Seaport in Virginia Part 14

One does not a.s.sociate religious intolerance with America; nevertheless, the Act of Toleration which permitted religious freedom of worship was not signed until 1760. French Presbyterians were seeking refuge in the New World as early as 1562. The Church of England was the official form of worship in Virginia from 1607 until after the Revolution. Prior to 1760 worship not of the Established Church was done secretly and behind closed doors, generally in the fastness of a citizen's private home or place of business, though from time to time one finds permission given to preach. For example, in 1699, Francis Makemie was granted permission from the colonial authorities to preach Presbyterianism at Pocomoke and Onanc.o.c.k on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Virginia. Francis Doughton preached in Virginia as early as 1650-59, and is considered the father of British Presbyterianism in the middle colonies, having begun his work as early as 1643.

Here in the little town of Alexandria, the population was largely composed of Scottish agents, shipping merchants, and sea captains, sincere followers of Dr. John Knox. Outwardly they conformed to the Episcopal Church, punctually attending services, by compulsion or otherwise. At the same time they adhered to the Scottish faith they had brought with them, meeting where and when it was expedient, until the day came when unmolested they were free to emerge from secret places and publicly worship as they pleased. That they practiced the liberty of conscience, which they won the hard way, is proclaimed in an announcement carried in _The Columbian Mirror and Alexandria Gazette_ of November 28, 1793: "At 12 o'clock on Friday the 30th instant a charity Sermon will be preached in the Presbyterian Church, by the Rev. James Muir, for the benefit of the Poor without respect to country or sect."

Major John Carlyle, after completing Christ Church in 1772 for his Church of England friends, undertook the direction of the Presbyterian meetinghouse, so-called, doubtless, to distinguish it from the Church of England. According to a report written in 1794 by the pastor, Dr. James Muir, "No church was yet built ... to accomodate them in worship [_i.e._, in 1772]. It was determined to build one; Mr. Richard Arrell and his wife, Eleanor, presented the Society with a lot of ground ...

the members of the Society came forward with generous subscriptions and loans; some a.s.sistance was afforded by their brethren of other denominations; they were thus enabled to erect and cover in a brick building sixty feet long and fifty feet broad."[127] This was partially completed by 1774. Not until after the Revolution was the church plastered and finished off.

The first minister of the congregation, the Rev. William Thom, was ordained in Pennsylvania in 1772 and called to Alexandria. But in one year the "Little Minister" was dead of a pestilential fever. Further steps to improve the House and organize the Society were interrupted, according to Dr. Muir's report, by the war which commenced between Great Britain and the colonies.

In 1780 the Rev. Isaac Stockton Keith was invited to remain with the Society during the winter. He remained nine years. The "Contract for the erection of the manse was let in July, 1787, to Mr. Robert Brockett."[128] In March 1789, Dr. Muir was called to the pastorate and remained until his death, serving for thirty-one years. Dr. Muir was a trustee of the Alexandria academy. As president of the board of trustees, he rendered to Washington satisfactory accounting on how his donations were being applied and what good was being accomplished, after a rather sharp letter of inquiry. As chaplain of the Masonic lodge, he a.s.sisted Dr. d.i.c.k with the Masonic ceremonies at the funeral of George Washington on December 18, 1799. Ten days later the _Gazette_ carried the following notice: "The walking being bad to the Episcopal Church the funeral service for George Washington will be preached at the Presbyterian Meeting House tomorrow at 11 o'clock." This was a memorial service, one of a countless number held throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Rev. James Muir's "Funeral Sermon on the Death of George Washington" was widely circulated in its day by means of a printed broadside.

When Dr. Muir died on August 8, 1820, he was held in such great affection and respect that it was decided to bury him under the pulpit and to erect a suitable monument to his memory. The committee appointed for this purpose was working at least five years and submitted reports again and again on the cost of altering the pulpit for the memorial. The last mention of the subject in the Committee Book reads: "Mr. Mark reports that the bannisters of the Cupola have been taken away as ordered at last meeting ... Rev'd E. Harrison, Mr. Jno. Adam & Mr. Jos.

B. Ladd are appointed a Committee to make all necessary arrangements for procuring and erecting a suitable monument to the memory of the late Dr.

Muir."[129]

An old table gravestone with its inscribed eulogy formerly marked the spot where Dr. Muir was buried under the pulpit. It was removed to the burying ground to the lot beside the tombs of his wife and children after the restoration of the church building following the fire of 1835.

A mural tablet under the gallery on the north wall now bears eloquent testimony to his beloved memory.

