter to Dr. Hawks before referred to, he gives this account of the matter:
“Their congregations (the Lutherans) were at that time in a very declining state, and overrun by imposters assuming the ministerial office without any regular authority whatsoever. To remedy these evils, they pressed me with the plea of necessity, to accept ordination from their hands, and mentioned that the Rev. Dr. Pilmour, of Philadelphia, had done so in the time of the Revolutionary war. There is now and was then a considerable number of Presbyterian clergy in this section, and the most of them with whom I had any intimacy recommended the same course, and the congregation earnestly requested me to accept of it, and (said) that they would be perfectly satisfied with my ministrations. In short, as I thought then, and do think now, contrary to my own better sentiments, I consented to receive the ordination from them, not as a Lutheran minister, but as an Episcopalian.”
Thus, feeling that he might be making a mistake, he yielded to the importunity of his friends; and in St. John's Church, Cabarrus county, May 20th, 1794, at the first Lutheran Synodical meeting ever held in North Carolina, Robert Johnston Miller, an avowed Episcopalian, was ordained by the Lutheran Ministerium, the first ordination by Lutherans in this State.
In taking this extraordinary step, Mr. Miller was careful to guard against any misunderstanding of his position. A letter of orders was drawn up and signed by all the ministers who took part in this ordination, and was carefully
preserved by Mr. Miller, and by his children after him, until it was destroyed in the burning of Mr. Elisha P. Miller's house near Lenoir about the close of the war. Fortunately Dr. Bernheim took a copy of it at the time of his visit before referred to, and gives it in his history of the Lutherans in Carolina. It is as follows:
To all whom it may concern, greeting:
“WHEREAS, A great number of Christian people in Lincoln county have formed themselves into a Society by the name of White Haven Church, and also having formed a vestry; We, the subscribers, having been urged by the pressing call from the said Church to ordain a minister for the good of their children, and for the enjoyment of ye Gospel ordidances among them, from us the ministers of the Lutheran Church in North Carolina” (here much of the Certificate is torn away and lost) according to ye infallible word of GOD, administer ye sacraments, and to have ye care” (sic: qu—cure?) “of souls: he always being obliged to obey ye rules, ordinances and customs of ye Christian Society called ye Protestant Episcopal Church in America. Given under our hands and seals, North Carolina, Cabarrus County, May 20th, 1794. Signed by Adolphus Nussmann, Sr., Johan Gottfriedt Arendt, Arnold Roschen, Christopher Bernhardt, and Charles Storch.”
Dr. Bernhiem says that “on the reverse side of this certificate the Lutheran ministers gave their reasons why they had ordained a man who was attached to the Episcopal Church as a minister of that denomination,” but with a reserve which is characteristic of his dealing with delicate questions, he is careful not to give the least intimation of what those reasons were.
A most interesting episode in Mr. Miller's history occurred immediately after his ordination by the Lutherans. His attachment to the Church, and his zeal and activity in keeping up its influence and its services, were widely known, and it seems to have been taken for granted that he was a minister. At the Convention held in Tarborough, November 21st, 1793, he was elected a member of the Standing Committee, and was notified to attend the meeting of the Convention called to assemble at the same place May 28th, 1794, for the purpose of perfecting the
diocesan organization and electing a Bishop. He must have gone immediately from his ordination to the Tarborough Convention, for he appeared and took his seat the first day of the Session, May 28th, and at that time it could hardly have taken less than a week to make the journey from Cabarrus county to Tarborough.
In this Convention Mr. Miller took his place as one of the Clergy, reading the morning service on the second day. He voted with the Clergy for a Bishop, and was chosen a Clerical member of the Standing Committee. His name is signed as one of the Clergy to the testimonial of Mr. Pettigrew's election which was transmitted to the General Convention, as may be seen by a reference to Bishop White's memoirs of the Church, as well as to the proceedings of the Convention. He says in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Empie, written in 1814: “I was also acknowledged and received as such” (i. e. as a minister) by the Convention of the Episcopal Clergy of this State, while it had any being.” There is nothing in the proceedings or the records of those Conventions to indicate that he had not been duly and regularly ordained. But in a list of the “Names and Places of the Clergy,” among the papers of Mr. Pettigrew, the Bishop-elect, though his name and his parish of White Haven, head the list, there is a note added at the bottom: “P. S.—The Rev. Robert Johnston Miller, White Haven Parish, Lincoln county, a Lutheran minister.” In one of Mr. Pettigrew's letters to Bishop White, he says of him: “At our Convention there was a gentleman who had been ordained in the Lutheran Church, and wished his ordination could be recognized in our Church, and, indeed, signified that if it should be considered invalid, he would submit to a re-ordination. He appears to be a decent man. He has since our Convention wrote me that he thinks the Society would wish (of which there are a number of respectable clergy) a coalition with our Church.”
It appears, everywhere that the subject is referred to, that Mr. Miller was always extremely doubtful of the propriety of his ordination, and uniformly excused his action upon the ground of an apparent necessity. He quotes the case of Dr. Pilmour, of Philadelphia, in his letter to Dr. Hawks, and also in his letter to Dr. Empie. Dr. Joseph Pilmour was one of the most eminent of Wesley's laypreachers, and after the Revolution he took orders, being ordained Deacon by Bishop Seabury, November 27th, 1785. I can find no mention of his having received Lutheran ordination—and if he had done so, it would not be a case in point, as he never professed to be a minister of the Episcopal Church by virtue of such ordination.
From this Convention Mr. Miller returned to his parish of White Haven, and entered upon his work with renewed ardor. He had been accompanied to the Convention at Tarborough by Mr. Joseph Perkins, probably his brother-in-law, who sat in the Convention as a lay-delegate from Lincoln county, and signed Mr. Pettigrew's testimonial along with the other laymen present. Mr. Miller entertained great hopes for the prosperity of the Church from Mr. Pettigrew's labors when he should have been consecrated as Bishop of North Carolina. He exerted himself to incline the few Lutheran ministers to a plan for the union of the two bodies into one, and hoped that the influence of Mr. Pettigrew's gentleness and christian humility might enable him to bring about this result to the mutual advantage of all parties. These hopes are indicated in his letter to Mr. Pettigrew of May 6th, 1795, already given. But unfortunate circumstances prevented Mr. Pettigrew's consecration to the holy office, upon which so much seemed to depend, and Mr. Miller was left powerless to do anything for the effectual upbuilding of the Church. It was many long years before he again saw the face of one of her ministers.
It may be well at this point to mention briefly one or
two important events in Mr. Miller's domestic life. He was married March 12th, 1787, to Mary Perkins, daughter of John Perkins, Esq., of Lincoln county, by whom he became the father of ten children, seven sons and three daughters. His father-in-law gave him a plantation in Burke county, in that part of it now the county of Caldwell, near the site of the present town of Lenoir. This plantation was called “Mary's Grove,” probably after the name of his wife. To this place he removed soon after his marriage, but finding the people of that new country rough and disagreeable neighbors, he soon returned to Lincoln county, living at one time at Poplar Springs, near Island Ford on the Catawba river, and another while at Willow Hill, near White Haven Church. In 1806 he returned to his place, Mary's Grove, in Burke county, which continued to be his residence for the rest of his life.
As the prospect of the revival seemed more and more distant and hopeless, Mr. Miller became the more earnestly engaged in co-operating with his Lutheran brethren, and being entirely alone as a Churchman, the work fell more and more completely into Lutheran lines. He was so faithful and zealous a man that he could not remain inactive, and he soon became one of the most influential of the members of their body. He was Secretary of their Synod, and a most laborious and untiring missionary, not only in this State, but in Virginia, Tennessee and South Carolina. Perhaps no man of that period did more for the practical extension and upbuilding of the denomination than he. As a member of the most important committees he appears also as exerting no small influence upon the inner spirit of the ecclesiastical administration. He tells us that he drew up the Constitution adopted by the Synod in 1803 upon the lines of the Constitution which had been adopted by the General Convention, and that it was intended to form a basis of union between the Lutherans and Episcopalians, as long as the latter should remain in
their then unorganized condition. In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Empie, of Wilmington, dated Mary's Grove, February 17th, 1814, already quoted, he says: “In the year 1803, through the exertions of myself and four other Lutheran Clergymen, a Convention was formed in Salisbury, called at first the Convention of the Lutheran and Episcopal Churches in this State; but since for some years past it has been called simply the Synod of the Lutheran Church in N. C.” He says further, in his letter to Dr. Hawks, that when he first entered their ministry he reserved to himself and his people perfect liberty “to return and unite in full, and without any impediment, with the bosom of the Protestant Episcopal Church, whenever it should please GOD to revive her in this State,” and that “by the spirit, terms and obligation of our union, they (the Lutherans) were bound to forward this object to the utmost of their ability.” Mr. Miller says that this union was effected, and the Constitution drawn up at Salisbury. Dr. Bernheim mentions the meeting at Salisbury, May 2d, 1803, but says that the Constitution was not adopted until the second session of the Synod, held at Lincolnton, October 17th, of the same year. He does not give any account whatever of the several articles of the Constitution, and indeed it looks as if the whole question were treated with studied reserve. In a MS. note upon the margin of the pamphlet published upon this subject, which I sent him a few years ago, with a request for his remarks and criticisms—he says: “There is nothing in that Constitution, which is in the German language, that leans towards the Episcopal form of government.” As Mr. Miller had not said that there was anything in that Constitution which leaned towards the Episcopal form of government, Dr. Bernheim's note is very little to the purpose. It would be interesting to know whether that Constitution contains any trace of the curious alliance at that time existing between Mr. Miller, with his White Haven and other congregations, and the
Lutherans. Mr. Miller was certainly a leading spirit in the Synod at this time. Dr. Bernheim mentions that he was Secretary of the Synod in 1803 and 1804, and such extracts from their proceeding as he gives exhibit him as one of their most trusted and useful members.
Lutheranism in North Carolina, as in other parts of the world, has confined its work chiefly, if not entirely, to those Germanic and Scandinavian peoples who at the period of the Reformation came under the influence of the great movement begun by Luther. It has not usually sought to extend itself beyond its race lines. So in the Carolinas its work was chiefly confined to the German settlers of our middle and western sections. But all through the country west of Greensboro’, and in the neighboring parts of Virginia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, are very many of these German settlers and their descendants. Among these Mr. Miller's Lutheran brethren exercised their ministry, and his association with them probably brought them nearer to the English speaking inhabitants in interest and sympathy. Being so few in number, these Lutheran ministers could reach the people of their faith and language only by extensive journeys, and Mr. Miller took part with them in this itinerant preaching. He made great circuits through the territory covering those parts of the four States in which the Lutheran population were seated, and was indefatigable in preaching to the people, instructing the children, and organizing congregations.
His especial charge during this period continued to be the congregations in which the English and Scotch Episcopalians predominated, though with a considerable mixture of Lutherans. Besides White Haven, he had two other congregations in Lincoln county. Smyrna and St. Peter's, one across the Catawba river in Iredell county called St. Michael's, composed partly of Lutherans and partly of Episcopalians from Maryland, and one, I think, near his home in Burke county, called Trinity. He also
seems to have ministered in Salisbury; and in the country he was concerned in organizing the present parish of Christ Church, Rowan.
The first of those extensive missionary journeys which have been spoken of, was made in the year 1811. October 22d, 1810, the Lutheran Synod had appointed him “travelling missionary for the Synod, with power to organize new congregations, and to take up collections for this object.” He set out from home June 18th following, travelled through Wilkes, Surry, and Stokes counties, and then entered Virginia. Up to this point he found only one house of worship, a small Methodist Chapel, and heard of no settled minister among the people, who came in large numbers to attend his preaching. He found only three families whose parents had been Lutherans. In Virginia he found some Lutheran ministers and congregations. One minister who attended six congregations, had not been ordained; “yet he ministered all the sacraments. I warned him and his flock against such conduct.” He spent the month of July and the greater part of August in travelling and preaching in south-west Virginia; thence going by way of Abingdon into Sullivan county, Tennessee, where he found a number of Lutheran congregations under the Rev. Mr. Smith. From Tennessee he returned home, having been absent three months.
The 4th of November following, he set out upon the second part of his journey, going by way of Rutherfordton into South Carolina. He traversed the greater part of the upper settlement of this State quite across to the Savannah river, found a number of Lutheran congregations and ministers, but a low state of religion among the great mass of the people. He seems to have returned home some time about the middle of December. “On my whole tour,” he says: “I have baptized this year two adults and sixty children, preached sixty-seven times, travelled three
thousand miles and received $70.44 for my support, without asking for a cent in any way.”
Mr. Miller made another missionary tour of the same kind in 1813, the Journal of which he begins in these words: “Saturday, May 1st, 1813. Left home in the name of the Triune GOD, on a second missionary tour.” He took very much the same course as in June, 1811, preaching all along the way. He stopped at Salem and was much pleased with the religious services of the Moravians, and the excellence of the female school. He preached in the Moravian Church, and being joined here by his brother Lutheran the Rev. Mr. Scherer, they went on together upon their mission to Virginia. Mr. Miller's Journal gives an interesting account of this expedition, but it is too long to insert here. He preached often in English, and Mr. Scherer in German, to the mixed congregations which gathered to hear them. He gives a bad account of the religious condition of the country generally. At Franklin he speaks of “a Mr. Todd, an Episcopal minister, who teaches a school, and preaches in this place, but has formed no congregation.” June 4th, Mr. Scherer parted from him to take another part of the circuit, and he continued on alone. He mentions visiting New Market, Woodstock (where was an Episcopal Church all in ruins), Strasburg, Middletown, Newton, Winchester; and then turned homeward by a somewhat different route, taking in Front Royal, Madison Court House, and Orange Court House. The following entry is interesting, under date of Wednesday, July 30th: “Rode ten miles to a Mr. Gordon's, a noted stand at the cross-roads. Here I saw a Mr. Waddell, a sensible and pious man, and son to a venerable old man that is now dead, who was useful in his day, the Rev. Mr. Waddell, a Presbyterian minister.” Also the following: “I could not but observe the general neglect, or rather total disregard, of all religious institutions, in passing through this quarter: I mean the counties of Orange
Albemarle, and Nelson. In the first resides the present President of the United States, and in the second the late President. Near to the former is a large brick church in a state of ruin. * * * * In my view an enemy to the religion of Jesus Christ is the worst enemy of his country, whatever his profession may be; and the higher he is in station the more fatal his influence.” Speaking of New Glasgow, he says: “There is also, as I understood, a Rev. Mr. Crawford, an Episcopalian, near; but preaches very little.” Thence he went on to Lynchburg, and then he pushed on for North Carolina, crossing the Yadkiu at the Shallow Ford, before sunrise Sunday, July 11th, and going to the hosue of his brother-in-law, Thomas Snoddy, Esq., in Iredell county. He adds: “This day I finished my 55th year in this world.
