FIRST FIRST LADY'S CHURCH
The construction of St Peter's Parish Church in New Kent County, Virginia got started in 1702. The church had been established by the general court April 26, 1679. At that time, there were already two churches in the area and there seems to have been no immediate urge to start a new building.
One was near the town of Broaddus Flats on the Pamukey River. It was called “Newcastle” and has disappeared.
The second one, called the “lower church” because of its location “below” Broaddus Flats came to be known as the “broken back'd” church. It got that name, because it was a pole building built by what was called “The Earthfast Post ” system. The poles were set right in the soil with a block of wood as a base. They rotted quickly under in Tidewater soil conditions. It was a common type of building and we fed of several churches being ”reposted” after a few years of use.
On August 13, 1700 the Vestry met and stated: “Whereas the “lower church is very much out of Repair and Standeth very inconvenient for most of the inhabitants of the Parish it is ordered that as soon as it may be convenient a New Church of Brick ... sixty feet long, twenty fower feet wide in the cleer and fourteen feet pitch with a Gallery Sixteen feet long ....to be built and erected on the main Roade by the School House near Thomas Jacksons.”
Detailed records of all supplies were kept and we have many accounts of the actual construction. They contracted with Mr. Jackson, who donated one-acre of his land for the church, to make 100,000 bricks. The kiln adjoined the church property and it is thought today's parking lot covers portions of it. Jackson had the huge stacks of brick ready and waiting, but the Vestry demanded an outside inspection of the quality and dimensions of the brick before they paid him his alloted 25,000 pounds of sweet-scented tobacco. Records show it took the best part of 1701 April of 1702 before the inspection was so completed and the bricklayers got busy. The main portion of the church was finished in the course of a years, however, and covered 20,000 “good sound sipras shingles” each 18-inches long, 5 inches wide, no more less and ¼/ inch thick and no more then 3.4 inch. Henry Wyatt cut them in Chickahomney Swamp for a fee of 20,000 pounds of tobacco. All carpenter, joiners, and masons and so forth were well paid it seems, but for some reason “sawyers” - they received only a pound of tobacco for their work. And, we are left to wonder why.
It seems they had occasion to make use of the stocks, too with mentions of some “licentious and unseemly persons” who caused a scene in the congregation one Sabbath day.
This was the church Martha Custiss, wife of George Washington, must have talked about as being her home church . Think about that for a moment. We are re-living the same stories they, and others, shared when remembering old times.
A.L.M. July 2, 2003 [c569wds]
