CHAPTER III.—The Settlement.
The Meeting House, or as they were beginning to call it, The McDonald Settlement, capped a half dozen of the eastern Alleghany foothills at the head of Jackson River.
It was a community of some twenty farms, grouped for protection and company in such a way that four farm houses occupied each hill top near the central intersection of their respective boundaries. All were huddled about a large hill, capped by a grove of oak and sugar maple trees, which sheltered the stone church and the community school house of hewn logs. This arrangement had been possible because the whole boundary had been purchased and laid off by the trustees of the church.
The settlement was not only prosperous, but peaceful and homelike. Its inhabitants had never deemed it necessary to build a block house though more Indians visited their community than the less remote settlements which had suffered from attack and depredation, while they had escaped; it may have been in part due to the natural mountain barrier just at their back, but they attributed it to their treatment of the Indians, with whom they made friends.
The log houses were ruggedly comfortable. As each house had in turn been built at a community log rolling, all exhibited a similarity of style and construction. Each was carefully and cozily built, had four rooms and an attic, a front and ell porch and two large sandstone chimneys. At the edge of the side porch was the well with its pole sweep and back of each house was a barn, the lower story of which was of stone and set in the hill-side, where possible.
[pg 90] While to the casual observer these homes presented little apparent difference, individuality of ownership was perceptible in ornamentation as also prosperity or the reverse by the situation and fertility of the farm and the live stock in the farm yard and pastures.
The church marked the center of the community and was the most pretentious building west of Blue Ridge. It was of hewn stone with a wooden roof and spire; and in the belfry hung a sweet-toned bell which Angus Cameron had brought from Scotland in 1758. There were two front doors; the one on the right for the men and the one on the left for the women; and between, extending from the front wall to within six feet of the pulpit, exactly bisecting the church, was a six foot partition, over or through which no one saw except some of the boys and possibly a girl or two; who during one of the regular two hour services each Sunday, had surreptitiously with jack-knife or gimlet or hair ornament, perforated it.
By crowding, three hundred persons could find seats on the slab benches. They were filled to capacity each Sunday and some of the communicants and visitors rode more than fifteen miles rather than miss the meeting.
When in 1759, Samuel Davies had preached the dedication sermon, more than five hundred had crowded it. All the settlers of the valley had attended as well as many from Blue Ridge, the Shenandoah and Greenaway Court. Now eleven years old, the church was looked upon as an ancient landmark and known throughout Virginia as the Jackson River Meeting House.
More than once its doors had been closed in the name of the law, as enacted and administered by the Burgesses, most of whom were conformists. When this had happened Davies and other Scotch and Irish Presbyterian [pg 91] preachers and long and solemn faced ruling elders, refugees from Scotland and Ulster, Ireland, had gathered at Williamsburg; and so insistently and ably petitioned, that the easy-going planter delegates, worried by importunities; not only rashly promised their influence against further persecution, but legislation permitting to Presbyterians religious freedom throughout the colony. When the Baptists and Quakers learned of these promises, they demanded the same rights for themselves, but met with less favor.
The school house was a large structure of two rooms. The girls sat in one and the boys in the other; though the classes made up of both, recited in either room. There were two teachers, Jeremiah Tyler, a graduate of Oxford and an elder of the church, who taught the advanced classes, and Grandma McDonald, who taught the little children.
The Shorter Catechism and the Westminster Creed were printed in the back of the primer; and were taught all beginners. No one was promoted to the higher grade until he could recite the catechism without material blunder and could answer the essentials of doctrine propounded by the creed. The Bible was the text book of the advanced pupils, not only for its precepts but for its style and because it was the only book, a copy of which each family possessed.
Friday afternoon the boys and girls of the advanced grade held spelling and quotation battles. The sly old teacher watched to catch a boy exhibiting an interest in a girl pupil; then he chose the boy for captain of the boys and the girl for captain of the girls. The side lost whose captain was first quoted or spelled down. All quotations and words were from the Bible and no quotation once recited could be repeated. Each captain when first called [pg 92] upon was supposed to recite such quotations as he knew were known by the opposing captain; but no quotation could exceed a chapter or psalm in length. One of the lazy boys, having learned from the little brother that his sweetheart knew the 119 Psalm memorized and recited the 176 verses as his first quotation.
When supposed sweethearts were not available as captains, the master would select the laziest boy and girl. Then the school and sometimes the whole community, exhibiting an interest, would get behind the captains and by threat and persuasion urge each to earnest effort.
Jeremiah Tyler had emigrated to Virginia from Ulster and was one of the first to come to the settlement. He had assisted in building the church and upon its completion had made the journey to Williamsburg to bring Rev. Samuel Davies of Princeton for the dedicatory service.