Dr. Muir's widow was allowed to continue on in the manse where she conducted a school for several years. Near the end of her life she moved from the manse with expressions of grat.i.tude, and her daughters took up and continued the school for some years after her death. These ladies might have stepped out of the pages of Barrie's _Quality Street_ so gentle and so inadequately equipped were they to battle with cold dollars and cents and naughty children. Eleven years after the good doctor's death, this announcement in the _Gazette_ shows Dr. Harrison and Mr. Hallowell giving a helping hand:

Female Board School (The Misses Muir)

Tendering to the public their grateful acknowledgements for the liberal patronage hitherto received, take this method of giving notice that their school will re-commence, on Monday next the 5th of September. The course of instruction will be as heretofore, and very similar to that of all other respectable Female Seminaries in the District.

The higher cla.s.ses besides being examined twice a week by the Rev.

Mr. Harrison, will have also the privileges of attending the lectures of Mr. Hallowell on Astronomy and Chemistry. And in addition to all the ordinary branches of a solid education, they are prepared to teach and do teach, the more ornamental ones of Music, Drawing, Painting, and French.

Terms of boarding and tuition, as usual, moderate.[130]

On a hot Sunday afternoon in July 1835, during an electrical storm, the meetinghouse was struck by lightning. On that day the pastor, Dr.

Harrison, had been invited to Georgetown to preach, and the usual Sunday afternoon services were postponed. Imagine his horror upon returning to discover the "severe and Awful calamity which had befallen the church and congregation." In the session book of the meetinghouse, we find this vivid description:

It has pleased G.o.d in his inscrutably mysterious yet wise and adorable providence to permit that on this day consecrated to holy rest, and to public services of devout worship in his earthly sanctuary, their venerable Church Edifice--for so many years, the place of hallowed devotion for their fathers and themselves, should be totally consumed by the lightening of Heaven.

This melancholly event took place about a quarter before three o'clock in the afternoon--a few minutes previously to the time ordinarily set apart for the ringing of the bell for the exercises of Public Worship. It was just at the close of a refreshing shower of rain, attended as is usual at this season of the year, with peals of thunder and flashes of vivid lightening. The Electric fluid seems to have been attracted by the spire of the Steeple, which--running up from the centre of a four-sided roof rising in the form of a pyramid--was rapidly conducted by means of a large quant.i.ty of iron used for the security of the timbers, to the shingles and other combustible materials of three of the corners of the building, almost directly under the eave. There entirely inaccesible for some minutes to any efforts which could be made use of for the purpose of quenching it, and continually fed by the qualities of the matter with which its work of desolation, with a rapidity which was truly awful and appalling. In a s.p.a.ce of time too brief almost to be deemed credible by such as were not witnesses of the sublime and fearful spectacle, the entire roof exhibited to the immense mult.i.tude gathered around to mingle their sympathies and tender their a.s.sistance, nothing but one mighty map of living fire--curling in rapid and terrific volumes around the still suspended tho tottering steeple; and smiling at every effort towards extinction, save that of Him--that Dread and Aweful Being, by whom the flame had been enkindled. A period of two hours had not elapsed from the commencement of the conflagration, before the whole edifice except the walls, was involved in one shapeless ma.s.s of smoking ruin, presenting a scene, as desolating and repulsive to the common citizen, as it was tearful and heart-rending to the church and congregation. Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised the Lord--to use the language of the Prophet,--was thus burned up with fire; and all our pleasant things laid waste.

With the exception of the lamps, a venerable clock in front of the Gallery opposite, the pulpit, the books and cushions, a part of the windows, the Stoves, a large proportion of the pipes of a Splendid Organ which was split open with an axe for that purpose, and some of the plank broken from the pews--all was destroyed; and but for the real and practical sympathy of many of our esteemed citizens in braving dangers of no common magnitude, a like destruction had been the fate of these also.

The house had been standing for more than 63 years--the steeple and galleries had been built somewhat later--and except the Episcopal church on Washington Street, generally known by the name of "Christ's Church"--was the oldest of all the ten places of religious worship in town. For many years its bell was the only Church-going signal within the limits of the corporation; and owing to this circ.u.mstance, connected with its peculiarly clear and inviting tones, the destruction of it--which was caused by its fall from so lofty an eminence--seemed the occasion of regrets to the public at large, more immediately expressed than for the edifice itself. To the congregation, no loss besides the house, was more deeply deplored than that of the large and richly toned Organ. Not only because of its superior worth as an Instrument of Music, the difficulty of replacing it by another, and the sacred uses to which it was applied, but equally because it had been presented by a few venerated and much esteemed individuals, most of whom are now sleeping in the dust.

For several years, there had been an Insurance effected on the building to the amount of five thousand dollars--two thousand five hundred on each of the Offices in town. But it so happened in providence, that one of these Policies, which had expired about four or five months previous, had never been renewed;--so that with the exception of twenty-five hundred dollars, the loss to the congregation was total.

