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A church, courthouse
and jail already existed at the old Town of Yorke (present-day Coast
Guard Training Center) in 1691, when the Virginia Assembly enacted
a measure that required a new county seat to focus and attract commerce.
The new town was laid out in orderly half-acre lots above the bluff;
a business sector was concentrated below the bluff. The records
show that lot #35 was held for the church until a building could
be erected. An empty lot was also held for the York County court
house; in 1696, the court ordered a removal to the new site. This
circumstance probably served as incentive to erect the new church
as well.
Frances Nicholson,
lieutenant governor of the colony, pledged in 1696, "twenty
pounds sterl. if within two years they build a brick church (at
Yorktown)."
[York County Records, Deeds, and Wills, Vol. 10, p. 344.]
Although Nicholson's
pledge was witnessed by the Rev. Stephen Fouace, rector of York
Parish, in 1697, the church in Yorktown was in fact built of marl.
While Nicholson was credited as a generous patron of the Church,
he was involved in several disputes, including one with the College
of William & Mary, over building funds pledged in 1691 that
had not materialized by 1697.
In a letter
to the Archbishop of Canterbury, dated 22 April 1697, Fouace complains
that Nicholson has not come through: "Your Grace's charitable
hopes of alteration in him have been frustrated by his steaddy perseverance
in his former designs & methods which are such that if we continue
much longer under his Government we must...despond at last &
give over our endeavors to further what he hinders & uphold
what he undermineth with all the craft he is master of."
[Fulham Papers in the Lambeth Palace Library, compiled by W.M.
Manross, 1965.]
Early in its history, the Yorktown church began
to attract the attention of the wider world. Prominent visitors
to the area made the little stone church one of their stopping points.
Missionary and theologian George Keith, with his partner, the Reverend
John Talbot, made two passes through the Tidewater area. Keith and
Talbot (1645-1727), missionaries for the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, came to Virginia in 1703, probably
at the invitation of Governor Francis Nicholson, an SPG board member
and active supporter. Keith records, in his Journal of Travels (1706),
that they preached at York and Hampton parishes in April and June
of 1703, during their first missionary tour of America.
April 18, 1703. "I preached
at York Town, by York River, on Acts 20:24"
Keith was recognized
as a great Anglican Church apologist late in his life. The text
of his sermon at Yorktown does not survive, but we do have one he
preached at Abingdon on June 13, 1703. In it, Keith likens the process
of spiritual discernment to a "breeze or gale of wind, filling
the sails of a ship that carrieth her to a desired port, the sails
answering to our affections, the wind to the divine influences...of
the Spirit, blowing and breathing upon our affections. But...the
ship needeth not only sails and wind, but compass and cards, with
anchors...so in the course of our Christian life through the tempestuous
seas of this world...we must take hope for our anchor and the word
of God for our compass, and the noble examples of the holy lives
of the apostles...and the most holy example of our blessed Savior
for our cards."
Another famous
visitor to Yorktown was William Byrd of Westover (1674-1744), a
political leader and ancestor of the influential Byrd family. Byrd
visited Yorktown in 1709, the year he entered Virginia's Council
of State. Byrd's personal diaries give a fascinating depiction of
his own life and times and Virginia people and politics. He records,
for November 8, 1709: "I rose at 7 o'clock and said a short
prayer. I ate chocolate for breakfast. Then we took our leave of
Mrs. Berkeley and went in a boat to York where there is a stone
church. Then we went...aboard the shallop and sailed down the river
with a fair wind."
[The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709-1712]
By 1700, York
County encompassed three parishes along the York River: Charles
Parish, whose church site was near present-day Tabb High School;
York Parish, in Yorktown; and Hampton Parish, whose church was often
referred to as the Chischiak or "Cheesecake" church, located
on the present-day Naval Weapons Station. Each parish also had a
glebe, a 100-200 acre farm that provided income for the clergy.
In 1706, the
vestries of York and Hampton parishes petitioned the Council to
be allowed to combine, describing themselves as "being so small
& poor as not to be able to maintain a minister according to
the law." They were given permission to merge, the new parish
to be called York-Hampton Parish. The new parish supported one clergyman.
In 1713, the church acquired Lot 41 in Yorktown to expand the churchyard.
When York-Hampton parish was formed, the silver flagon and chalice,
give to the Hampton Parish in 1649, came to the church in Yorktown,
where it has been in continuous use ever since. A silver paten,
a gift to Martin's Hundred Parish, was probably used at the Yorktown
church after Martin's Hundred merged with that parish in 1712. The
paten is now in the posession of St. John's Church, Hampton.
"My Parish is about Twenty
Miles in Length...there are about 200 Families in it."
One important
surviving source of information about colonial Anglican churches
is the 1724 report to the Bishop of London by ministers in Virginia
and Maryland. The Reverand Francis Fontaine, minister at York-Hampton
Parish from 1721 to 1749, answered 17 queries as to the state of
his parish and ministry. From this report, we learn that Fontaine
was licensed by the Bishop of London as "a missionary in the
government of Virginia." He was not "inducted" by
the vestry of the parish, which means that his employment and income
remained at the whim of the vestry, since he had no permanent contract.
Fontaine reported: "I read prayers and preach twice every Sunday...in
the morning at one of my churches, and in the afternoon at the other."
About two-thirds of the parishioners attended each Sunday. Holy
Communion was administered at Easter, Whitsunday, Michaelmas, and
Christmas.
TimeLine
of Significant Events
- 1699 - Capital
of Virginia moves to Williamsburg
- 1700 - Beginning
of massive importation of Africans as slaves through Yorktown
- 1704 - 168
"landowners" on tax rolls in York County
- 1706 - York
and Hampton parishes merge to form York-Hampton Parish
- 1707 - United
Kingdom of Gread Britain created. Results in wave of Scottish
immigration to American, including Thomas Nelson
- 1712 - York-Hampton
Parish absorbs Martin's Hundred Parish
- 1715 - Black
slaves comprise 24% of the population of Virginia colony
- 1724 - 60
communicants at York-Hampton Parish
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