While at Williamsburg, being a thrifty Scotchman, he had patented one thousand acres of fertile land adjoining the community boundary of seven thousand acres. His patent included a broad and fertile mountain cove of several hundred acres, overlooking the settlement.
He married Judith Preston in 1762; and they had built their home in the outer edge of the cove. From the house you looked down upon the houses of the settlement; and the white church and school house on the hill stood out against the grove and the green valley beyond, as two full-rigged ships, with expanded sails on a calm sea.
There they had lived for four happy years, until the winter of 1776; when in the night, bears came out of the mountains and breaking into their sheep shed, killed half the flock.
Then he built a bear pen of great logs and caught a large black bear. The bear in his struggles for freedom [pg 93] displaced a log, which as Tyler was passing, fell upon his foot and crushed it. His wife unable to lift it, leaving their daughter of three months in her cradle, ran to the nearest neighbor’s, more than a mile distance, for help and not waiting until a horse could be caught and saddled, hastened home. Then unmindful of her own condition, helped with her husband.
The next day a doctor from Blue Ridge removed her husband’s foot and gave her some medicine for “a misery in her side.” Within the week she died of pneumonia; then Tyler and his little daughter went to live with Grandma Preston. Since that time, no longer able to farm, he had taught the school, hobbling back and forth from the Preston farm.
Archibald Campbell, seeking a location, visited the Tyler clearing and, enchanted by the view, brought his wife to the place. It was a fine October day; the earth was still and warm; the valley green; the mountain side clothed in vivid autumnal shades made the view perfect in its loveliness. She insisted that providence had led them to this paradise.
When school was out he sought the master and together they rode over the boundary. Tyler told of the four happy years when Judith and he had toiled in this, their Eden, counting it play, to make it a place of beauty and peace and altogether a home. He pointed to a cedar grove upon the mountain side where she was buried; and reserving a hundred acres around this spot, sold the place to Mr. Campbell for four hundred pounds. Thus it was the Campbells found their home on the edge of civilization.
Through October and until the first snow in late November, they toiled, fitting and provisioning the place for winter; the family living with Mr. McDonald, while [pg 94] their servants remained at the farm. The house was repaired and enlarged, the barn loft filled with forage and the shed with firewood.
Then on Thanksgiving day, established by the Pilgrim fathers in 1621, and now observed by all the colonies; after a three hour church service and a family dinner at the McDonalds; they moved to their own home, where the servants, though the day was warm, had built great fires to welcome them.
All were pleased with the location and glad to be at home; though for the first few nights, a timid strangeness thrilled them when the mountain owls hooted and wolves howled in dolorous cadence at the edge of their clearing.
The following spring, needing work horses, and learning that Herman Hite had several for sale, Mr. Campbell, taking his servant Richard and accompanied by David Clark, rode northward across the divide, to the Joist Hite Settlement, more than eighty miles distant.
When they arrived at Mr. Hite’s they were celebrating his daughter’s wedding and the festivities were to continue for several days. He refused to exhibit or sell his horses until the festivities ended. They were quartered with the men in the big red barn, where they slept comfortably on the hay wrapped in homespun blankets.
Mr. Clark succeeded in stealing the bride’s slipper, which the groomsmen were supposed to guard; and if stolen they were forced to redeem before she could dance. One of them was permitted to redeem it with a bottle of wine, after Mr. Clark had extorted the promise of a kiss from the bride and the privilege of replacing the slipper, which doings, being a Dissenter deacon, he failed to mention to either his wife or his father-in-law.
When the marriage celebration finally ended and the other guests had departed old man Hite expressed a [pg 95] readiness to transact business. They purchased four horses from him; and then rode to Winchester.
It was St. Patrick’s day, and as they rode down the single business street they met a procession of Dutchmen carrying crude effigies of St. Patrick and his wife Sheeley. She wore a necklace of potatoes and carried a peck or more in the folds of her check apron. As the procession marched by the mouth of an alley, it was set upon by a half dozen husky Irishmen, who after a fierce struggle rescued the Saint and his lady.
Home again, they found Rev. Donald McDonald in conference with the other three Presbyterian preachers of the Valley churches.
Under the Act of Toleration, all Dissenter ministers were required to apply in person to the Council at Williamsburg, the capital, for license to preach and for permits to establish churches. This law, the Presbyterian preachers had found they could now disregard and had been doing so for some time; enjoying greater religious freedom than the Act in letter permitted; or than was enjoyed by any other of the Dissenter denominations. The Baptists petitioned the House of Burgesses that they might be given “the same indulgences as the Presbyterians.”