Again another fleeting yearOf my short life is past;I cannot long continue here,And this may be my last.Much of my dubious life is gone,Nor will return again;And swift my passing moments run,The few that yet remain.O! guide me down the steep of age,And keep my passions cool;Teach me to scan the sacred page,And practice every rule.My flying years time urges on,What's human must decay;My friends, my young companions gone,Can I expect to stay?”Monday, July 12th: “Rode home, about 36 miles, where, through the Divine mercy, I found my family in health and peace—Glory be to GOD for this, and all His unmerited goodness to me, a poor sinful creature. On this tour I have rode one thousand and eighty-two miles; spent two months and twelve days; paid, in expenses, twenty-three
dollars and sixty-nine cents, and received from the people amongst whom I labored, seventy dollars; have preached forty-eight sermons; helped to administer the sacrament of the holy supper, and baptized twenty-seven children.” (He had also organized quite a number of new congregations in Virginia.) “I have to observe as to the twelve counties on this side of the Blue Ridge, in Virginia, through which I passed, that is, Culpepper, Madison, Orange, Albemarle, Nelson, Amherst, Campbell, Bedford, Franklin, Henry, Patrick, and Pittsylvania, that their religious situation is by no means either promising or favorable.” He goes on to specify that the people are not only irreligious and immoral, but that no means are taken for bringing up the children in religious nurture. Most of the few preachers among them were Baptists or Methodists, and they did not pay much attention to the instruction of the young.
It appears from the above journal that Mr. Miller followed the usual custom of Lutherans and confirmed the children and young persons preparatory to admitting them to the Lord's Supper. He not only practiced this among the Lutherans, but also among his little congregations of Church people. There is an old record in Christ Church, Rowan county, showing that he administered Confirmation in that Church a number of times, once to as many as twenty-four persons in a single class. It is probable that, being cut off from the ministrations of the Church, he adopted the whole Lutheran system as he found it practiced by his brother ministers.
In November, 1813, Mr. Miller received a letter from the Rev. Adam Empie, Rector of St. James’ Church, Wilmington, inquiring about the Church in the upper part of the State, and also asking information in regard to Mr. Miller's ecclesiastical status. Mr. Miller's reply is dated “Mary's Grove, Burke county, February 17th, 1814.” He gives in brief the account of his ordination already
detailed in the preceding pages, and asserts that he has always considered himself an Episcopalian. He declares that “nothing this side the glory of heaven” would give him more satisfaction than the revival of Episcopacy in his beloved country. In speaking of his missionary tours he says that he “found many very respectable families still strongly attached to her communion, although they had but little prospect of ever enjoying it, as there was but one or two Episcopal Clergy in all that extent through which I passed, and they appeared to be sleeping upon their oars.” “As to the number of Episcopal congregations in this quarter there are but three that have had any regular form.” These three were probably White Haven, St. Peter's and Smyrna, in Lincoln county. He speaks of one called “Trinity,” of which I remember no other mention. He had a congregation a few miles from the present town of Lenoir on the road to Hickory, but that was St. Andrew's. He says that many Church people were scattered about through the country mingled with the Presbyterians; and he still holds out the idea that if the Church could be revived in North Carolina the whole body of Lutherans would unite with it. This letter shows that during the interval between Mr. Miller's Lutheran ordination and the revival of the Church his principles had not changed. Nothing practical came of this correspondence.*
* A number of letters passed between Parson Miller and Dr. Empie between 1813 and 1825. Those of the latter are still preserved by the descendants of Parson Miller, but only one of Mr. Miller's is known to be in existence—that dated February 17th, 1814, quoted above. If Dr. Empie's papers have been preserved it is likely that Parson Miller's letters to him would prove to be of very great interest, for it appears from Dr. Empie's letters that Parson Miller devoted several of his to an account of the condition of the Church in North Carolina during the days succeeding the Revolution. In his letter to Dr. Hawks he goes over the same ground, but these letters written so much earlier would probably be more interesting and valuable.In 1815 Mr. Miller organized a new congregation in Iredell county, called “New Pearth,” which after a few years came to be called St. Michael's. The land was donated by Daniel Walcher, and was given to Lutherans and Episcopalians jointly for use in common. The congregation was composed of descendants of the German families of Rowan and Cabarrus, together with a number of Episcopalians from Maryland, part of the same colony which had come into Rowan as early as 1793 or 4. This congregation has been mentioned before, but it was not organized until 1815.
The year 1817 was almost as much of an epoch to the Lutherans of North Carolina, as it was to the Churchmen, though an epoch of a very different character. In the Synod which met in October, 1817, the latitudinarians carried the day in regard to the licensing of unordained men to administer the sacraments. This, with other things, apparently carried through the influence of Gotlieb Shober, the MOravian, laid the foundation of the schism, in which the reactionary party under the leadership of Henckel, organized the Tennessee Synod, as has been already mentioned. Mr. Miller was the only member present in the Synod who opposed this action to the very end; and he seems to have taken part in only one subsequent meeting, that of 1819. The organization of the Diocese of North Carolina in 1817, and the visitation of Bishop Moore in 1819, and again in 1820, encouraged him to hope that the long desired revival of Episcopacy in North Carolina had come. In 1821 the Convention of the Diocese met in Raleigh, April 28th. Mr. Miller attended with his letter of Lutheran Orders. It is said that when Bishop Moore read it, he said to Mr. Miller: “Why, you belong to us.” We have seen that Mr. Miller had all along looked upon his Lutheran ordination as an expedient under the necessities of his situation; and that within a week of that ordination he had declared to Mr. Pettigrew
his readiness to be re-ordained. We are therefore not surprised to find that he availed himself of this opportunity to receive the ministerial commission by the imposition of Apostolic hands: and that Bishop Moore, in the case of a man so approved by a long course of faithful and fruitful labors, passed by all ordinary preliminaries, and ordered Robert Johnston Miller, Deacon May 1st, in the fore-noon, and in the evening of the same day ordained him to the Priesthood. Both services took place in the Methodist Church at Raleigh.
Of Mr. Miller's history after this we must speak but briefly. Having thus in the end of his life, for he was now about sixty-three years old, received Episcopal ordination he earnestly desired to build up the Church in those regions where he had labored so long as a Lutheran minister. He still hoped to bring the Lutherans into some kind of union with the Church: his efforts in this direction will be narrated in a separate section to follow. His labors as a pastor among his people after this time were not so successful as he could have wished; and he did not feel that he enjoyed that sympathy and co-operation from his Lutheran brethren, which by the terms no less than the spirit of his original agreement and union with them, he had a right to expect. For nearly thirty years he had given himself unreservedly to their work no less than to his own. Indeed his labors for them were greater than for his own communion. In all of his congregations he ministered as a Lutheran to the Lutheran members, and outside the few congregations in Lincoln and Rowan, in which his labors may be said to have been equally divided between the two, the whole of his ministry was to build up and to extend Lutheranism. The question of the reasonableness of such a mixed work is not now under consideration. The fact of his very great services during all the best years of his life to the cause of Lutheranism in the two Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee, is not disputed.
Dr. Bernheim says of him: “He organized several” (he might have said many) “Churches in our midst, and accomplished much good as an active energetic minister, and our Church owes a debt of gratitude to his memory which cannot easily be cancelled or forgotten.” Yet it does not appear that in his efforts to build up the Church and to recover for it those individuals and congregations which under his pastoral care had been associated with the Lutherans, he received any encouragement or assistance whatever. The lesson which he draws from his experience in this matter is that it is vain, if not absurd, to suppose “that the successful attempt of amalgamating the different sects, creeds, order and worship of all those who call themselves Christians, will, or can, produce that unity of faith and practice enjoined by the pure Word of GOD.” “And it furnishes us with an experimental demonstration, how impossible it is to attempt, in any degree, a compromise with error, schism, or heresy, without injury to the truth.” He seems to have found it impossible to recover for the Church those congregations which in consequence of his action had so long been identified with Lutheranism: and he sadly reflects that “neither sorrow nor lamentation will recover the ground that has been lost to the Episcopal cause in this section of the country in consequence of that fatal error of mine.”
After his return from the Convention at Raleigh, Mr. Miller renewed the energy and enterprise of his youth. White Haven, and Smyrna, in Lincoln county were admitted into the Convention in 1822: Christ Church, Rowan, had been admitted in 1821: St. Peter's Lincoln, and St. Andrew's, Burke county, were admitted in 1823; as also St. Peter's Church, Lexington. All these were under Mr. Miller's charge. The Missionary Society of the Diocese assigned to him as assistants in this extensive field the Rev. Thomas Wright, ordained Deacon in 1820, and the Rev. Robert Davis, of Orange, ordained Deacan in 1821,
though most of Mr. Wright's time was given to Wadesboro’. St. Luke's Church, Salisbury, was also under the same pastoral charge. In 1823 Mr. Davis left the Diocese, and Mr. Wright confined himself to his work in Wadesboro’, with an occasional visit to St. Luke's and Christ Church, for the purpose of administering the Holy Communion. Mr. Miller, for some years, was the only pastor for the whole section from Davidson county to Burke. In 1824, he reports that most of the Lutheran members of St. Michael's in Iredell county, have withdrawn, and after 1825 the name of St. Michael's disappears from the Journals of the Convention. The portion of the congregation remaining under his care was chiefly composed of members of the Mills family and their connections—Mr. Charles Mills, being the head of the family at that time. For some years the congregation was reported to the Convention in the name of that family—“Mill's, Iredell County.” It is now the parish of St. James.
The little that remains to be told of Mr. Miller's ministerial labors can be gathered from the Journals of our Convention, and therefore need not to be narrated here. St. Luke's, Salisbury, Christ Church, Rowan, St. James’, Iredell, upon our present parochial list, may fairly be claimed as parishes which he founded. St. Andrew's, Burke, was the beginning of the present parish of St. James, Lenoir. He also preached in a log church on John's river, which may have been the Trinity, referred to on a former page, but there was no regular congregation there. White Haven, has long ago crumbled to decay, of St. Peter's and Smyrna, not even the location is known.
In 1827, Mr. Miller had the misfortune to lose his wife after a union of nearly fifty years. His large family all occupied positions of credit in the community. Many worthy descendants of his still represent the Church of his affections in the country where most of his mature
years were spent. One of his daughters married the Rev. Godfrey Dreher, a Lutheran minister of Lexington district, South Carolina. Others married into the most distinguished and respectable families of Burke county. The names Miller, Scott, Kent, and others, are borne by his descendants at the present day.
Mr. Miller attended no Convention after that of 1829. He is mentioned from time to time in the addresses of Bishop Ravenscroft and Bishop Ives, and always with the greatest affection and respect. His bodily strength gradually decayed with increasing years until May 13th, 1834, when he fell asleep in the Lord, after an earthly pilgrimage of seventy-five years, ten months and two days. His mortal remains were interred in the family grave-yard at “Mary's Grove,” near the present town of Lenoir, which continued for many years afterwards to be the residence of his son Elisha P. Miller. The funeral service was read and an appropriate sermon preached by the Rev. John Morgan, Rector of St. Luke's Church, Salisbury, and Christ Church, Rowan. In his address to the Convention of 1835, Bishop Ives says: “In recording the changes which, during the past year, have occured among us, I notice with unfeigned sorrow the death of the Reverend Robert J. Miller, of Burke county, a clergyman of whom we may emphatically say, for him to live was Christ; and to die is gain.”
III.FRATERNAL RELATIONS.
The Diocesan Convention and the Lutheran Synod.
It is a fact not generally remembered that delegations from the Lutheran Synod once sat in the Conventions of the Diocese of North Carolina, and that our delegates also had honorary places in the Lutheran Synod. The names of the Rev. Gottlieb Shober, the Rev. Daniel Scherer,
Gen. Paul Barringer, and Col. Henry Ratz, are found in the list of the members of the Convention of 1823; and during this period the minutes of the Synod record the presence of the Rev. Adam Empie, the Rev. G. T. Bedell, and the Hon. Duncan Cameron, of our Convention.
These mutual courtesies were due directly to the influence of the Rev. Robert Johnston Miller, and they constitute a pleasing after-piece to the curious and anomalous position occupied by Mr. Miller and the congregations of Episcopalians under his charge during their twenty-seven years connection with the Lutheran Synod. A brief consideration of the relations formerly existing between the Lutherans and the Churchmen of North Carolina will not unfitly conclude this imperfect account of old White Haven Church and its Pastor.
Concerning this episode in our diocesan history, there is very little to be recorded, and that little is mostly contained in the Journals of our Conventions. Complete sets of these are now become so rare that few persons are acquainted with their contents, which is the excuse offered far transcribing a few of these particulars of our recorded history.
But although the story of the interchange of these formal greetings between the two ecclesiastical bodies is but brief, and concerning them there is nothing new to relate, yet there is this to be observed, which has hitherto escaped attention—that the friendship between the Lutherans and the Churchmen of North Carolina did not result from the action or the influence of Mr. Miller. On the contrary it is morally certain that Mr. Miller's action in this connection was to a very great extent influenced by the state of feeling between these two bodies, the mutual sympathy and friendship which had begun long before Mr. Miller came into this part of the county. He only perpetuated and rendered more close and intimate a friendly alliance which he found existing in 1786.
It has already been remarked that there was much in the doctrines and worship of the old Lutherans to attract the favorable regard of Churchmen. Indeed, it is well known that Luther and Melancthon, and other Protestant divines, exercised no small influence upon the course and character of the English Reformation. The further fact that the Hanoverian Kings of England were originally Lutherans, and so far as they displayed any religious feeling at all, remained Lutherans, until the accession of George III, must have tended to promote a friendly feeling between members of the two communions in the Colonies. In the reign of Queen Anne, overtures were made by the King of Prussia looking to the adoption by the Lutherans of Prussia of the Articles and Liturgy of the English Church; and the proposition that the English Bishops should consecrate Bishops for Prussia, and so convey to that Kingdom the Apostolic succession, was so favorably received that the most sanguine hopes were entertained of the result. But for delays and complications caused by the desire to included Hanover in this arrangement, it seems more than likely that these two great barriers against Roman tyranny, the Church of England and the Lutherans of Germany, might have been happily united. As further illustrating the friendly relations which have thus for centuries been preserved, it may be mentioned in passing that for a number of years during this present century, the British and Prussian governments maintained a Bishop at Jerusalem, selected alternately from England and Germany, and consecrated by English Bishops.
Considering all these things, it is not surprising that Lutherans and Churchmen, finding themselves in a condition of common poverty and spiritual destitution in the wilds of the new world, should have drawn close together in Christian feeling; and we are prepared to find evidences of this kindly regard among the German and English settlers upon the banks of the Yadkin and the Catawba.
The presence of a vigorous and aggressive population of Scotch-Irish Calvinists would also tend to lead them into this friendly alliance.
The records of those early days are too meager to afford us detailed accounts of such matters as these, but the evidence, though scanty, is conclusive. In Dr. Rumple's account of the establishment of the “oldest Lutheran congregation organized in the Province of North Carolina,” given in his History of Rowan county, he says: “In the year 1768, John Lewis Beard, a wealthy citizen of Salisbury, and a member of the Lutheran Church, was bereaved by the death of a daughter, and her body was interred in a lot of ground owned by her father. To prevent her remains from being disturbed by the march of civilization, Mr. Beard executed a deed for the lot, containing 144 square poles, to a body of trustees of the Evangelical Lutheran congregation of the Township of Salisbury, allowing ministers of the High (sic) Church of England to occupy it, when not used by the Lutherans.” The building afterwards erected upon this lot was used in accordance with the provisions of this deed down to the year 1825. This is the first evidence of the friendship between Lutherans and Churchmen in this section.
The Rev. Thodorus Swaim Drage, having been “licensed for the Plantations” by the Bishop of London, May 29th, 1769, was by Gov. Tryon recommended to the Vestry of St. Luke's Parish, Rowan county, by letter dated November 12th of the same year. July 9th, 1770, the Governor sent him a letter of induction. He seems to have gone to Salisbury at the end of 1769, or the beginning of 1770, and to have entered zealously upon the task of putting into effect the Colonial statute for the organization of the parish and the support of the Church. In this he was strenuously opposed by the Presbyterians, and a long struggled followed, from which Mr. Drage seems to have retired after a year or two, despairing of success. This is alluded
to merely to show, in connection with this bitter struggle with the Presbyterians, the fact that the kindliest feeling existed between the Churchmen and the Lutherans during the whole of this exciting period. Mr. Drage says the two lived together in much harmony: a second example of the disposition of Lutherans toward Churchmen.