Yet there was one circ.u.mstance which ought to be recorded with emotions of adoring grat.i.tude. The calamity took place at a time when on ordinary occasions, some individuals would have been in the house--as it was so near the hour of the afternoon's service,--and had that been the case now, there is much reason to fear, that it would have been attended, if not with loss of life, at any rate with serious injury to not a few. But it had been so ordered by Infinite Wisdom no doubt, that, for the first Sabbath in more than two years, the Church was closed during the whole of that day--the Pastor having been providentially called away to supply the pulpit of a sick brother in the neighboring city of Georgetown. So that no individual was in the house, and no serious injury occurred to any individual during the progress of the fire--and thus, while there is much to produce sadness and to call for deep humiliation before G.o.d, the Session would feel, that there is still something to awaken emotions of grat.i.tude and praise; and that however severely the loss may be felt, yet it has not been unattended with significant expressions of kindness and regard.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The old Presbyterian Meetinghouse showing the new tower]

Dr. Harrison's lamentations, while justified, were not for complete demolition. In the minutes of the trustees, the fact is stated that the roof and cupola burned and fell in, destroying much of the interior woodwork, but not all. The walls and part of the galleries remained intact, Dr. Muir's tablet was uninjured, many windows were not broken, and the organ, at first thought destroyed, was very little injured; it remains in use to this day, and likewise the old clock. However, the damage was terrific and there was only a nominal insurance to cover the loss.

Part of the congregation wished a new building site and it was given some thought, but the "siller" [silver] was found to be inadequate for the purpose. The amount in the treasury did cover the cost of restoration, and on April 5, 1836, it was "Resolved, That the congregation of the Church be called to meet at the Lecture room on Friday evening next at 1/2 past 7 o'clock, to decide permanently on the location of the Church."[131] In November the committee minutes recorded that "The location of the Church was permanently fixed on the old site,"[132] and on February 7, 1837, "Mr. Smith, from the committee appointed to consult on the propriety of lowering the gallery, reported that it was thought to be inexpedient to do so."[133] The final notation on the new church read: "It was, on Motion Resolved that our New house of worship, be solemnly Dedicated to the Worship of Almighty G.o.d on the last Sabbath of July next--it being on that day two years before, that our former house of worship was consumed by fire...."[134]

It is distressing to think of the eighteenth century interior destroyed on that hot afternoon of July 1835, but we must be grateful for what the rebuilders of 1837 preserved as an outstanding example of Georgian architecture. In 1843 the tower was added: it was in the approximate location that the pulpit had stood for many years. In 1853 the front vestibule was constructed.

Dr. Harrison was a delicate man and for a long time his health was far from good. In 1848 he was so wretched that it was recommended he go south for his health. The firm of Lambert & McKenzie offered Dr.

Harrison a free pa.s.sage to and from the Barbados on the barque _Archibald Gracie_. The minutes of the committee record the motion of appreciation to the owners.

Mr. Robert Bell of the old printing firm of that name made a gift of letter paper to Dr. Harrison every Christmas for many years. In his latter years the Doctor in thanking Mr. Bell always said that he never expected to see another Christmas. He saw at least three after the first of these communications, for that many letters exist containing the same mournful allusion.

In 1862 the Civil War disrupted the Church. Dr. Elias Harrison died in 1863 after forty-three years of ministering to his congregation and with his death the Church ceased to function and its congregation scattered.

During the Battle of Bull Run, it was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers, and from time to time it was used by other faiths, including a Negro Baptist congregation. Neglected, uncared for, the prey of thieves and vandals, the doors were finally closed.

The cemetery lies between the Church and the manse. Here John Carlyle sleeps. Cofounder and trustee of Alexandria in 1748; son-in-law to Colonel William Fairfax; brother-in-law to Lawrence Washington; commissary of the Virginia forces under Braddock in 1755; collector of customs on the South Potomac, and major in the Revolution; a Scottish gentleman, heir to a t.i.tle, he cast his fate with the colonies. Nearby lies the tomb of William Hunter, founder of St. Andrew's Society, and that beloved friend and physician of General Washington, Dr. James Craik. Ramsay, McKenzie, Muir, Vowell, Harper, Hepburn and Balfour are among the names found inscribed upon the old stones. Their dust makes of this soil a part of Old Scotland.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chapter 12

Presenting The Sun Fire Company

In the eighteenth century calamities visited Alexandria, and of these nothing was more feared than fire. To prevent and control such catastrophes the gentlemen of the town formed themselves into several companies of fire fighters. How and with what means the raging holocausts were controlled is revealed in an old, mutilated, leather-bound minute book of the Sun Fire Company.[135] The first entry in this treasure is part of the damaged record for the March meeting in 1775. The next page is numbered 9 and contains the minutes for the April meeting. This is evidence that the Company was formed in 1774 between August and December.