This caused the Presbyterians to fear that their privileges might be curtailed; and learning that a bill was in preparation affecting “His Majesty’s Protestant Subjects in The Colony,” the Valley ministers met at Donald McDonald’s and after a lengthy conference and long prayers decided that he should go to Williamsburg as their representative; carrying petitions from the Valley churches protesting against the proposed law. In his absence it was arranged that the schoolmaster, who [pg 96] was also a ruling elder, should fill the pulpit of the Jackson River Meeting House.
It was on this first Sunday that he delivered a sermon on “Civil and Religious Liberty,” taking as his text Acts 5:38, 39; which was said to have roused the Valley settlements to active open opposition against the Mother Country.
On Sunday morning the church doors were opened regularly at nine o’clock, though service did not begin until ten. From sunrise a person might stand in the church yard and looking out over the Valley see the worshippers leaving their distant homes and in convergent and ever-increasing numbers approach the church from every direction. They came in family groups or singly; on foot and on horseback; a few in carriages and farm wagons; sometimes a family on a single horse; the wife riding behind her husband, with a baby in her lap and a child of tender years clinging on behind her.
At nine-thirty, the sweet voiced bell was first tolled; most of the congregation had already gathered in neighborly little groups under the trees. The women on their side of the yard discussed family news and local gossip; while the men on their side talked of crops and sports, hinted at horse trades to be consummated on the morrow and argued over politics, taxation and religion.
There was a distinct group of several families from far away Greenaway Court; in the main conformists who at the time having no church of their own to attend, came to Jackson River. They were kindly received in the settlement and welcomed by the congregation. They remained to themselves until the last church bell rang, when they, too, separated; the men going in the door to the right and the women to the left, as was the custom of the Valley congregations. Each mother with her girls [pg 97] about her, walked down the aisle and shooed them into a pew; while beyond the partition, over which the top of a tall man’s head might be glimpsed, the fathers found seats for themselves with their boys.
The schoolmaster announced and read the hymn, which was considered necessary, as books were few; then whanging his tuning fork until the key suited his trained ear, led in singing the hymn—Reconsecration—by Rev. Samuel Davies.
Here at that cross where flows the blood
That bought my guilty soul for God;
Thee, my new Master, now I call,
And consecrate to Thee my all.
As he was in the midst of his first long prayer; the one in which it was the custom to pray by name for the sick, afflicted and dissolute; and for the heads and representatives of government from the King to the county magistrate; he was interrupted by the piping voice of four-year-old Dorothy Fairfax, of Greenaway Court, who sitting near the partition and peeping through a gimlet hole made by some bad boy, saw little John Calvin Campbell, of her own age, not more than a foot away.
In the unsubdued voice of infant innocence, she piped out: “’ittle boy, peep through the ’ole.”
He was the grandson of the minister, and while minister’s sons are not always well behaved, it is said their grandsons are; at least John Calvin, an infant non-conformist, knew better than to talk to a daughter of the conformist church during meeting. He remained quiet with his eyes fixed on the preacher with a sleepy stare, while Dorothy’s voice grew louder and more insistent; to the amusement of the younger members of the congregation, until the thought occurred, that now all peep [pg 98] holes would be hunted out and plugged by Deacon Cressler, the carpenter.
The schoolmaster, knowing the ways of and accustomed to interruptions by children, did not waver in the fervency of his prayer, except as the child’s voice grew louder his own was raised in seeming greater earnestness.
With eyes apparently fixed on a small gable window in the front church wall, through which a beam of sunlight made a slanting bar of silver he began his sermon:
“When a stranger far out in the Valley of Virginia sees this church he is struck by its location and impressed by its look of age and permanence. He asks its history and is told: ‘It is the Jackson River Meeting House, built by Dissenters, Presbyterians, who came to this wild land from far Scotland and Ireland, counting the cost and danger nothing, if they might but find a place to worship God as conscience told them God should be worshipped. But they have found that even the groves of the wilderness are not God’s free and holy temples.’
“Christ’s mission was to wipe out persecution, to tear out the partitions of prejudice in his kingdom, to establish a universal faith; yet history shows that persecution, the murderous offspring of prejudice, remains; that all that is necessary to unleash it, start the rack creaking and the stake burning is a minor doctrinal divergence; it may be as to the form of baptism, belief in trans-substantiation or predestination.
“Churchmen clothed with a little brief authority become venomously intolerant; instigate the sovereign to acts of oppression, particularly against kindred sects; against other spiritual warriors serving under the banner of the cross; leading lives much as theirs were before [pg 99] they occupied the seats of the mighty and struggling as they once did against religious intolerance. The commission, ‘Go ye into all the world,’ is neglected and the torch of evangelism kindled in the white flame of sacrifice to light the way, is perverted to light the pyre of martyrdom of believers, as they, that the Son of God was crucified that Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian might live.