Dr. Bernheim in his History says that “in the year 1772, Christopher Rintelmann, from Organ Church, in Rowan county, and Christopher Layrle, from St. John's Church, in Mecklenburg county, were sent as a delegation to Europe, * * * * for a supply of ministers and school-teachers, for the various Lutheran congregations, then organized in North Carolina,” and adds that “these commissioners travelled first to London.” In this Dr. Bernheim mistakes the date and overstates the facts. Rintelmann and Layrle went upon their mission to Europe early in the year 1771, and they did not go “for a supply of ministers and school-teachers for the various Lutheran congregations then organized in North Carolina;” nor were they, the one from the Organ Church, and the other from St. John's. It appears from their own record book, lately discovered in Salisbury by the Rev. Francis J. Murdoch, and by him presented to St. Luke's Church, Salisbury, that these men represented the only Lutheran congregation at that time organized in this section, and they went to obtain help to support a minister and school-teacher for that congregation. No name is given to this organization, but it is said to be composed of “sixty German Lutheran Protestant families,” forming a settlement on Second Creek, in Rowan county. They were sent expressly to England and made their first appeal for assistance to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Bishops of the English Church. Before setting out from home, Mr. Drage gave them a letter of commendation to Gov. Tryon, and one to the Secretary of the Society. They say that Gov. Tryon “according to his known
humanity has countenanced their petition under the great seal of the Province, and referred the case to the Honorable Society, * * * which Society has likewise piously countenanced under their seal this undertaking.” Gov. Tryon, his sister, the Honorable Miss Tryon, the ArchBishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel headed the subscription for this pious object, and at the request of the commissioners, the Treasurer of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, consented to act as Treasurer of the fund. It may be noted in passing that the Rev. Mr. Drage speaks of these German Lutherans as his parishioners, and everything shows that there was the kindest and most cordial relations existing between them. The fact that so uncompromising a champion of the Church should have spoken and acted in this way in regard to this effort of the Lutherans to obtain a minister and teacher for their struggling congregation puts it beyond all doubt that a warm and earnest feeling of mutual sympathy and affection prevailed at this time. This is also confirmed by other parts of Mr. Drage's correspondence. These documents have never been in print, and therefore the light which they throw upon the relations of the Lutherans with the Churchman of Rowan comes in to supplement the evidence of the same thing from other sources.
When Mr. Miller settled on the Catawba river in 1786, the only Lutheran ministers in the whole of the German settlement were the Rev. A. Nussman, and the Rev. J. G. Arndt, who had been sent from Germany in 1773 in response to the appeal of the commissioners before mentioned. Mr. Arndt had come out as a school-teacher, but had since become a minister. These men owed their position and power for usefulness among their people, very largely to the assistance rendered by Churchmen in the first effort to put the Lutherans of Rowan upon their feet. It was therefore but natural that they should receive Mr.
Miller cordially, and that they should desire, and that he should reciprocate the desire, to preserve and to perpetuate this brotherly feeling among their people. The steps by which they were led to attempt a closer and more organic union have already been narrated.
With the first rise of Church life in North Carolina, the idea of organic union was found to be impracticable. It had so far been all give by the Churchmen, and all take by the Lutherans. Naturally the stronger body did not relish the idea of reversing the process. But there were deeper causes than any mere selfishness or sectarian feeling, which stood in the way of union between the two bodies.
Lutheranism, during Mr. Miller's connection with the Synod, had been gradually drifting away from its old standard of doctrine and of worship, and becoming more and more assimilated to the various bodies of English Dissenters by which it was surrounded. This is no place for an examination of the question, but it is a fact disclosed by their own records that in 1821 when Mr. Miller was ordained by Bishop Moore, the Lutherans had almost wholly abandoned those devotional practices and those sacramental doctrines, which had both in Europe and America been such a bond of union between them and us.*But there remained a sentiment springing from the memory of past association, and Mr. Miller sought anxiously to perpetuate the fraternal relations in which he had lived with his Lutheran brethren for more than a quarter of a century.
His first appearance in our Convention was as a delegate from the Lutheran Synod. On page 4, Journal of 1821, is the following entry: “It being ascertained that the Rev. ROBERT
* In a MS. note to a copy of a former pamphlet containing this statement which I sent to Dr. Bernheim, he says: “All this, tho’ true for that time, is greatly changed now. The Lutherans are rapidly returning to the true and original faith as set forth in the unaltered Augsburg Confession, and other symbolical writings of the 16th century.”JOHNSON MILLER, of Burke county, has come to this Convention in the capacity of a delegate from the German and English Lutheran Synod of North Carolina, and for the purpose of effecting as far as practicable, intercourse and union between the Episcopalians and some of the Lutheran congregations:
“Resolved, That the Rev. Mr. Miller be cordially received in the above capacity and admitted to a seat in this Convention.”
Mr. Miller being thus admitted presented a formal communication from the Synod, and upon the recommendation of the committee upon the state of the church, the Revs. Adam Empie and G. T. Bedell and the Hon. Duncan Cameron were appointed a committee to attend the Lutheran Synod, and “to consider of and agree upon such terms of union, as may tend to the mutual advantage and welfare of both Churches, not inconsistent with the Constitution and Canons of this Church.”
This committee attended the meeting of the Synod held at Lau's Church, Guilford county, June 17th, 1821, with a letter from Bishop Moore, conveying to that body information concerning the above action of the Convention. The minutes of the Synod record that this committee “were all affectionately received,” and a committee appointed to confer with them, namely: the Revs. G. Shober, and Michael Rauch, and Henry Ratz, Esq. The result of the conference between the two committees was a series of Resolutions, to be found on page 11 of the Journal of the Convention of 1822. They declare that it is deemed “expedient and desirable that the Lutheran Synod, and the Protestant Episcopal Church of North Carolina, should be united together in the closest bonds of friendship,” they therefore provide that each of these bodies “may send a delegation of one or more persons,” to the other, and that these delegates shall be entitled to speak and to vote “in all cases except when a division is called for, in which
case they shall not vote;” and they further provide that all ministers of either body shall be entitled to honorary seats in the other. These resolutions were at once adopted by the Synod, and the Revs. G. Shober and Jacob Scherer, and Henry Ratz. Esq., were appointed delegates to the Convention appointed to meet at Raleigh in April, 1822.
None of the Lutheran delegates attended this Convention of 1822, but our committee presented the report and resolutions agreed upon in conference with the Lutherans, and adopted by the Synod, together with a letter from the Rev. Gottlieb Shoeber; and the resolutions were unanimously adopted. At the same meeting Messrs. Miller, Wright, and Davis, of the clergy, and Messrs. Alexander Caldcleugh and Duncan Cameron, of the laity, were appointed delegates to the Synod.
In the Journal of the Convention held at Salisbury in 1823, among the names of the attending members, we find the following: “The Rev. G. Shober, the Rev. Daniel Sherer, Gen. Paul Barringer and Col. Henry Ratz;” and on a subsequent page we find that the Revs. Messrs. Miller and Davis of the clergy and Messrs. Wm. R. Holt and Alexander Caldcleugh, of the laity, were appointed delegates to the next meeting of the Synod.
With the Convention of 1823 all mention of delegates to or from the Lutheran Synod disappears from our records, though no formal action was taken to repeal the “Fraternal Union,” and under it a delegation from either body might still probably be entitled to a seat in the other. But the Lutherans and the Episcopalians were mostly settled in different and distant sections of the State, and each body held its meetings in towns usually inconvenient for the attendance of the other. There were therefore difficulties in carrying out this arrangement, while no corresponding benefits seemed likely to arise. The Convention of 1823 was held in Salisbury: hence the full attendance of the Lutheran delegation at that Convention. It was not
until 1840 that another Convention met so far west, with one exception; and we hear no more of delegations from Synod or Convention.
But though this may be a sufficient reason for the fact of the interchange of delegations having ceased, yet there were probably other causes lying deeper, which even under more favorable circumstances would have made the result not less sure. By the consecration of a Bishop for North Carolina, and by the clear and positive teaching of Bishop Ravenscroft, the differences between Lutherans and Episcopalians must have come out with a distinctness unknown before. Although several of the Lutheran Churches in Europe had preserved the Episcopate, and the old Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania and in Deleware had united with the Church in those Dioceses and acknowledged the pastoral government of the Bishop, the North Carolina Lutherans were not at all inclined to such a union as this. They had drawn their pastors and teachers mostly from Hanover, and, as has been already pointed out, they had fallen off very much from the purity of early Lutheranism. The Augsburg Confession had been branded by the North Carolina Synod as tainted with Romanism, and for some years they had allowed unordained men to administer both sacraments. Liturgical services had very generally fallen into disuse among them, and at this very time the most acrimonious controversy was raging, and a schism had already been made in their body, caused chiefly by this back-sliding from their old principles. The leading man in the Synod was the Rev. Gottlieb Shober, not a Lutheran at all in doctrine, but a professed Moravian, who seems to have had little or no respect for the ancient Lutheran position. The fact that two of their most eminent preachers, Mr. Shober and Mr. Miller, were professed believers in and adherents of a different ecclesiastical polity, and were of different doctrinal views from those peculiar to Lutheranism, is a sufficient commentary upon
the condition of Lutheranism in North Carolina at that time.
It is beyond all question that Mr. Miller's amiable desire for a closer union with the Lutherans had involved his own people in the same defection from those principles which they held in common, besides weaning them from the distinctive doctrines of the Church. Bishop Ravenscroft's great work was to sound the trumpet with so certain and distinct a blast that no one could mistake it; and to find out who in North Carolina was on the side of the Church as a matter of conscience and with intelligent convictions of truth and duty. Even had the principles of Churchmen and of Lutherans been much more in accord than they were, there could have been no sort of sympathy between the spirit which under the new administration began to animate the Church in this State, and that which prevailed among their Lutheran brethren.
But again, the fundamental principle of the Church being the maintenance, not only of primitive truth, but of Apostolic Order as well, it was hardly to be expected that those who had so far departed from this latter as to allow the sacraments to be administered by men who had no kind of ordination whatever, could remain in such perfect accord with the Church under Bishop Ravenscroft, as to take part in her councils and legislation. It is pleasant to remember this long co-operation and friendship, and we trust that the good will, implied in it all, continues to animate both our Lutheran brethren and ourselves; but such a union as the one attempted was in the nature of the case impracticable.
NOTE ON THE REV. HATCH DENT.In a list of “Names and Places of the Clergy” among the Pettigrew MSS. given in connection with the proceedings of the Tarborough Conventions of 1790—94, after the names of seven Clergymen, numbered consecutively, and their fields of labor designated, there is added, “the Rev. Mr. Dent, near the Yadkin river.” This was the Rev. Hatch Dent, of Maryland. He was ordered Deacon by Bishop Seabury at the same time with William Duke, October 16th, 1785. Both these names occur in the earliest list furnished the General Convention of the Clergy of Maryland, in 1792. His name is absent from the list of 1795, but re-appears in that of 1799. In Rumple's History of Rowan county, page 408, Mr. Henderson states that the Rev. Mr. Dent came from Maryland to Rowan county with quite a Colony of Churchmen about the year 1794, and purchased a farm, but remained only a few years. He was an uncle of two clergymen of North Carolina, Richard W. Barber and Samuel S. Barber. In a biographical sketch of Wm. Wirt, prefixed to an edition of The British Spy, I have seen it stated that William Wirt about the year 1780 went to a classical school taught by Hatch Dent in Charles county, Maryland, about forty miles from Bladensburg. His school room was “the vestry-house of Newport Church.” He is said to have been “a most excellent man, very good-tempered”—certainly high praise for a school-master in those days. Many of his pupils afterwards became eminent men.
APPENDIX.
THE CONVENTIONS OF 1790, 1793 AND 1794, —WITH THE— CONSTITUTION ADOPTED FOR THE CHURCH —IN— NORTH CAROLINA, IN 1794, —AND THE— TESTIMONIAL OF THE REV. CHARLES PETTIGREW as Bishop-elect.
THE NAMES AND PLACES OF THE CLERGY.
[The following list of the Clergy of North Carolina is without date, but is certainly of the year 1795. It is given just as it appears in the Pettigrew Manuscript. The name of the Rev. Mr. Pettigrew is omitted, probably because this was only a private memorandum of his own.]
1st. Rev. JOHNSTON MILLER, Lincoln Co., White Haven Parish.
2d. Rev. SOLM. HALLING, Rector Christ Church, Newbern.
3d. Rev. JAMES L. WILSON, of Martin and Edgecombe.
4th. Rev. NATANIEL BLOUNT, of Pitt and Edgecombe.
5th. Rev. GEORGE MICKLEJOHN, of Granville.
6th. Rev. JOSEPH GURLEY, of Hertford.
7th. Rev. STEPHEN JOHNSTON, of Northampton.
The Rev. Mr. DENT, near the Yadkin river.
P. S.—The Rev. Robert Johnston Miller, White Haven Parish, Lincoln county, a Lutheran minister.
THE PROCEEDINGSOF THE
FIRST CONVENTION OF THE CLERGY [AND Laity],
HELD AT Tarborough.
At a meeting of the Protestant Episcopal Clergy and Laity of North Carolina, held at Tarborough, on the 5th of June, 1790, pursuant to a previous agreement entered into by the clergy of the said State in consequence of a circular letter addressed to them from the Committee of Correspondence at Philadelphia, the following proceedings were entered into:
1st Resolved, That we do approve of and accede to the Constitution adopted by a Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church held at Philadelphia in the year 1789.
2d Resolved, That the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, Rev. James L. Wilson, and John Leigh, Esq., be, and they are hereby, appointed a Committee to draw up and send forward an answer to the circular letter written by the Corresponding Committee of Philadelphia to the Episcopal Clergy of this State, expressing the high sense we have of the proceedings of the last General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church held in that city.
3d Resolved, That the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State are entitled to elect and send one member from each of their respective counties to represent them at a general convention of the Protestant Episcopal Clergy and Laity of this State.
4th Resolved, That when there is a regularly ordained Clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, he shall represent the county in which he resides, and procure
[produce?] his orders at Convention. But when there is no such resident in a county, a layman shall be chosen by the people as their representative.
5th Resolved, That the Clergy and Laity thus elected shall convene on the 12th November next at Tarborough, to deliberate on the affairs of their Church, and to choose a representative to the next General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, to be held at the city of Philadelphia.
6th Resolved That the Rev. James L. Wilson and John Leigh, Esq., be, and [they] are hereby, appointed to make the same known by advertisement in the public papers printed in this State; fixing the time and mode for electing such representatives of the people.
CHARLES PETTIGREW,
Chairman.
WILLIAM CLEMENTS, Secretary.
[We learn from a letter of Mr. Pettigrew to Bishop White, of date June 6th, 1790, that this Convention was composed of only one clergyman, besides himself, and two laymen, “gentlemen of distinguished merit and reputation.” The other clergyman must have been the Rev. James L. Wilson, and the two laymen, Dr. John Leigh and William Clements, Esq., since the names of these three persons appear in the proceedings.]