At this March 1775 meeting it was agreed to limit the number of the Company to forty-five persons. The clerk for this meeting was John Dalton; members served as clerks in rotation. Absent members were fined one shilling three pence. Members were to be provided with two buckets, a brown linen or oznaburg bag containing at least four yards of material, and a wicker basket as soon as possible after admittance.

These were to be hung up in good order and always in place. There was a forfeiture of money for any neglect. The Company took some several months to acquire proper ladders and hooks. In April the "propriety of purchasing an Engine" was discussed and at the June meeting it was agreed to postpone the matter. Three ladders were then finished but most of the buckets were at the painters being marked with owners' names and numbers. By August the ladders had been completed by Thomas Flemming, and John Dalton was ordered to procure locks with proper staples for securing the ladders under the "piazza of the Court House."

As the Revolutionary War got under way many of the members were excused, "being frequently abroad on the Servis of Their Country." Among these were Captain Valentine Peirs, Captain John Allison, Colonel John Fitzgerald and J. Windsor Brown.

Unfortunately the clerks took for granted that everybody knew when there had been a fire and rarely are these important events mentioned in the minutes. In January 1777, "William Wilson lost a bucket at the late fire" and he was authorized to purchase another at the Company's expense; Robert Adam, who was clerk, forgot to "warn the Company and was fined Ten Shillings"; several members neglected to put up lights when the late fire happened at Zael Cooper's and the fine was two shillings.

The next clerk was "desired to Enquire of the several members if they had candles at their windows and to collect Fines from such of them as had not."

The light begins to break--at the first hint of fire the Company member must, at the fastest possible speed, put lighted candles in the front windows of his dwelling. This was Alexandria's first alarm system! The member then dashed for four yards of material in an oznaburg bag, two leather fire buckets (they each weighed as much as a saddle) and a wicker basket and, without stopping, he raced to the fire, where he either pumped water, formed spectators in ranks for pa.s.sing buckets, removed goods from burning houses in his bag or basket, climbed ladders or pulled down adjoining houses when necessary; and last but not least watched to "prevent evil minded persons from plundering sufferers." The only tranquil occupation was that of the "sentinels" who kept watch over goods removed from the conflagration wherever such goods were deposited.

What a spectacular sight a fire in Alexandria presented when one remembers the elegant dress of the day; short clothes, elaborate jackets or vests, ruffled linen, full skirted coats, perukes, queues braided and beribboned, powdered heads in three-cornered hats, silken and white hose, buckled shoes; and that fires generally occurred in winter upon the coldest days and in the worst weather, often at night, and that these firemen were the elite of the town, the serious, responsible merchants, doctors, masters, ship captains and owners.

There was some reward now and then for their efforts. At the April meeting in 1777, the "Succeeding Clerk is desired to warn the Company to meet next month at the _Ball Room_ and to Desire the Treasurer to purchase Ten Gallons of Spirits, and one Loaf of Sugar Candles etc. The Clerk to have the Ball Room cleaned and put in order." Alas, the members were either not warned or invited for only six showed up. The next month was worse, again no warning and only four came. The clerk was ordered to warn again and provide what spirit, sugar and candles may be necessary for the next meeting and "that the same be held in the Town House." The clerk was reimbursed "one pound Two Shillings for white washing and cleaning the Ball Room."

On February 22, 1779, a resolution was pa.s.sed to fine the clerk refusing or neglecting his duty forty-two shillings, and absent members three shillings. There was a fine called the "Moreover Fine," which was increased from five shillings to nine shillings, and the Company voted to dispose of any sum not exceeding 5 "when less than 2/3 of the members are met." Besides funds in cash, the Company had 1,000 pounds of tobacco on hand. The following July the Company ordered the tobacco sold.

On Monday, October 27, 1783, nine years after the founding of the Company, the succeeding clerk is ordered to give notice that at the next meeting a proposal will be made to dispose of the money in stock in the purchase of an engine. Two months later, undaunted by the recent unpleasantness, the treasurer was requested to "Import from London on account of this Company a fire engine value from seventy to eighty pounds sterling." It took two years for the engine to arrive.

Preparatory to its reception, officers were appointed for its direction.

Nine stalwart members were chosen, and they were ordered to serve nine months. Six shillings each was collected from the members to help make up the deficiency, and a committee was appointed to wait upon the county court with a pet.i.tion requesting ground sufficient for building an enginehouse upon the courthouse lot. This was granted and the enginehouse was built on Fairfax Street "adjoining the school House."

The members were called on for a dollar each for this purpose and it was later necessary to borrow another dollar. Two keys were ordered labeled "Sun Fire Company."

The April minutes in 1786 contain the invoice for the engine: