From Bishop Meade one learns that Rev. Mr. Mossom was succeeded in office "by the Rev. James Semple, who continued the minister of the parish for twenty-two years. The Rev. Benjamin Blagrove was the minister in the year 1789. The Rev. Benjamin Brown was the min ister in the year 1797. "After a long and dreary interval of nearly fifty years, we find the Rev. E. A. Dalrymple the minister from 1843 to 1845. (The Rev. Farley Berkeley officiated some time before this as missionary at St. Peter's church.) Then the Rev. E. B. Maguire, from 1845 to 1851. Then the Rev. William Norwood, from 1852 to 1854. Then the Rev. David Caldwell, from 1854 to 1856." [Bishop Meade's "Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia. Philadelphia," 1872, Vol. I., p. 386.J Bishop Meade finished writing his book in May, 1857. Four years later the Civil War broke out. A correspondent, writing in the Southern Churchman for February 9, 1907, gives the following account of affairs at St. Peter's immediately before, during, and after the war: "Just before the Civil War, St. Peter's had a large and prosperous congregation. During the war the church was abominably defaced by the Federal soldiers, who stabled their horses in the church, and seemed to take great pleasure in ruining it. A company of soldiers from Hartford, Conn., wrote their names on the inner walls of the porte cochere, and left many other marks of their occupancy. Those of the congregation who were not killed either never returned with their families, moved away, or had all they could do to live in any instance. Among all these things the people devotedly set to work to renew and repair the church. The rector, the Rev. Mr. Kepler, was largely instrumental in this, and received large contributions from wealthy gentlemen living at the North. After some years, he and his people succeeded in having the church thoroughly repaired, and it has been kept so ever since, chiefly by the faithful few Episcopalians to whom the church is very dear and very sacred." The interior of St. Peter's church as it appears to-day demands at least a passing notice. The high, plastered walls, marked off in blocks and colored a soft grey, the but partially carpeted floor, the simply designed benches painted a sober brown, finally the large, deep-set windows, filled with plain glass, make together a not unpleasing picture—a picture somewhat severe in its simplicity, but not without the advantage of offering little to distract the worshipper's attention from service or sermon. The two mural tablets, whose inscriptions have been given, are the only objects approaching to the ornamental to be seen in the church, and they are completely hidden by thin winglike partition walls, cutting off a part of the sanctuary space on either side the communion table. These walls are modern. The object had in view in building them was rather that of adding attractiveness to the chancel than to provide robing space for the clergyman, a purpose which the somewhat closet-like rooms so made but imperfectly fulfill. St. Peter's church is within easy driving distance of Tunstall's Station, on the York River branch of the Southern Railway. This station is distant just about twenty miles each from Richmond and West Point, the two terminals of the line. In the autumn of 1898 Bishop Whittle issued to the son and nephew of the then Bishop Coadjutor of Virginia licenses to read the service in St. Peter's. Since that time the doors of the old church have been open for divine service with more or less regularity. The last rector, the Rev. Charles J. Holt, died during the year 1906. He had been connected with the parish which he held along with West Point, only since 1904. At present a lay reader, with headquarters at West Point, holds service in St. Peter's on one Sunday in the month. To-day, after more than two hundred years of authenticated history, St. Peter's church stands, to all intents and purposes, as good as new, a monument to those who built and worshipped in it. ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, ELIZABETH CITY PARISH, T HAMPTON, VIRGINIA. BY THE REV. REVERDY ESTILL, D. D., RECTOR. HE forefathers of our English Christianity came to this country of the Chesapeake Bay, which is now so familiarly known as Cape Henry, to which also they gave the name. After their long voyage they revelled in the beauty of the verdure and in the vastness of the wooded glory about them, feeling that they had come upon a goodly land, while they dreamed of the wealth which should come to them from so rich a soil. There they would have continued and planted the first colony upon so favorable a spot had not their leader been enjoined to seek further inland for a more permanent settlement, as the danger from their near neighbor and rival in the scheme of American Colonization was imminent anywhere upon the coast; a danger which might be escaped by sailing further up the great body of water which came from the interior. They therefore set sail in their three tiny ships and landed at a small village or settlement of the Indians, called in their language Kecoughtan. "The town," says one of the authorities, "containeth eighteen houses, pleasantly seated upon three acres of ground, upon a plain half environed by a great bay of the great River, the other part with a Baye of the other river falling into the great baye, with a little isle fit for a castle in the mouth thereof: The town adjoining the maine by a necke of land sixty yards." Captain John Smith gives a quaint yet interesting description of the place: "The houses," says he, "are built like our arbors—of small young springs (sprigs) bowed and tiede and so close covered with moss or barks of trees, very handsomely, that notwithstanding either wind, rain or weather, they are warm as stoves, but very smokey, yet at the top of the houses there is a hole made for the smoke to go into right over the fire." After this time the town was again visited by the whites. He writes for instance of the year 1608: "Six or seven days the extreme wind, frosts and snows caused us to keep Christmas among the salvages where we were never merrier or fedde |