[ADDRESS OF THE CONVENTION OF JUNE, 1790, TO THE GENERAL CONVENTION, DRAWN UP IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SECOND RESOLUTION OF SAID CONVENTION.]
Tarborough, N. C., 5th June, 1790.
Right Rev. Brethren and Gentlemen of the Laity:
In answer to your zealous and friendly letter last Fall, addressed to the Episcopal Clergy of this State, we beg leave to say in behalf of ourselves and absent brethren, there is nothing we more ardently wish than strict union with onr brethren of the Clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America. But your letter reached the hand of Dr. Cutting too late to
procure that representation of our Church, which would have been highly proper, at your Convention of last September in Philadelphia. We have seen your journal and have the pleasure to say that we highly approve of the business done [on that] and the preceeding occasion; particularly of your Constitution and Canons, and cheerfully subscribe and accede to the union. The necessity of this our accession is to us so obvious that we reflect with pain [on] the non-attendance of our clerical brethren who were to meet us in Convention at this juncture—particularly the Rev. Mr. Cutting, from whom we expected your letter, and necessary information; but we charitably conclude that indisposition or unavoidable accident must have prevented. This puts it out of our power to answer the particulars in your letter with that precision we could wish, which we hope your candor will excuse.
We transmit you a copy of our imperfect proceedings, in which you will find that we have resolved on the election of members for a more general convention for the purpose of choosing a delegate to represent our Church constitutionally at the next General Convention to be held in your city.
The state of our Church in this Commonwealth is truly deplorable from the paucity of its clergy and the multiplicity of opposing sectarians who are using every possible exertion to seduce its members to their different communions. This grievance, however, we hope will be reduced in time by the energy of its faithful labourers; and we esteem it a most fortunate circumstance that Providence has advanced a gentleman of so well known integrity and zeal for the interest of the Church and religion in general, as the Right Rev. Dr. White, of Philadelphia, to preside in the Episcopal chair.
We have the honor to be, with sentiments of the truest respect and esteem, Brethren and Gentlemen, your sincere friends and Brethren.
MINUTES OF A CONVENTION
OF THE
CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE STATE OF
NORTH CAROLINA,
HELD IN
Tarborough on the 12th and 13th of Nov., A. D. 1790.
[From the North Carolina Chronicle, or Fayetteville Gazette, of date November 22d, 1790. The paper, from which the following extract is taken, is in the possession of the Hon Kemp P. Battle, LL. D., President of the University of North Carolina.]
At a meeting of the Episcopal Clergy and Laity of the State of North Carolina, held at Tarborough, on the 12th day of November, 1790:
The Reverend Dr. Micklejohn was unanimously chosen President.
Resolved, That the Clergy and Laity present do form themselves into a Committee of the Whole, for the purpose of preparing business necessary to be proceeded on by the Convention of to-morrow.
Adjourned until to-morrow morning, 9 o'clock.
SATURDAY, November 13th, 1790.
The Convention met according to adjournment.
The Committee appointed yesterday for the purpose of preparing business for the Convention, reported the following resolutions, which were agreed to:
Resolved, That the Reverend Doctor Micklejohn, the Rev. Charles Pettigrew, the Rev. James L. Wilson, of the
clergy, and John Leigh, William McKenzie, and Joseph Leech. Esquires, of the laity, be, and they are hereby, appointed deputies to represent the Clergy and Laity of this State in the next General Episcopal Convention, to be held in New York, in September, 1792. Provided, That if any of the lay deputies should fail to attend the said Convention, the said clerical deputies shall have power to nominate and appoint others in their stead.
Resolved, That the Reverend Doctors Micklejohn and Cutting, the Rev. Messrs. Blount, Pettigrew, McDougal and Wilson, of the Clergy, and Jonathan Kitterell, of Granville; James Mills, of Warren; Henry Hill, of Franklin; William McKinzie, of Martin; Esquires; Doctors Leigh, of Tarborough, and Dickinson, of Edenton; and Colonels Long, of Halifax, and Leech, of Newbern; of the Laity; be appointed a Standing Committee of the Episcopal Church in this State. Any two of the Clergy, with two of the Laity, aforesaid, may receive applications from, and give recommendations to, all candidates for Holy Orders, which recommendation shall be a sufficient voucher to said candidate to obtain the signatures of a majority of the whole Committee, agreeably to the sixth Canon agreed to and ratified in General Convention, held in Philadelphia on the 16th of October, 1789.
Resolved, That there be an annual meeting of the Episcopal Clergy and Laity of North Carolina, under the name of the State Convention of the Episcopal Clergy and Laity.
Resolved, That in all General and State Conventions, the Laity have a right to representation of their own order, and until some future regulations take place, it is recommended to the Laity to choose one for every county and one for every district town* in this State.
Resolved, That the Episcopal Convention of this State
*See Article 4 of the Constitution of 1794, page 431 post, and note on that Article.do appoint the stated time and place of their meeting and direct the same to be advertised.
Resolved, That in case of emergency, during the recess of the Convention, a majority of the State [Standing?] Committee be empowered to call the State Convention. That in all such, not less than three months’ notice shall be given in the public papers of the State, or advertised at the court house in each county.
Resolved, That the Laity hold their election for representatives to the next State Convention at the court house in each county, on the first Saturday in September next.
Convention adjourned to meet again at Tarborough on the fourth Wednesday in October next.
JOHN NORWOOD, Sec. C.
Tarborough, Nov. 13th, 1790.
[The Convention which by the action of the above body was called to meet at Tarborough in October, 1791, seems not to have been held. The most important result of the Convention of 1790 was the ordination of the Rev. S. Halling, who was recommended for Holy Orders by the Standing Committee, and was ordained by Bishop Madison, of Virginia. He succeeded the Rev. Dr. Cutting as Rector of Christ Church, Newbern, in 1792. In Bishop Burgess's “LIST OF PERSONS ORDAINED DEACONS” Dr. Halling's ordination is put in the year 1792, and his death in 1813.
The Rev. James L. Wilson, one of the deputies appointed to attend the General Convention of 1792, proceeded to New York for that purpose, but was so delayed on his voyage that he did not arrive until some days after its adjournment, as will be seen by a note appended the journal of the General Convention of 1782.]
CONVENTIONHELD AT
TARBOROUGH, NOVEMBER 21st, 1793,
BEING THE SECOND ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE THE CHURCH
IN NORTH CAROLINA.
[Heretofore the only record of the proceedings of this informal meeting was the mention of it in Parson Miller's letter to Dr. Hawks. As Parson Miller was not present, and spoke only from hear-say, and after the lapse of many years, his account is not here inserted.
The following extract from a letter of the Rev. Dr. Halling, of Newbern, to the Rev. Chanles Pettigrew, is the fullest account we have of the proceedings of this Convention. The letter is dated at Newbern, December 10th, 1793]:
“It will exceed the bounds of a letter to acquaint you with all the business we went through, but I hope the following short abstract of our proceedings will afford you some idea of our actions:
“I am sorry to inform you that only six persons formed the meeting, three of the Clergy, viz: Mr. Gurley, of Murfreesborough, Mr. Wilson and myself. On the part of the Laity, Mr. Clements and Dr. Leigh, of Tarborough, the former of the Presbyterian Church, who was our Secretary and Mr. F. Green, whom I desired the Vestry of Newbern to appoint as deputy for Craven county.
“You may reasonably suppose that it would have been unadvisable in us to appoint a Bishop-elect; the smallness of our number would have subjected him to reproach, and our Church also.
* * * * * * * * *
“I proposed we should send another advertisement, accompanied with a circular letter, to one or more respectable and popular characters in every county, recommending in the most earnest manner a convention of the people who profess the Protestant Episcopal religion of the American Church, to choose immediately a Vestry, to appoint Readers, where a regularly ordained Clergyman could not be procured; and we resolved
that this Vestry, the Readers, and whoever they might elect in addition as deputies, should meet at Tarborough the last Wednesday in May, 1794, to form a Constitution and elect one of the Clergy to be consecrated as Bishop of this State.
“This is the sum of our proceedings.”
[We learn from Parson Miller's letter to Dr. Hawks, that the Rev. James L. Wilson was President of this Convention, and William Clements, Esq., Secretary; also that the Convention appointed a Standing Committee, and published a general notice of the meeting called for May, 1794. The Rev. Dr. Halling, of Newbern, seems to have been the moving spirit in this second effort at organization. There is a long and most earnest letter from him to Mr. Pettigrew, in which he urges the importance of the meeting to be held in May, 1794; and probably it was his exertions which caused so good an attendance.]
The Convention sent forth the following printed Circular:
DEARLY BELOVED:—
The Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, for the State of North Carolina, at its meeting held in Tarborough on the 21st day of November, 1793:
Resolved, That in consideration of the great apparent decay of virtue and vital religion, every exertion is necessary to awaken and animate the zeal of those professors of christianity, who call themselves members of said Church, we have therefore, thought proper to address a circular letter to those of the same persuasion in each county of the State; and to request that you would convene, at the Church or Court House, or some other public place, at an early day, those of the inhabitants who are desirous of worshipping GOD according to the Rules and Ceremonies as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.
That order and good government may be restored, it is warmly recommended to you by the Convention, to select from among yourselves persons of good morals and unexceptional characters, to act as Vestry. It shall be the duty of this Vestry to procure the services of a neighboring Clergyman, who has been regularly ordained according to the Forms of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He is to preach as often as convenient, considering the distance that his residence may be from you. He
is to administer the Holy Ordinances at proper times; but especially the Blessed Sacrament of the Lord's Supper—at least thrice every year. On those Sabbaths, on which he cannot attend in consequence of his other appointments, indisposition, or any other cause, one of the Vestry will be expected to read the service of the day, and some religious discourse to the people.
By this means, it appears probable, that the members of our Church may again be called together, many of whom, it is to be lamented, wander as sheep without a shepherd.
And may Almighty GOD, in his mercy, bless your endeavours, that the happy purpose—the salvation of souls—may be effected, for which we recommend these things to your practice. We commit you to the safe keeping and kind protection of our Heavenly Father; and shall always present our humble, but fervent addresses at a Throne of Grace, for your temporal prosperity, and everlasting happiness.
With sentiments of affection and charity, we are your Brethren in Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Signed in behalf of the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the State of North Carolina.
JAMES L. WILSON,
President.
WILLIAM CLEMENTS,
Secretary.
THE JOURNAL
OF THE
CONVENTION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL
CHURCH,
HELD IN
TARBOROUGH, IN MAY, 1794.
The Episcopal State Convention of North Carolina convened in the town of Tarborough, on the last Wednesday in May, 1794, agreeably to adjournment.
Present:—
The Rev'd CHARLES PETTIGREW,
JAMES L. WILSON,
SOLOMON HALLING,
ROBERT J. MILLER,*
On the part of the Clergy.
Present on the part of the laity:—
LEONARD DESSEAUX, for Beaufort county,
JOSEPH PERKINS, for Lincoln county,
ISAAC GUION, for Newbern,
JOHN LEIGH, one of the Standing Committee.
The necessary certificates were produced by the lay deputies of their appointment.
The Rev. Mr. Gurley, who was appointed by the last Convention to open the business of the present by preaching a sermon, having failed to appear:
*At this time the Rev. Mr. Miller had received only Lutheran ordination. He was ordained to the Diaconate and Priesthood by Bishop Moore in 1821. [See Journal of that year.]The Rev. Mr. Charles Pettigrew was appointed by the Convention to officiate in his place.
Adjourned until 7 o'clock P. M.
The Rev. Mr. Pettigrew officiated in the afternoon according to the appointment of the Convention.
WEDNESDAY, 7 o'clock, P. M.
Mr. Robert White appeared and produced a certificate of his election as a lay deputy to represent the town of Tarborough.
The Rev. Messrs. Wilson and Halling, on the part of the Clergy, and Mr. White, on the part of the Laity, were appointed a Committee to draw up a Constitution for the government of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State, and report the same to-morrow.
Resolved, That the Convention proceed to-morrow, at the hour of twelve, for the purpose of taking into consideration that part of the public advertisement which relates to the appointment of a Bishop-elect for the State.
The Convention adjourned till nine o'clock to-morrow.
THURSDAY, May 29th, 1794.
The Convention met according to adjournment, and the morning service was read by the Rev. Mr. Miller.
On motion, Resolved, That the business of each day commence with prayer.
On motion, Resolved, That Mr. William Clements be appointed Secretary of the Convention.
The Rev. Mr. Blount produced his orders and took his seat.
Mr. Wood, a member of the Standing Committee, appeared this morning, produced his certficate, and took his seat.
The committee appointed yesterday for drawing up a Constitution for the government [of the Church in this State] delivered their report. [See Appendix A.]
On motion, the Convention formed itself into a Committee
of the Whole, to take into consideration the Constitution as reported by the Committee, Dr. Guion in the chair. After some progress made the Committee rose.
Mr. James Adams, lay deputy from the county of Edgecombe, produced his certificate and took his seat accordingly.
The Convention conceived it necessary to proceed to appoint a Bishop-elect. Resolved, That this Convention do proceed, on Saturday next, to appoint by ballot a Bishop-elect.
The Convention then adjourned till 4 o'clock P. M. Thursday.
THURSDAY, 4 o'clock P. M.
The Convention met according to adjournment.
The General Constitution and Canons, as published by order of the General Convention, were, on motion, read.
The Convention adjourned until to-morrow at 8 o'clock.
FRIDAY, 30th May, 1794.
The Convention met according to adjournment, and opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Blount.
Mr. Grimes, member of the Standing Committee from Pitt county, appeared this morning and took his seat.
The Rev'ds Messrs. Blount, Wilson and Halling were appointed a Committee to draw a form of recommendation for the Bishop-elect to the General Convention.
The Convention resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, Dr. Guion in the chair. The Committee reported progress and asked leave to sit again.
The Convention adjourned until 4 o'clock P. M.
FRIDAY, 4 o'clock P. M.
The Convention met according to adjournment and resolved itself into a Committee of the Whole, Dr. Guion in the chair. The Committee rose and the President resumed
his seat. The chairman of the Committee reported progress and asked leave to sit again.
The Convention adjourned until to-morrow morning at 7 o'clock.
SATURDAY, 31st May, 1794.
The Convention met according to adjournment, prayers being read by the Rev. Mr. Gurley.
The Committee presented a form of recommendation for the Bishop-elect. [See Appendix B.]
The Convention adjourned to meet at 12 o'clock.
SATURDAY, 12 o'clock M.
The Convention met at 12 o'clock, according to adjournment.
The appointment of a Bishop-elect, agreeable to a resolution entered into on Thursday last, took place, when it appeared that the Rev. Mr. Pettegrew was duly elected.
Resolved, That the Clergy choose lay members of the Standing Committee, and that the laity choose the clerical members, and in consequence of this resolution the following persons were chosen, viz-
The Rev. Messrs. NATH. BLOUNT,
JAMES L. WILSON,
ROBERT J. MILLER,
SOLOMON HALLING,
JOSEPH GURLEY,
GEORGE MICKLEJOHN,
Of the Clergy.
And of the laity:
Messrs. McKenzie, Moore, Hardy, Murfree, Dr. Guion, David Turner, and Joseph Blount.
The Rev. Messrs. S. Halling and J. L. Wilson were appointed as clerical deputies, and W. Clements, as lay deputy to the next General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Resolved, That the thanks of the Convention be rendered
to the President of the Convention, and the Secretary.
The Convention adjourned to meet in Tarborough on the third Wednesday in October, 1795.
