Kinsale church marks 300 years

By FRANK DELANO

Mary Francklin, Sara Hutchins, Sara Rogers and Susanne Palmer were apparently more pillows than pillars of early Westmoreland County society.

But they contributed much--a ton of tobacco, to be exact--to the building of a little church 300 years ago in what was then the forest of the Virginia frontier.

In separate cases in 1706, the county court convicted the women of fornication and ordered each of them to pay 500 pounds of tobacco to the new parish church near the new town of Kinsale on the Yeocomico River.

The river, forest, town and church endure. The town celebrated its 300th birthday earlier this month and Yeocomico Episcopal Church celebrates its 300th anniversary tomorrow.

According to the Diocese of Virginia, Yeocomico is the sixth oldest Anglican church in the state. Yeocomico is the fourth of those old churches with active congregations.

"Just finding Yeocomico is something of an accomplishment," Richard Ruda of The New York Times wrote in 1999.

The pay-off, he said, is finding "one of the most wonderful--and overlooked--of America's Colonial buildings."

One unique architectural feature is a medieval feature called a wicket door. It may have been used in an earlier church on the site dating back to 1655.

The main door weighs 1,000 pounds and is large enough for three people abreast to walk through in good weather. Within it is the small wicket door just big enough for a single person to pass in bad weather.

One early Yeocomico worshipper was Mary Ball (1708-1789), who later became the mother of George Washington. Washingtons, Lees, Carters and other famous families attended the church in the 1700s.

The church fell on hard times after the American Revolution. The war severed age-old connections between church and state, and many Anglicans of the era left the church to join new Baptist and Methodist congregations.

Yeocomico is one of three small churches in Cople Parish. Now the parish's congregation of about 250 graying members is trying to map a path to its future, said Rector Catherine Swann.

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1717

"Nine persons were committed to the County Gaol [jail] of Westmoreland 'for convening' under pretence of religious worship in Conventicles, contrary and repugnant to Law." The court had directed that the prisoners, "severally, in the presence of the persons congregated at Yeocomico Church own their fault and acknowledge their error and humbly ask God and this congregation forgiveness of the offense promise never to commit the like again."

--Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, Work Projects Administration, 1940.

1774

"The three grand divisions of time at the Church on Sundays:

1. Before Service giving and receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements, consulting about the price of Tobacco, Grain & settling either the lineage, Age, or qualities of favorite Horses

2. In the Church at Service, prayrs [sic] read over in haste, a Sermon seldom under & never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound morality, or deep studied Metaphysicks [sic].

3. After Service is over three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the Church among the Crowd, in which time you will be invited by several different Gentlemen home with them to dinner."

--Westmoreland diarist Philip Vickers Fithian

1814

"Its doors were open, its windows broken, the roof partly decayed and fallen in, and to complete its apparent hopeless fate, a pine tree thirty or forty feet high, had been blown up by the roots, and now lay across the main structure. The remains of a large Bible still lay upon the desk. The Font was gone, which I was told was of marble, and now used for convivial purposes. The aisles were paved with brick and covered with abundant evidence of its being the resort of sheep and cattle running at large, and to complete the evidence of its abandonment, the ceiling which was of boards, was tenanted by squirrels, snakes, and scorpions. Besides, I was told, it was the terror of the neighborhood, from being the resort of runaway negroes, and wandering vagrants."

--1857 letter of William L. Rogers, a New Jersey soldier stationed in Westmoreland in the War of 1812.

1820

"In the year 1820, being on a visit to Ayrfield, and seeing old Yeocomico still a ruin, even more deplorable than when I left it, I proposed to Mr. Murphy to undertake its repair. To this he not only assented, but gave money, labor, and his personal service. The gentlemen of the neighborhood subscribed cheerfully and liberally, and the work was pushed forward by employing suitable mechanics and importing from Alexandria lumber, shingles, paints and seven or eight barrels of tar for the roof, which had not had a shingle put upon it since the year 1788."

--William L. Rogers

1906

"At the foot of the hill in the shade of the forest nearby is a spring of limpid water where thirsty worshippers have been long wont to refresh themselves by aid of a wrought-iron ladle, placed there many years ago by kind-hearted Presley Cox, whose initials were impressed in its bowl."

--A Sketch of Yeocomico Church (Built 1706) in Cople Parish, Westmoreland County, Va.

2006

"[Yeocomico] has been a rock of strength and source of comfort to its communicants. Now, after three hundred years, it bears silent testimony to the past and is ready for the future."

--A Brief History of Yeocomico Church 1706-2006.

Date published: 9/30/2006

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