[The above is the journal of the Convention of 1794, as given in the Pettigrew Manuscript. It is in the handwriting of Mr. William Clements, the Secretary, and is evidently the official record transmitted by him to the President, Mr. Pettigrew, for preservation. It is defective in one or two points. It does not mention the election of any President, nor does it show that any disposition was made of the report of the Committee of the Whole on the Constitution for the Church in this State. Immediately after the journal, in the Manuscript, follows a copy of the Constitution, and, as it is signed by all the members of the Convention, it must have been adopted by the Convention, although no mention was made in the journal of such action. A copy of the Constitution is given and is marked “Appendix A.”]
[APPENDIX A.]A COPY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL
CHURCH IN THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA.
PREAMBLE.
WHEREAS, There are numbers of good people in this State who have been educated in the faith of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and many religious and well-disposed persons who appear to be desirous to worship God according to the forms used in said Church; We, the Clergy and lay deputies in Convention met, have thought it advisable to frame a Constitution for the future government of said Church; and humbly pray at the throne of Heavenly Grace that our endeavors may prove effectual to the promotion of virtue and true religion.
ARTICLE 1st. That the Church be denominated the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of North Carolina.
ART. 2d. That there shall be a Bishop in the said Church, who shall be elected by ballot by the Convention, and that two-thirds of the members present at the time of election shall be a majority for that purpose.
ART. 3d. There shall be a Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the State of North Carolina, on the third Wednesdav in October annually, in such place as may be determined upon by every preceding Convention.
ART. 4th. That the Convention shall be, or may consist of the Clergy regularly ordained and settled in this State, of the members of the Standing Committee, one of the Vestry of each Parish, two delegates from each county, and one from each town* in the State, to be elected by the people.
ART. 5th. One-third of the Clergy and an equal number of the lay deputies shall constitute a quorum for transacting business, but a smaller number may adjourn.
ART. 6th. A Standing Committee, consisting of twelve persons, shall be chosen or appointed by the Convention, whose office it shall be to perform the duties laid down in the Canons and General Constitution of the Church; and the vacancies shall be filled up during the recess by the Bishop, which appointment shall count until the meeting of the next Convention.
ART. 7th. That as speedily as possible after it is known in each county what numbers are desirious of becoming members of the Protestant Episcopal Church, they be convened and elect a Vestry consisting of twelve persons; to form the people into a regular society, and to procure a clergyman, who has been regularly ordained according to the rites and ceremonies of said Church, to officiate among as frequently as it is in his power to do so, and duly to administer the Holy Ordinances. The Vestry shall be chosen annually.
ART. 8th. That there shall be no fee or reward demanded for the administration of the Holy Ordinance of Baptism.
ART. 9th. All the Clergy shall be amenable to the Convention for any immorality or misbehavior, and for countenancing and encouraging any doctrines contrary to the Holy Scriptures comprehended in the Articles of our Church.
ART. 10th. Any Church or Parish in this State not represented at the time of ordaining this Constitution, shall be entitled to the benefit thereof, as soon as the members shall signify their ratification in writing, or by a deputy to the State Convention.
ART. 11th. That no person professing himself to be a Clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church, shall be permitted to preach in any of the churches or Chapels in the State, until he shall produce his Orders to the rector or minister of said church or chapel, or the vestry.
ART. 12th. The Bishop or President during the recess of the annual Convention shall have the power of calling an especial Convention on any urgent occasion, at such time as to him may appear most convenient, and at the place to which the preceding Convention adjourned itself.
*This refers, no doubt. to the old borough towns of Edenton, Halifax, Newbern, Wilmington, Hillsboro and Salisbury, which, under the Constitution of 1776, were entitled to one Representative each in the General Assembly.ART. 13th. This Constitution shall remain permanent until it may be deemed necessary by three-fourths of any future Convention to alter or amend the same.
Done and ratified in Convention in Tarborough May 31st, 1794, and signed by
CHARLES PETTIGREW, President of the Convention.
J. LEIGH,
I. GUION,
R. WHYTE,
BENJ. WOODS,
JOSEPH PERKINS,
L. DESSEAUX,
WILLIAM GRIMES,
ROBERT GODLEY,
WILLIAM CLEMENTS.
NATHANIEL BLOUNT,
JOSEPH GURLEY,
JAMES L. WILSON,
SOLOMON HALLING,
R. JOHNSTON MILLER,
[APPENDIX B.]TESTIMONIAL OF THE REV. CHARLES PETTIGREW.
We, the subscribers, having met in Convention, at Tarborough, in North Carolina, on the 28th* day of May, 1794, for the purpose of considering the declining situation of the Protestant Episcopal Church in this State, and having chosen the Rev. Charles Pettigrew as a person fit to be our Bishop, and worthy to be recommended for consecration to that holy office—but being sensible that the great distance at which the laity, as well as the clergy of this State live from each other deprives us of sufficient personal acquaintance with one another to subscribe a testimonial in the words prescribed by the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, have thought it necessary and proper to make some deviation therefrom, which we presume to hope will be no obstacle to our laudable pursuit. We therefore do hereby recommend to be consecrated to the office of a Bishop, the said Reverend Charles Pettigrew, whom, from his morality, religious principles, piety of life, from his general reputation in a clerical character, from the personal knowledge we have of him, and from his sufficiency in good learning, and soundness in faith, we are induced to believe worthy of being consecrated to that important office. We hereby promise and engage to receive him as such when canonically consecrated and invested therewith, and to render that canonical obedience which we believe to be necessary to the due and
*This Testimonial could not have been actually signed before Saturday, May 31st, the day on which the election was made; but the old rule of law refers every act of a legislative assembly to the first day of the session, and so this paper is dated May 28th Wednesday, the day on which the Convention met.proper discharge of so important a trust in the Church of Christ. And we now address the Right Reverend the Bishops in the several United States, praying their united assistance in consecrating this our said brother and canonically investing him with the Apostolic office and powers.
In testimony whereof, we hereto subscribe our names, the day and year above written.
J. LEIGH, M. D.
I. GUION, M. D.,
R. WHYTE, Lawyers,
B. WOODS, Lawyers,
W. CLEMENTS,
L. DESSEAUX,
W. GRIMES,
R. GODLEY, (Of the Laity.)
N. BLOUNT,
J. L. WILSON,
J. GURLEY,
S. HALLING,
R. J. MILLER, (Of the Clergy.)
LIST OF BOOKS ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF THE
CHURCH IN NORTH CAROLINA,
OR ASSOCIATED THEREWITH, EXHIBITED DURING THE
JOINT CONVENTION AT TARBOROUGH.
| TITLE OF BOOKS. | NAME OF OWNER. |
| 1.—Collection of Laws of the Province of North Carolina; Swann. The “Yellow Jacket,” printed by James Davis, Newbern, 1752; the first book printed in North Carolina | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr, |
| 2.—Collection of Laws of the Province of North Carolina, James Davis, Newbern; “Davis's 1st Revisal,” 1764 | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr, |
| 3.—Revisal of the Laws of North Carolina, James Davis, Newbern, 1773. “Davis's 2d Revisal.” (Contains autographs of Judge Richard Henderson, Jesse Benton, Maj. Pleasant Henderson, and others) | Wm. H. Bailey, LLD. |
| 4.—Sermon before Gov. Tryon and the Troops at Hillsboro’ in 1768, by Rev. Geo. Micklejohn, S. T. D., printed by James Davis, Newbern, 1768 | Hon. Wm L. Saunders. |
| 5.—“Admiranda Narratio, Fida tamen,” &c. (Latin copy of Hariot's “Brief and True Report;” with Jno. White's drawings of the Natives, &c. DeBry: Frankfort, 1590 | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr. |
| 6.—The Bible of George Durant, the first settler in Albemarle—Old Testament, Geneva version. New Testament by Tomson, London, 1599 | State Historical Society. |
| 7.—Family Bible of George Durant, son of the preceding—containing family records of the Durant, Blount, Littlejohn, and Reed families. King James's Version, London, 1713 | Mrs. Fred. Nash. |
| 8.—An Application of the Church Catechism, &c., by Gabriel Towerson; London, 1685. From Dr. Bray's Library at Bath | Diocese of East Caroiina. |
| LIST OF BOOKS. | NAME OF OWNER. |
| 9.—Book of Common Prayer; London, 1749. Formerly belonged to the Rev. Thos. Burges of Edgecombe Parish, Halifax county | Mrs. Melissa Long. |
| 10.—Book of Common Prayer. Formerly belonged to Jno. Nicholls, of Bertie | Diocese of East Carolina. |
| 11.—University Sermons, Rev. Henry Adams. Published by Henry Sacheverell, London, 1716. Formerly belonged to Rev. Chas. E. Taylor, of Northampton and Halifax, one of the Chaplains of the Provincial Congress of 1775, at Hillsboro | The Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, D. D., Tarborough. |
| 12.—Bishop Barlow's Remains; London, 1793: printed by the famous John Dunton. Belonged to Rev. Chas. E. Taylor | The Rev. Jos. Blount Cheshire, D. D., Tarborough. |
| 13.—Burnett on the XXXIX Articles. Formerly belonged to the Rev. Wm. Holt, minister to St. Mary's, Edgecombe county, circa, 1785 | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr. |
| 14.—Sermons, &c., by the Rev. Henry Pattillo, an eminent Presbyterian minister of Granville county; Wilmington, James Adams, 1788 | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr. |
| 15.—The book called “Luther,” published by the Lutheran Synod of North Carolina in 1818 | Jos. Blount Cheshire, Jr. |
INDEX.
[This Index is only to the Addresses, &c., and does not include the proceedings of the Conventions in the first part of this volume.]
| Abbott, Henry | 244 |
| Abernathy Family; | 376 |
| Academy, at Edenton; | 171, 178-9, 255—7 |
| at Newbern; | 85, 151, 169—179, 258-9, 275 |
| at Wilmington (“The Innes”); | 143-4, 164, 261 |
| Act of Assembly relating to the Church: of 1701, 52, 95; of 1708, 56; of 1711, 53, 56, 57; of 1715, 63, 64; of 1729, 67; of 1741, 67; of 1762, 76; of 1764, 77 | |
| Concerning Marriage; by Clergymen of the Church, | 68 |
| by Dissenting Ministers, | 69, 79 |
| of S. C. Assembly falsely attributed to N. C. | 53, 54 |
| Adams. Rev. James; | 50, 53, 55, 97, 125, 126, 164 |
| James; | 264, see also Appendix |
| Albemarle, Duke of | 93 |
| Alexander, Rev. John | 166-7 |
| Ambrose, Philip; | 173 |
| Amidas, Philip; 92. Amidas and Barlow's Narrative, | 91 |
| Anderson's Hist., of the Church of England in the Colonies; | 71 |
| Andrews, Sam'l., exempted from Act of Pardon and Oblivion; | 153, note |
| Archdale, Gov.; 97. Precinct of; | 162 |
| Ardern, John; | 120 |
| Arendt, Rev. Johan Gottfriedt, a Lutheran Minister; | 385 |
| Asbury, Rev. Francis; | 381 |
| Ashe Family; | 133—5, 181, 193, 249. |
| John (1703); 133. John (2d), 115, 133-4; John Baptista, | 107, 128, 133 |
| Judge Samuel, 134; Sam'l. A., | 97, 127 |
| William S., 135; Judge Thomas S., | 136 |
| Asheville, Bishop Ravenscroft's first visit to; | 319 |
| Atkinson, Rt. Rev. Thomas; | 292—5, 304, 309, 323, 324, 332, 333, 337, 342, 343 |
| Attamuskeet Indians; | 73, 167 |
| Avery, Rev. John, | 179, 213, 249, 256—8 |
| Babbitt, Rev. P. T., | 303, 304 |
| Badham, William; | 153 |
| Bailey, Rev. Thomas; | 65 |
| Baker Family; | 150 |
| Judge Blake, 264. Henry, | 150 |
| Dr. Simmons J., 84, 150, (and Mrs. Baker) | 273 |
| Banbury (or Benbury), Wm; | 52, 118, 120 |
| Thomas, John A, and Lemuel C; | 120 |
| Baptists; | 66, 82, 243 |
| alleged persecution of; | 61 |
| Barbour, Rev. John Humphrey; | 157 |
| Barker, Thomas; | 146 |
| Barlow, Arthur; Amidas and Barlow's Expedition; | 91 |
| Barnett, Rev. John; | 74, 116 |
| Barrenger, Genl. Paul; 401, 408. Genl. Rufus; | 375 |
| Bath, the oldest town in N. C.; (see also “St, Thomas’ Church,” Bath) | 209 |
| Battle, Hon. Kemp P.; | 91. See also Appendix |
| Kemp P. Jr., 328. Richard H.; | 328 |
| Judge William H.; | 151 |
| Bagley, Ambrose Cox; | 173 |
| Beard, John Lewis; | 403 |
| Bedell, Rev. G. T.; | 401, 407 |
| Berkeley, Bishop; | 88 |
| Parish, Perquimans County; | 84 |
| Sir William, Governor of Virginia; | 47 |
| Bernhardt, Rev. Christopher, a Lutheran Minister; | 385 |
| Bernheim, Rev. G. D., a Lutheran Minister; | 398, 406 |
| His History of the Lutheran Churches and German Settlements in the Carolinas; | 378, 379; 385, 389-90, 404 |
| Berry, Chief Justice Charles; | 139 |
| Bevis, Rev. Christopher; | 69 |
| Blacknall, Rev. John; | 69 |
| Blair, George; | 179 |
| Rev. John, sent to Albemarle in 1704, the first Missionary of the S. P. G. to N. C.; | 52, 55, 161 |
| Blinn, Rev. Peter; | 73, 83, 84 |
| Blount Family; | 122—3, 249 275 |
| James, 122. John, 52, 118, 120, 122, 123, James, Jr., 154. Jacob. 122, 154, 173, 272. John Gray, 122. Col. John, 123, 219, 230, 232. Joseph, 123. 179. Joseph, Jr., 123, (see also Appendix). Mrs. Mary Sumner, (“Jacky”), 264; her bequest to build a Church in Raleigh. 276. Rev. Nathaniel, 73, 84, 88, 183, 184, 200, 202, 208, 213, 216, 252, 254, 261-2, 272-3, (see also Appendix.) Maj. Reading, 122. Genl. Thomas, 122, 264, 276. Maj. Thomas H., 273. Thomas, 52, 118, 122. Gov. William, 122, 273. Wm. Augustus, 122. Gov. Willie, | 122 |
| “Blount's Chapel” (Trinity Church, Chocowinity) | 212-13, 261, 272 |
| Blythe Family, 376. Frank | 369-70 |
| Bonner's (i. e. Bennett's) Creek, | 48 |
| Bonner, Henry, 120. James, | 154 |
| Boyd, Rev. Adam, | 249, 259—61 |
| Rev. John | 67 |
| Brainerd, (spelled in the text Brainard), Rev. C. C., | 212 |
| Branch Family, | 265 |
| “Bray's Associates,” | 73, 167-8 |
| Rev. Dr. Thomas, Commissary of the Bishop of London | 51, 95 |
| sends Books to Albemarle, and a Minister, | 52 |
| establishes the Society called “Bray's Associates,” for the education of slaves, | 167-8 |
| Brett, Rev. Daniel, first Minister in Albemarle, | 52 |
| Brevard, Mrs. R. J., | 325 |
| Bronson, Rev. Benjamin S., 323, 329, 331. “Bronson Hall,” in the Thompson Orphanage, | 331 |
| Brownrigg, Richard, | 179 |
| Bryan, A. P, | 328 |
| Buel. Rev. D. H., D. D., | 310, 311 |
| Buncombe, Col. Edward, | 145, 181 |
| Burges, Dr. A. S. H., 276. Rev. Henry John, 83, 84, 276. Rev. Thomas. 75, 83, 246, 252, 262, 273. | |
| Burgess, Bishop, his “List of persons ordained Deacons” | See Appendix |
| Burgwin, or Burgwyn. | |
| John Burgwin, 140. Geo. B. Burgwin, 140. Hill Burgwin, 140. Jno. F. Burgwyn, 140. Wm. H. S. Burgwyn, | 140 |
| Burrington, Gov. George, | 65, 67, 100, 103, 104, 105, 107 |
| Burton Family, 376 Col. Robert | 207, 376 |
| Bute County (now Franklyn and Warren); | 150, 227 |
| Court House | 229 |
| Butler, Bishop, | 88 |
| Buxton, Rev. Jarvis, D. D., 297, 311; Rector of Parish at Asheville,” | 309 |
| Bynum, Rev. William S., | 315-6 |
| Caldcleugh, Alexander, | 408 |
| Caldwell, Rev. David, 116, 179, 238. His Life by Caruthers, | 177, 178 |
| Rev. Joseph, | 238 |
| Calvary Church, Tarborough, | 270, 274 |
| Calvary Church, Wadesboro’, | 269, 270, 274 |
| Cameron Family, 268. Hon Duncan, | 152, 276, 401, 407, 408 |
| Campbell, John, | 154 |
| Candidates for Holy Orders, | 67, 83, 84, 249 |
| Their Difficulties and Dangers, | 84—7 |
| “Cape Fear Mercury, The,” a newspaper, | 259 |
| Carey, Col Thomas, | 56, 62, 97, 98, 99 |
| Carolina; The name of part of North America, when and why given, | 43 |
| Carteret, Lord, | 99 |
| Cartwright (or Carteret) Gov. Peter, | 94 |
| Caruthers, Rev. E. W., his errors in matters ecclesiastical and religious, | 177, 178 |
| “Castanea,” Presbyterian Church, | 369 |
| Caswell, Gov. Richard, | 115, 149, 154, 181, 182 |
| Cathcart, Dr., | 146 |
| Charles I, his grant to Sir Robert Heath, | 43, 44 |
| II, his two Charters, | 44, 46, 57, 81, 93 |
| Cherokee Boundary, Gov. Tryon's extravagance in running it | 114, 115 |
| Cheshire, Rev. Jos. Blount, 123, (see also Appendix). Jos. Blount, Jr., 124, 153, 157, 170, 243, 332, 369, see also Appendix | |
| Chevin, Nathaniel, | 52, 118, 120 |
| Childs, Thomas, | 150 |
| Christ Church. Newbern, 74, 162, 172, 248, 249, 258—9, 267, (see also Appendix). Its Communion Service | 12 |
| Christ Church, Raleigh, | 269, 270, 276 |
| Christ Church, Rowan, | 269, 270, 274, 390, 394, 398, 399 |
| Christian, Rev. Nicholas, | 74 |
| Chowan Parish—see “St. Paul's Church, Edenton. | |
| “Church Messenger, the” 378, “Church Review, the” 378. | |
| “Churchman, the” | 13 |
| Churton, Richard, the first lay-reader in St. Paul's Church, Edenton, | 119 |
| Clark Family, | 264, 275 |
| Christopher, 264; Gov. Henry T., 263 note; Hon. James W., 264; Rev. Wm. M., | 327, 328 |
| Clarkson, Mrs. T. S., | 325, 329 |
| Clay, Rev. Jehu Curtis, | 249 |
| Clear, Timothy, | 173 |
| Clements, William | 152, 183, 189, 190, 264, see also Appendix |
| Clergy during the provincial period, their character, | 89, 90 252 |
| Clitherall, John, | 173 |
| Closs, Rev. William, a Methodist Preacher, | 217 |
| Coffin, Miss J., | 328 |
| Cogdell, Richard, | 172, 173 |
| Cogswell, Joseph G., | 301 |
| Coke, the Rev. Thomas | 266, 380, 381 |
| Collett, Capt. | 86 |
| Collins Family | 249 |
| Josiah, 239, 258; Josiah, Jr. | 288 |
| Colonial Records, the North Carolina, | 55, 105 |
| Communion, the Holy Communion, its first administration in the Province of North Carolina | 124 |
| Compton, Spencer, Earl of Wilmington | 106 |
| Conacarara Chapel, Halifax County | 72, 273 |
| Confirmation, administered by Rev. Robt, J. Miller | 394 |
| Congress, Provincial, of North Carolina. At Hillsboro’, August, 1775, (sse Appendix). At Halifax, 1776, | 83, 271 |
| Convention of the State of N C., July, 1788, held its Sessions in old St. Matthews’ Church, Hillsboro’, | 272 |
| Conventions of 1790, 1793 and 1794; | 182—93, 243, 246—8, 262, 274, 341, 342, 372-3, 385—7; for Journals of same, see Appendix |
| Convention of the Diocese of N. C., organized in 1817 | 340, 342 |
| Convocational System adopted | 316 |
| Conway, Peter | 173 |
| Corbin, Francis | 71, 150 |
| Cornell, (erroneously Cornue on page 154). Samuel | 154, 173 |
| Cornue, (error for Cornell, as above) | 154 |
| Cornwallis, Lord | 153-4, note |
| Cotten Family | 275 |
| Cotting, Eliu | 173 |
| Covenantees, settlers in Mecklenburg County | 78 |
| Cox, Longfield | 173 |
| Craighead, Rev. Thomas, a Presbyterian Minister, 260; Jane, | 260 |
| Craven Parish; see Christ Church, Newbern. | |
| Crawford, Rev. Mr., “an Episcopal Minister,” | 393 |
| Creecy, Col. R. B | 124 |
| Crisp, Nicholas | 52, 118, 120 |
| Culpepper, Gov. John | 94 |
| Cupples (sometimes Kupples), Rev. Charles | 83, 265 |
| Curratuck Parish | 52, 162 |
| Curtis, Rev. M. A. | 212, 301 |
| Cutlar Family | 128 |
| Cutting, Rev. Leonard. | 183, 184, 258, (see also Appendix) |
| D'Allone. his bequest to Dr. Bray for a fund for the education of Slaves in the English Colonies | 168 |
| Daly, John. | 173 |
| Daniel, Gov. Robert | 54, 55, 96 |
| Dare, Virginia, first child born in America of English parents, | 92 |
| Daves, John | 152 |
| Davis, Rev, Samuel, a Presbyterian Minister | 226 |
| Davis Family, of the Cape Fear, 136; of Orange, 271; Hon. George, 134, 136; James, the first printer in North Carolina, 82, 147, 173; Rev. Robert, 398-9. 408; Thomas, 212; Rt. Rev. Thos. F., of S. C., 136, 293; William, | 154 |
| Dawson, John and Wm. Johnston, | 146 |
| Deal, Rev. John A., | 319 |
| DeFoe, Daniel, | 92, 96 |
| DeGraffenreid, Baron, | 61, 99, 100, 126 |
| Dent, Rev. Hatch, | 373, see also Appendix |
| De Rosset Family, 142-3, 249; Dr. Armand John (1), 142; (2), 143; (3), 143, 332; Lewis, 142, 154; Moses John, | 142, 260 |
| Desseaux, Leonard, | see Appendix |
| Devereaux, Jon, Thomas P., and Frances, | 101 |
| Dickinson, Dr., | see Appendix |
| Dillon, James, | 236 |
| Diocese of North Carolina, organization of, | 267 |
| Dissenters in the Province of North Carolina, | 59, 60, 68, 79, 80, 82, 244 111 |
| Dobb, Gov. Arthur, 75, 109—14. His Thanksgiving Hymn, offers a donation towards establishing a school among the Catawba Indians, 169; Edward Brice, 113-4; County, name changed to Lenoir, 114; Parish, the Moravian Settlement, | 78, 163 |
| Dow, Lorenzo, | 211 |
| Drage, Rev. Theodorus Swain, | 78, 79, 403—5 |
| Drake, Sir Francis, | 26, 92 |
| Drane, Rev. Robert B, | 161 |
| Dreher, Rev. Godfrey, a Lutheran Minister, | 400 |
| Dromgool, Rev. Edward, a Methodist Preacher, | 220 |
| Drummond, Gov. William, | 47, 127 |
| Dry, William, | 154 |
| Duckenfield, William, 52, 64, 118, 121; Nathaniel, 120; Sir Nathaniel, | 121-2, 154 |
| Durant, George, first permanent white settler in N. C., | 44, 47 |
| His Bible, | see Appendix |
| Durant's Neck, place of first permanent settlement, | 44 |
| Dutch Reform, where settled in N. C., | 77 |
| Eagles Family, 249; Alexander, | 173 |
| Earl, Rev. Daniel, | 75, 84, 146, 168-9, 219, 229, 230, 231, 235 |
| East Carolina, Diocese of, | 343, 344-5 |
| Eden, Gov. Charles, 63, 99, 101—3, 104; Penelope, said to have been daughter of the preceeding, | 103 |
| Edenton, | 81, 100, 251, 255—7 |
| Edgecombe County, record concerning dissenting ministers, | 60 |
| Inhabitants originally Churchmen, | 263-4 |
| Parish | 72, 75, 163, 246, 273 |
| Edmundson, William, the first Quaker preacher in N. C. | 47, 149 |
| Edwards, Jonathan, and Eunice his daughter, | 101 |
| Ellis, Richard, | 173 |
| Emmanuel Church, Warrenton, | 269, 270 |
| Empie, Rev. Adam, | 251 note, 261, 266, 267, 301, 317, 386, 389, 394-5, 401, 407 |
| Euens, Will., | 173 |
| Evangelist, Diocesan, | 314—6 |
| Everard, Gov. Sir Richard, | 65, 103, 104-5, 107 |
| Falcon, John, | 207 |
| Fanning, David, excepted from the Act of Pardon and Oblivion, 153, note; Edmund | 149 |
| Fenner, Richard, | 172, 173 |
| Ferrers, Earl, his daughter Mary married Charles Tryon, | 116 |
| Fite Family, | 376 |
| Fonville, John, | 173 |
| Forbes, Rev. Edward M. | 377 |
| Forney, Family, 376; Daniel M. | 376 |
| Fox, George, visits Albemarle | 48—50, 95 |
| Mrs. Julia | 325, 329 |
| Franck, John | 173 |
| Free Churches in North Carolina | 353 |
| Freeman, Edmund, 256; Rt. Rev. George W., 256; Rev. Jonathan Otis, a Presbyterian Minister | 179, 239, 256 |
| French Settlers at Newbern | 61 |
| French, Rev. Wm. G. | 317 |
| Frohock (erroneously Frobock in text), John | 149 |
| Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina | 45, 57 |
| Gale, Chief Justice Christopher, 100, 137—8; Edmund | 153 |
| Garden, Commissary, of S. C. | 66, 67 |
| Garzia, Rev. John | 12, 69, 70 |
| Gaston, Alexander | 173 |
| Geer, Rev. Edwin | 212 |
| George II, | 12, 87 |
| George III, | 12, 76, 87, 88 |
| George, Rev. T. M. N. | 321 |
| German Settlers in North Carolina | 61, 77, 78 |
| Gerrard, Rev. Henry | 120, 123 |
| Gilliam, Thomas | 118 |
| Glebes, 207; In some instances sold and the price appropriated for county purposes | 209 |
| Glover, Gov. William, | 55, 56, 96, 97, 99, 101, 124, 164 |
| Good Friday, a public fast-day by order of the Assembly in 1711 | 62 |
| Gordon, Pat, 173; Rev. William, | 55, 56, 96, 97, 99, 101, 121, 124, 125, 127 |
| Grace Chapel, Pitt County | 269, 270 |
| Graham, George, a Baptist Minister | 60 |
| Granberry, Mrs. | 145 |
| Granville, Earl of, 71; Rev. Bevel. 66; Parish, | 83, 163 |
| Grassy Creek, (Presbyterian Church) | 226 |
| Gray, Thomas | 154 |
| Green, F., 190, (see also Appendix); James, Jr., 154; John, 173; Roger, “Clark”, of Va., attempts a settlement in N. C., 44; Rt. Rev. William M. | 211, 212 |
| Grenville, Sir Richard | 91 |
| Griffin, Charles | 124—5, 164 |
| Griffith, Rev. David | 218 |
| Grosnenduyk, Cornelius | 173 |
| Groves, Rev. (?) | 212 |
| Guion, Dr. Isaac | 249, see also Appendix |
| Gurley, Rev. Stephen | 190, see also Appendix |
| Hager Family | 376 |
| Hall Family, 128; Rev. Clement, 70—2, 74, 252; Edward, 154; Judge Enoch, 139; Moses, | 154 |
| Halling, Rev. Solomon, 189, 190—1, 199, 201, 203, 208, 249, 252, 258, 261, (see also Appendix) | |
| Hampden Sidney College | 292 |
| Hardy, Benjamin, 154; Robert, 179; Rev. William, a Methodist preacher | 214 |
| Harell, error for Hasell, which see. | |
| Hariot, Thomas, 91; His “Brief and True Report,” &c., | (see Appendix) |
| Harnett, Cornelius | 154, 181 |
| Harrison, President Wm. H. | 84 |
| Harvey Family, 144—5, 233; Gov. John, 94, 138, 144—5; John | 144—5, 181 |
| Hasell, (given erroneously Harell on page 139), James | 139, 154 |
| Haslen, Thomas | 172 |
| Hatch, Rev. Frederick W., | 256 |
| Hatteras Indians, school for them | 73 |
| Hawkins Family, 148, 265; Benjamin, 227—9; Philemon, | 148, 154, 229 |
| Hawks, Rev. Francis L., his History of N. C., | 53, 101, 189, 378, 380, 389 |
| Haywood Family, 148, 152, 264, 275; Egbert, 148; John, 148; Judge John, 148; Treasurer John, 148; Sherwood, 148; Sherwood, Jr., 148; William, 60, 148, 154; William H., Jr., | 148, 276 |
| Heath, Sir Robert, his grant of Carolina from Charles I; | 43, 44 |
| Henderson Family, 138, 271; Archibald, 139; David, 120; John S., 139, Chief Justice Leonard, 139, 151, 210, 211; Judge Richard, 139; William F. | 210, 212 |
| Henkel, Rev. David, a Lutheran Minister | 374—5, 396 |
| Henkelites, a Lutheran party or sect | 374—5 |
| Henly, Chief Justice Peter | 139 |
| Henry Family | 238 |
| Henshaw, Rt. Rev. J. P. K. | 293 |
| Herritage, William | 153 |
| Hewes, Joseph, signer of the Declaration of Independence, | 123, 146, 154, 179, 181 |
| Highlanders, Settlers in North Carolina | 82 |
| Joined by the Regulators and Parson Micklejohn in the battle of Moore's Creek | 82—3, 265, 268 |
| Hill Family of Bute (Franklin) County | 265 |
| Charles N., 128; Jos. A., William and William H., 142; Mrs. Thos. B., 273; Green, first Methodist Conference in N. C. held at his house, 380, 381; Henry, | see Appendix |
| Hines Family, 275, Francis G., 128; Dr. P. E., 327, 328; Thomas, 154; Rev. Richard | 212 |
| Hoke, Hon, Wm. A. | 332 |
| Holmes, Rev. Lucian | 311 |
| Holt. Rev. William, 263, (see also Appendix); Mrs. Wm. E., 329; Dr. William R. | 408 |
| “Holy Cross,” Order of the, at Valle Crucis | 318 |
| Hooper Family, 249, William, signer of the Declaration of Independence, 153, 181; Rev. William. 276; John DeBernier | 301 |
| Hospitals in North Carolina | 321 |
| St. Peter's Home and Hospital, Charlotte | 323—5 |
| St. John's Hospital, Raleigh | 325—8 |
| Good Samaritan Hospital for Negroes, Charlotte, | 328—9 |
| Howard, Chief Justice Martin | 139 |
| Howe, Job, 140; Gen. Robert, 115, 141—2, 154; Thomas Clifford | 172, 173 |
| Howell, Joseph | 60 |
| Hubbard, Rev. Fordyce M., D D., | 303 |
| Hughes, Rev. N. Collin, D D., | 31, 305 |
| Huguenots gave the name Carolina to Coast of America | 43 |
| a Colony settled near Bath | 56, 66 |
| Humphrey's History of the S. P. G., | 166 |
| Hunt, William | 211 |
| Huske Family, 268; Rev. Joseph C., D. D. | 377 |
| Hyde, Gov. Edward, 56, 58, 62, 97, 98; Parish, 162; Testimony of Vestry in favor of Rev. Mr. Bailey | 65 |
| Indians: Massacre and War of 1711; 62, 99; September 22d, a public fast-day in memory thereof, 64; Schools for Indians, 73, 165, 167, 169; Indian Slaves, 99; Indian blood in many negro slaves | 100 |
| Innes, Col. James, and the “Innes Academy” | 143—4, 166 |
| Iredell, Judge James, 115, 139, 145, 181, 249; Gov. James | 299 |
| Irving, Rev. Thomas P. | 249, 258—9 |
| Irwin (on pages 264 and 275 spelled incorrectly Irvin) Family | 152, 264, 275 |
| Ives, Rt. Rev. Levi S., 287—92, 293, 297, 305, 306, 307, 308, 318, 337, 342, 376, 377 | |
| Jarratt, Rev. Devereux | 381 |
| Jenkins, Gov. John | 94 |
| Johnson Family, of Chowan, 146—7; Charles, 146—7, 249; Charles Earl (1), 146; Dr. Charles E. (2), 146; Charles E. (3), | 147, 328 |
| Johnston, Commissary of S. C. | 64 |
| Family, of Edgecombe, 152, 264; Rev. Francis, 83, 84; Gov. Gabriel, 67, 75, 103, 105—8; Isabella, 146; James C., 146; John, 145; Maj. Jonas, 150; Mrs. Nancy, (nee Forney) 376 note; Sir Nathaniel, Gov. of S. C., 53, 54, 96; Gov. Samuel, 115, 123, 128, 145—6, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 220, 249; Dr. William | 376 |
| Jones Family, of Halifax | 181 |
| Rev. Mr., of Va., 66; Edward, of Warren County, 207; Rev. Edward, 83, 84, 85—7, 211; Mrs. H. C. Jones. 325; Dr. Johnson B., 153 note; Joseph, 173, Marmaduke, 154; Rev. Stephen, (see Appendix); Mrs. Richard L., 329; Thomas, of Cape Fear, 128; Thomas, of Edenton | 123, 146, 179 |
| Judd, Rev. Bethel | 261, 268 |
| Kehukee Chapel | 151, 262, 273 |
| Kent Family | 400 |
| Kimbelle, Burchatt, grave of | 370 |
| Kittrell, Jonathan | see Appendix |
| Knight Family, of Edgecombe | 152, 263, 264 |
| Tobias | 101 |
| Knox, Andrew, 154; Dr. A. W. | 328 |
| Kollock, Rev. Shepherd, a Presbyterian Minister | 226 |
| Lamon, Duncan | 60 |
| Lane, Joel, 152; Ralph, | 91, 92 |
| Lapierre, Rev. John | 66, 69 |
| Lardner, Mrs. Annie L. | 329 |
| Latta Family, of Orange County, 271; C. G., | 328 |
| Lau's Church (Lutheran), Guilford County | 407 |
| Lawson, John | 126 |
| Lay-Readers | 119, 124-5, 138, 150, 164, 178, 206, 244 |
| Layrle, Christopher | 404 |
| Leech, Col. Joseph | 74, 154, 172, 249, see also Appendix |
| Leigh, Dr. John, | 152, 185, 187, 190, 198, 250, 251, 264, see also Appendix |
| Lenoir, Thomas, Leah, and Gen'l. William | 150 |
| Lewis, Hornell, 226; Dr. R. H. | 326, 328 |
| Lewistown, Bertie County; Old Chapel there | 214 |
| Libraries, Public, in the Province of N. C. | 52, 129, 157 |
| Lillington Family, 135-6, 193; Gov. Alexander, 94, 96, 127; Gen'l. Alexander | 115, 192 |
| Linnington, John | 120 |
| Little, Chief Justice William | 138 |
| Littlejohn, William | 249 |
| Lloyd, Rev. Mr. and his wife, a sister to Gov. Eden | 103 |
| Joseph R. | 275 |
| Locke, John, author of the Fundamental Constitutions | 46, 161 |
| Lockhart, James, 192, 236; Mrs. Elizabeth, 236; Mary | 222, 235, 236 |
| Long, James, (omitted by mistake from Chowan Vestry on page 52), 118; Colonel, | see Appendix |
| Lord Family | 128 |
| Lovick, John | 103 |
| Lowe, Emmanuel | 56 |
| Lowry, Mrs. R. W. | 273 |
| Ludwell, Gov. Philip | 94 |
| Luten, Thomas | 52, 118, 120, 129, 209 |
| Lutherans, in N. C., 77, 78, 116, 193, 220, 372—5, 382—5, 389—93, 396; their relations with Churchmen, 397-8, 400—10; relations with the Anglican Church, 361, 363-4, 383, 402; overtures in regin of Queen Anne looking to the Consecration by the English Bishops of Bishops of Bishops for the Lutherans of Prussia, 402; their first congregation, minister and teacher in N. C., 404-5; the first ordination by the Lutheran Ministerium in N. C. | 382-3, 387, 388-9 |
| Lyman, Rt. Rev. Theodore B. | 34, 304, 332, 343 |
| McAden, Rev. Hugh, a Presbyterian Minister | 116 |
| Macartney, Rev. James, 83, 211, note, (in this note the name Edward Jones is an error: it should be James Macartney.) | |
| McCorkle, Rev. Dr., his school | 179 |
| McCullock, Alexander | 154 |
| McDonald, Donald, 82; Ronald | 312 |
| McDougal, Rev. (Sam'l.?) | see Appendix |
| McDowell, Rev. John | 74 |
| McKee, Dr. James | 328 |
| McKenzie, William | see Appendix |
| MacKilwean, Francis | 154 |
| McKinne, William, | 154, (printed erroneously McKinnon) |
| Maclaine, Archibald | 153, 181, 249 |
| McLeod, Rev. C. D. | 212 |
| McLester, Miss M. | 328 |
| McMasters, Rev. Sterling Y. | 212 |
| Macon, John, 207; Nathaniel | 227, 228, 229 |
| McRee, Griffith J., 218, 222; His Life of Judge Iredell | 272 |
| Madison, Bishop | see Appendix |
| Mallett Family | 268 |
| Peter, curious circumstance of his being accused of treason during the Revolution, with explanation of the facts | 153, and note |
| Marsden, Rev. Richard | 66, 69, 124, 164 |
| Marshall, Rev. Matthias M., D. D. | 327, 328, 341 |
| Martin, Gov. Alexander, 118; Gov. Josiah, 87, 117-8, 154, 176, 219, 227; F. X., his “Private Statutes of N. C.,” 258; County, named after Gov. Josiah Martin | 118 |
| Mashburn, Mr , his school at Sarum | 164, 165 |
| Meade, Bishop, his “Old Churches and Families of Va.,” | 125 |
| Medley, Bishop, of Frederickton | 293 |
| Methodists, 243, 379—81; counted as Churchmen, 82; Mr. Pettigrew's relations with them, 217-18; their relation to the Church | 361, 362, 380-1 |
| Micklejohn, Rev. George, 76, 82, 83, 85, 116, 183, 211, 212, | 265-6, 270-1, see also Appendix |
| Miller, Elisha P., 379, 400; George and Margaret, parents of Rev. Robert J., 379; Gov. Thomas, 94; Rev. Robert Johnston, 189, 193, 245, 250, 251, 266, 267, 273-4; Sketches of his life and work, 369—400, 401, 405, 407; His Ordination by the Lutheran Ministerium, and his Letters of Orders | 384-5 |
| Mills Family, of Iredell County, 399; Charles, 399; James, see Appendix Rev. John, on page 74 is an error for Rev. John Wills. | |
| Missionary Society, Diocesan | 313-4 |
| Moir, Rev. James | 69, 71, 166 |
| Montfort, Joseph | 154 |
| Moore Family, of Cape Fear. | 131-3, 193, 249 |
| Family of Mount Tirza, Person County, 205; Judge Alfred, 133; Baxter H., 332; Charles, his correspondence with Parson Pettigrew, 205—8, 246; Miss Hattie, 325. Gov. James, 131; Col. James, Sr., 131; Col. James, Jr., 132-3; 140, 154; John, 173; Maurice, Sr., 101, 102, 131—3, 135; Judge Maurice, 115, 133, 139, 154; Nathaniel and Roger, 132; Gen'l. Stephen, 205, 206; Rt. Rev. Richard Channing, 275, 278, 285, 342, 396-7, 406, | 407, see also Appendix |
| Moravians in N. C., 78, 163, 392; Their separate parish, “Dobbs Parish” | 78, 163 |
| Morgan, Rev. John | 400 |
| Morson, Hugh | 328 |
| Morton, Rev. Andrew | 78, 116 |
| Moseley, Edward, 12, 55, 56, 65, 96, 100, 101, 102, 107, 120, 121, 128—31, 157; Sampson, | 131 |
| Muhlenberg, Rev. Dr., | 297 |
| Murdoch, Rev. Francis J. | 310, 311, 357, 404 |
| Nantz Family, 376; Clement and Martha | 371 |
| Nash Family | 152, 249 |
| Gov. Abner, 74, 115, 152, 154, 181; Gen'l. Francis, 115, 152, 181; Mrs. Frederick, 434; Thomas, | 152 |
| Neale, Christopher | 173 |
| Negro Slaves, efforts to Christianize them | 64, 73, 83 |
| New Pearth Church (afterwards St. Michael's), Iredell County | 396 |
| Newbern, (In some places in this Volume this name is spelled New Berne by an inadvertence of the Editor and proof-reader.) Settled by Swiss, Germans, and French, 61; see also “Christ Church,” and “Craven Parish.” | |
| “New-Lights,” | 76 |
| Newman, Rev. John | 65, 74, 121 |
| Nicholson, Gov. Francis, of Va. | 95 |
| “North Carolina Chronicle and Fayetteville Gazette,” a news-paper | see Appendix |
| North West Parish, Bertie | 67, 163 |
| Norwood Family, 150, 265; John, 150, 270-1, see also Appendix; Judge William, 271; Rev. William | 212, 214 |
| Nussman, Rev. A., the first Lutheran Minister in N. C., | 373, 385, 405 |
| Oaths, of Allegiance tendered the Quakers, 54; Test, required of Dissenting Ministers, 59, 60; the same required of Civil Officers and of the Clergy of the Established Church | 60 |
| Olmstead, Rev. A. F. | 377 |
| “Organ Church,” Rowan | 404 |
| Orphanage, The Thompson | 329—32 |
| Osborne, Col. Adlai, 115; Rev. Edwin A., 330, 332; Mrs. E. A., | 325 |
| Otey, Rt. Rev. James H. | 212 |
| Packer, Miss S. | 273 |
| Paine Family | 257 |
| Palatines under DeGraffenreid settle at Newbern | 61, 100 |
| They desire to be received as members of the Church | 61 |
| Palmer, Paul, first Baptist preacher in N. C. | 66 |
| Pamplico (or Pamptico) Parish, afterwards St. Thomas's Bath | 52, 162 |
| Papists and Unitarians not included in the Act of Toleration, | 59 |
| Parishes first established in N. C., in 1701, 52; List of, in the Province | 163 |
| Parker Family, 275; Haywood, | 312 |
| Parkinson, Bernard | 123 |
| Parrott, Mr., teacher in the Newbern Academy | 176 |
| Passmore, Rev. William | 317 |
| Pasquotank (afterward St. John's) Parish, | 52, 162 |
| Pattillo, Rev. Henry, a Presbyterian Minister, | 82 note, 83, 116, 179, 219, 226 |
| Pender Family, | 152, 264 |
| Perkins, John. 388; Joseph, 387, see also Appendix; Mary, | 388 |
| Perquimans County, earliest settled in N, C., 44; Parish (afterwards Berkely Parish) | 52, 162 |
| Perry Family | 265 |
| Person, Gen'l. Thomas | 152, 207 |
| County, Proceedings of Churchmen of | 206-7 |
| Pettigrew Family, | 218, 224—6 |
| Rev. Charles, Bishop-elect in 1794, 84, 123, 179, 181—241, 248, 249, 250, 252, 254, 255, 274, 341, 373-4, 386, see also Appendix; Ebenezer, 222, 230, 233, 234, 236, 238, 239; James, “the Emigrant,” 225—7; James L., (Pettigru of S. C.), 226; Gen'l. James Johnston, 218, 223, 238; John, 230, 233, 239; William, 228; Rev. Wm. S. | 181, 212, 234, 238 |
| Pettigrew's Chapel | 192, 202, 215—18, 222 |
| Phelps, Jos., the discoverer of Lake Phelps | 215, 216 |
| Philips Family | 264 |
| Phillips, Henry, first Quaker in N. C. | 48 |
| Rev. John | 249, 259, 263, 274—6 |
| Pilmour, Rev. Joseph | 372, 384, 387 |
| Pindar, John | 173 |
| Plummer, Thomas | 229 |
| Polk, Rt. Rev. Leonidas | 101 |
| Pollock Family | 98—101 |
| Gov. Thomas, 52, 56, 98—101, 118, 119, 120, 123, 129, 172; Cullen, George and Thomas, Jr., sons of the preceding, 100; Thomas, Cullen (see also 173), and George, sons of Thomas, Jr., 100; Thomas, and Frances, children of Thomas (3) above | 101 |
| Porter Family, Connections and Descendants | 136-7 |
| John | 56, 119 |
| Presbyterians, marriages by their ministers | 69, 79, 80 |
| Their ministers support Gov. Tryon in the Regulation troubles of 1768; their letter to the Governor and the Pastoral to their people, 72, 82, 89, 116; their number in N. C., after the Revolution, 243-4; their relation to the Anglican Church | 361-2 |
| Presentation to Churches and Parishes, Right of | 81 |
| Preston, John S. and William Ballard, | 292 |
| Prince, Henry A. | 312 |
| Property of the Church in N. C., secured by Ordiance of the State Congress of 1776 | 271 |
| Proprietors of Carolina | 44, 45, 46, 59, 81, 92, 93, 94, 96 |
| They give £200 towards the Church in Edenton, | 75 |
| Provost, Rt. Rev. Samuel | 34 |
| Prout, Rev. H. H. | 212, 306, 307, 317—20 |
| Provincial System | 348-9 |
| Quakers, their first appearance in N. C. | 47-8 |
| their numbers in Albemarle, 50, 55, 56; the Quaker troubles of 1704-11, 54, see also pages | 59, 76, 95, 99 |
| Rail, Bishop, (probably Rait, which see) | 379 |
| Rainsford, Rev. Giles, 63, 98; his interest in the Indians | 63, 165 |
| Rait, Rev. James, Bishop of Brechin | 379 note |
| Raleigh, Sir Walter | 27, 44, 91 |
| Ratz, Col. Henry | 401, 407, 408 |
| Rauch, Michael | 407, 408 |
| Ravenscroft, Rt. Rev. John Stark, 192, 210, 211, 212, 245, | 265, 271, 274, 279—87, 298, 312, 319, 342, 376, 377 |
| Rebecca, “a slave” | 273 |
| Reed, Rev. James, 74, 82, 252; Mr. Reed and the Newbern Academy | 169-70, 172—8, 258 |
| Regulators, The | 75, 82, 114, 115 |
| Rice, Gov. Nathaniel | 109 |
| Rich, Rev. Edward R. | 326, 328 |
| Ridley, Rev. Jos. J. | 212 |
| Riggs, Edward | 233 |
| Rintelmann, Christopher | 404 |
| Roanoke Indians | 73 |
| Robards, Col. William | 212 |
| Robertson, Mrs. T. R. | 325 |
| Robinson Family, 376; John, a Methodist preacher | 283 |
| Roschen, Rev. Arnold, a Lutheran minister | 385 |
| Rose, Richard | 120 |
| Rowan, Rev. Andrew, 109, Gov. Matthew, 109; County | 109, 111, 366 |
| Rumple, Rev. Jethro, D. D., his History of Rowan county | 403, 411 |
| Rutherford, John | 154 |
| St. Andrew's Church, Burke | 269, 270, 395, 398 |
| St. Andrew's Parish, Tyrell | 163 |
| St. Barnabas Parish, Hertford County | 163 |
| St. Bartholomew's Parish, Chatham | 163 |
| St. David's Parish, Cumberland | 163 |
| St. David's Church, Scuppernong | 216 |
| St. Dennis's Parish, (Huguenot), S. C. | 66 |
| St. Gabriel's Parish, Duplin | 163 |
| St. George's Parish, Anson | 163 |
| St. George's Parish, Northampton, (erroneously put in Bertie on page 78) | 72, 78, 163 |
| St. James's Church, Greenville | 269, 270 |
| St. James's Church, Iredell | 399 |
| St. James's Church, Lenoir | 399 |
| St. James's Parish, New Hanover, 69, 70, 74, 163, 245, 249, | 259—61, 267, 332, 333, 335 |
| St. James's Home, Wilmington | 332—5 |
| St. John's Parish, Bute | 83 |
| St. John's Church, Cabarrus (Lutheran) | 375, 384, 404 |
| Rev. Robt. J. Miller ordained there by the Lutheran Ministerium | 384-5 |
| St. John's Church, Fayetteville | 267-8 |
| St. John's Parish, Onslow | 163 |
| St. John's Parish, Pasquotank | 163 |
| St. John's Church, Williamsboro’ | 151, 163, 210—12, 266, 269, 270 |
| St. Jude's Chapel, Stony Creek, Orange county | 269, 270, 271 |
| St. Jude's Parish, Surry | 163 |
| St. Luke's Parish, Rowan | 78, 163, 269, 270, 399, 403 |
| St. Margaret's Parish, Wake | 163 |
| St. Mark's Church, Halifax | 269, 270, 273 |
| Sl. Martin's Parish, Bladen | 163 |
| St. Martin's Parish, Mecklenburg | 78, 163 |
| St. Mary's Parish, Edgecombe | 72, 84, 163, 263, 264, 275, 276, |
| Parish Register | 263 and note |
| Bible and Prayer Book belonging to | 263 and note |
| St. Mary's Chapel, Orange | 269, 270 |
| “St. Mary's Chapel” White Haven, so called by Bishop Ives, | 377 |
| St. Matthew's Church, Kinston | 269, 270 |
| St. Matthew's Parish, Orange | 82, 163, 269, 270, 271-2 |
| St. Michael's Church, Iredell | 269, 270, 274, 390, 396, 399 |
| St. Michael's Parish, Pitt. | 163 |
| St. Patrick's Parish, Johnston | 163 |
| St. Paul's Parish, Chowan, 52, 66, 118—24, 152, 162, 164, 209, 245, 249, 254-8, 267; First Church in N. C., built in this Parish, 119; Communion plate belonging to | 12 |
| St. Paul's Church, Swift Creek | 272-3 |
| St. Peter's Church, Charlotte | 323, 325, 329 |
| St. Peter's Church, Lexington | 269, 270, 398 |
| St. Peter's Church, Lincoln | 269, 270, 390, 395, 398 |
| St. Peter's Parish, Pasquotank | 162, 163 |
| St. Peter's Church, Washington | 269, 270, 273 |
| St. Philip's Parish, Brunswick | 70, 74, 116, 163, 255 |
| St. Stephen's Parish, Johnston | 84, 87, 163 |
| St. Stephen's Church, Oxford | 269, 270 |
| St. Thomas's Parish, Bath, (formerly Pamplico), 65, 69, 70, | 73, 162, 209, 214, 255, 260, 269, 270 |
| St. Thomas's Chapel, Bertie | 213 |
| St. Thomas's Parish, Tryon, now Lincoln | 163 |
| Salem, The Moravian School at | 392 |
| Salisbury, St. Luke's Rowan | 78-9 |
| Samson, John | 115, 154 |
| Saunderson, Richard | 125 |
| Sarum, Chowan county, Mr. Mashburn's School | 164 |
| Chapel, St. Paul's Parish, Chowan | 165 |
| Saunders, Rev. Jos. H., 212; Hon. Wm L. | 55, 97, 104, 105, 117, 150 |
| Scherer, Rev. Daniel, a Lutheran minister | 392, 400 |
| Schoenberger, John | 311 |
| Schools, Church Schools in the Province of N. C. | 163—179 |
| Mr. Griffin's school in Pasquotank, 164; Mr. Mashburn's school at Sarum, 164-5; Mr. Moir's school in New Hanover, 166; The Innes Academy, Wilmington, 143-4, 164; Rev. Mr. Alexander's provisional bequest, 166; Rev. Mr. Stewart's school for Indians and Negroes in Hyde county, 73, 167; Rev. Mr. Earl's school in Chowan, 168 9; Gov. Dobbs proposes a school for the Catawba Indians, and the S. P. G. favors it, 169; The Newbern Academy, 169—179; The Edenton Academy | 171, 178-9 |
| Church Schools in the Diocese of N. C.: “The Episcopal School” at Raleigh, 298—302; St. Mary's School, Raleigh, 302-3; Trinity School, Wake county, 303-4; St. Augustin's, Raleigh, 304-5; Trinity School, Chocowinity, 305; The Valle Crucis School, 305—8; Ravenscroft School, Asheville, 308—12, 319, 337; Parochial schools | 312 |
| Scott Family, 400; Andrew | 173 |
| Seabury, Bishop | 259, 387 |
| Seawell Family | 265 |
| “Seceders,” a sort of Presbyterians | 78 |
| Secker, Archbishop | 88 |
| “Separatists” | 76 |
| Shaw, Rev. Robert | 212 |
| Shepard Family, 249; Miss Hannah B., 239; Wm B | 235 |
| Shepherd, Jacob | 154, 173 |
| Shipp Family | 376 |
| Shober, Rev. Gotlieb | 396, 400, 407, 408 |
| Simpson, John | 154 |
| Sisterhood of St. Mary's, N. Y. | 332-3 |
| Sitgreaves. Thomas | 173 |
| Skiles, Rev. Wm. W. | 290, 306, 309, 317, 318 |
| Skinner Family, 249; Joshua, 233; Rev. Thomas, a Baptist minister | 232 |
| Skinnersville Chapel | 214 |
| Smedes, Rev. Aldert, 302, 303; Rev. Bennett, 327, 328; Rev. John E. C. | 305 |
| Smith, Nicholas, of Scotland Neck, and his Descendants | 151 |
| Rev. J. Brinton, 304, 305; John, 173; Richard H., 151; Robert, 146; Chief Justice William, 106, 138-9; Wm. A., 332; William R. Smith, Sr., and Mrs. Smith | 273 |
| Smithwick, Edward | 52, 118, 119, 120 |
| Smyrna, Lincoln county | 269, 270, 390, 393, 399 |
| Sneed, Stephen | 211 |
| Snoddy, Thomas | 393 |
| Society Parish, Bertie | 84, 162 |
| Society for promoting Christian Knowledge; founded by Dr. Bray | 51 |
| Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, | 51-2, 54, 56 |
| It aided in procuring a minister and a teacher for the first Lutheran congregation formed in N, C. | 405 |
| Sothell, (or Southwell) Gov. Seth | 94 |
| Spaight (misspelled Speight on pages 74 and 249), family | 249 |
| Richard, 114; Gov. Richard Dobbs | 74, 114 |
| Spencer, Bishop, of Madras, 293; Judge Samuel | 115 |
| Spottiswood, Gov. Alexander, of Va. | 98 |
| Spruill Family | 249 |
| Stanly Family, 249; John W. | 153 |
| Starkey, John, 107, 148; Edward | 149 |
| Stephens, Gov. Samuel | 94 |
| Stewart, Rev. Alexander, 73, 84, 166, 167, 252; Andrew | 173 |
| Storch, Rev. Charles, a Lutheran minister | 385 |
| Strange Family | 268 |
| Strebeck, Rev. George | 259, 275 |
| Strudwick, Samuel | 153 |
| Succession of Bishops from the Church of England before the Reformation preserved in the Anglican Communion only | 359—61 |
| Sugg Family, 152, 264; Aquilla | 60, 154 |
| Sumner Family, 265; Genl. Jethro | 264, 276 |
| Sutton, Rev. Robt B. | 305 |
| Swann, Elizabeth and Sarah, 128; Samuel, 56, 107, 126—8, 131; Samuel, Jr., 127-8; Thomas, 127; Thomas, Jr., also another Thomas, 128; William, 126; William, Jr., | 128 |
| Swiss settlers at Newbern | 61, 100 |
| Taliaferro, Mrs. W. R. | 325 |
| Tarborough, 72, 75, 183, 185, 187, 189, 274-5; old Church in which the Conventions of 1790—94 were probably held | 9, 263-4 |
| Taylor, Rev. Ebenezer, 64, 65; Family of Granville, 271; Rev. Lewis, 212; Col. Joseph, 207; Chief Justice John L., | 276 |
| Thomas, Dr. Wm. George, 334; Jonathan, a Baptist preacher, | 60 |
| Thompson, Mrs. Lewis | 330 |
| Thompson Orphanage | 329—32 |
| Thurston, Rev. William | 212 |
| Tillinghast Family | 268 |
| Todd. Rev. Mr | 392 |
| Toleration, Acts of | 59, 60, 61 |
| Tomlinson, Thomas, the first teacher in the Newbern Academy | 151, 169, 172—7 |
| Toole Family | 152, 264, 275 |
| Toomer, Judge John D. | 143 |
| Tories | 82, 265, 268 |
| Trinity Church, Asheville | 319 |
| Trinity Church, Burke county (?), | 390 |
| Trinity Church, Chocowinity | see “Blount's Chapel.” |
| Trinity Church, Scotland Neck | 273 |
| Trinity Church, Tarborough, (afterwards Calvary Church) | 269-70, 274-5 |
| Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut | 157, 293 |
| Tryon, Charles, 116; “Lady Tryon,” wife of Gov. Tryon, 116, 117; ‘The Hon. Miss Tryon,” sister to the Governor, 86, 116, 117, 405; William and Thomas, merchants, Treasurers of the S. P. G., 76, 116; Gov. William, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 89, 114—17, 169, 173, 403, 404, 405 | |
| “Tryon's Palace” | 255, 259 |
| Turner, David | see Appendix |
| Tynte, Gov. Edward, of S. C. | 97 |
| Unitarians and Papists not included in Act of Toleration | 59 |
| Unitas Fratrum, The Moravians | 78, 163 |
| Unity Parish, Guilford | 163 |
| University of N. C., 293; Mr. Pettigrew's interest in it | 189, 220 |
| Urmstone, Rev. John | 61—65, 98, 102, 162 |
| “Valle Crucis” | 289-90, 317-8, 337 |
| Vaughan, Rev. Maurice H. | 212 |
| Vestry, members of first Vestry in N. C. | 52, 118 |
| Virginia, Rev. R. J. Miller's account of the state of religion in, | 392-4 |
| Voluntary Subscriptions to support the Church | 57-8, 120 |
| Wachovia, the Moravian settlement | 163 |
| Waddell, Hugh, 115, 134, 139-40, 154; Hon. Alfred M., 17, 136, 139; Rev. James, Wm. Wirt's famous “Blind Preacher” | 219, 226, 392 |
| Wake, Archbishop, 116; Miss Esther, sister to “Lady Tryon,” | 116, 117 |
| Walcher, Daniel | 396 |
| Walker Family, of Cape Fear, 249; Gov. Henderson, 49, 52, 56, 94, 95, 100, 118; His death | 54 |
| Walpole, Sir Robert | 87 |
| Ward, Richard | 154 |
| Wardens of the Poor—a continuation of the old “Church Wardens” | 246 note; 263 note |
| Washington, George | 30, 81 |
| Watson, Rt. Rev. Alfred A., 34, 279, 333, 334, 335; John | 229 |
| Webb, Lorenzo | 213, 214 |
| Wesley, John, 214; His Prayer Book, 380; His twelve reasons why Methodists should not leave the Church | 381 |
| Wetmore, Rev. Wm R. | 332 |
| Weymouth, Lord, his “Bounty” | 52 |
| Wheeler, John H. | 101 |
| White, Gov. John, of the Roanoke Island Colony of 1587 | 91, 92 |
| Robert, 264, see also Appendix; Rt. Rev. William, Bishop of Pennsylvania, 34, see also Appendix; His correspondence with Parson Pettigrew, 182—9, 204; His Memoirs of the American Church | 251 note, 262 |
| White Haven Church | 266, 269, 270, 369—400, see also Appendix; |
| Called “St. Mary's Chapel” once by Bishop Ives, | 377 |
| Whitefield, Rev. George, preaches in Newbern, 82; is said to have preached also in St. Thomas's, Bath | 209, 214 |
| Whitford, William B. | 174 |
| Wickham, Precinct of | 162 |
| Wilkes, Mrs. John | 325, 329 |
| Wilkinson, Gov. Henry, 94; William | 52, 118 |
| William and Mary College | 125, 280 |
| Williams, Robert, William and Robert, 151; Judge John, of Granville, and his family, 151-2, 211; John | 172, 173 |
| Wills (printed erroneously as Mills), Rev. John | 74 |
| Wilmer, Rev. George, D. D. | 310, 311 |
| Wilmington | 74, 251; (see also St. James's Church, New Hanover.) |
| Wilson, Rev. James L., | 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 249, 262, see also Appendix. |
| Wilton, William | 173 |
| Winslow, Edward, 268; John | 268 |
| Woods, B. | see Appendix |
| Woolcott, William | 328 |
| Wright Family, 128, 268; Rev. Thomas | 398, 399, 408 |
| Yeamans, Gov. Sir John | 94, 131, 132 |
| “Yellow Jacket,” the first book printed in N. C. | 147, see also Appendix. |
| Zion Church, Beafort county | 269, 270 |