“During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, at the very time Columbus financed by them was cruising unknown seas and finding a new world, Torquemada, a Spanish monk, having shown special aptitude for persecution was raised to Inquisitor General; and carried on against the Jews the greatest religious persecution that as yet has disgraced a world drenched scarlet by persecutions; which did not end until 8,000 had been burned at the stake, 90,000 had been imprisoned for life and 800,000 had been expelled from Spain.
“In your prejudice you say: ‘But Spain is a Catholic country.’ Do not the Catholics believe that there is a God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is; and that there is a Christ who made atonement for the sins of the world? And what more believe you? And are not they as charitable as you?
“Has Protestant America clean hands? The New World’s record of persecution, opportunity and environment considered, is no cleaner than that of the Old. The Pilgrim fathers coming to America, seeking religious freedom, brought with them their prejudices. The churchman of the Old World brought his doctrinal issues to the New, as the caravan camel under his burden of ivory and dates and spices, carries his hump. He was no sooner established by the finding of shelter for his goods and chattels than unloading the pack he exhibited the [pg 100] old hump, declaring that God should only hear prayers of repentance and praise in his particular church.
“Our age of greater freedom and new thought demands a severance of church and state; but our colonial government, assuming to know and prescribing as physician its only remedy for a sick soul and a contrite heart, commands that the penitent shall only offer prayers and God shall only answer, if they are offered within the walls of the Church of England.
“Human laws cannot control men in their attitude of mind and heart towards God; the state cannot compel uniform prayers and hours of prayer; and faith is an issue between God and the individual. Coercion makes opinion stronger and constraint makes hypocrites, not converts.
“Again history demonstrates that the persecutor accomplishes nothing except his own undoing; while the persecuted one, if an advocate of a great truth, grows to greater things. By persecution faith grows; it lifts the vail for the persecuted one and he sees into the Holy of Holies.
“Truth can stand alone. Truth is inherently inextinguishable. It offers something the world must have. It will never die an outcast. If Scribes and Pharisees will not hear, Publicans and sinners will listen.
“Because truth is all powerful and will prevail, the Christian religion will evangelize the world, led by the light of religions freedom. Gamaliel recognized the infallibility of this truth when he advised the Sanhedrin, ‘And now I say unto you; refrain from these men and let them alone; for if this council or this work be of men it will come to naught, but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.’
[pg 101] “When the path of prophet and believer is too easy, the growth is slow. The sting of persecution is necessary to fructify the seed, to harrow the field; then follows occasional abundant harvests—never a failure.
“You have read or been told how our fathers were harassed in the Old Country until they were driven to the New. From 1745, the year of the Rebellion, until now, our people have been coming to this colony; and at infrequent intervals have felt that victory, not of religious liberty, but of toleration, was at hand.
“The fall and winter of 1758-9, we quarried and hauled the stone for this church and in the summer of 1759 it was completed. Then Mr. Preston and I went to Williamsburg, where we met the Rev. Samuel Davies and brought him back to preach the dedicatory sermon.
“On that day the whole Valley was in attendance, as were many from Blue Ridge and Greenaway Court and Winchester. There were even a few from Williamsburg and Richmond. Every Presbyterian within a hundred miles who was able to ride or walk came; and with them many of their friends among the Quakers, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Mennonites, the Dippers and communicants of the English Church. It was God’s House; God’s people filled it; the spirit of the Holy Ghost was upon it; the commandment of the Son was regarded; and crowded out all thought of sect and doctrinal intolerance. It looked as though there was to be a religious peace in the colony: and all rejoiced.
“Who brought this about? That greatest of preachers, Samuel Davies, the greatest orator who has ever spoken in the colony. But I am wrong—not all rejoiced. Who strangled the movement? Clergymen of the Conformist Church.
[pg 102] “The seat of an established church is no birthplace for a new faith. The birthplace of the Christian faith was not in Jerusalem but on the shores of that placid inland sea on which the boats of the fisher apostles rested. To the Christian, the first mind pictures of Jerusalem are of the Garden, the crucifixion and the resurrection. After these comes the picture of the Savior’s lamentation: ‘O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together; even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and ye would not.’
“When I think of the Church of England, it is not of the communicants, but of their intolerant clergy; who in selfishness of heart undid the great work of Davies and smothered with tares the seed he had sown. For them, the vision of Peter has no significance; the command, ‘Rise, Peter, kill and eat’ is not heard; the conclusion, ‘of a truth I perceive God is no respecter of persons,’ is impossible.
“The Conformist Church is not without the Kingdom. It is an agency of God for the salvation of the world. Many a communicant loves his Presbyterian neighbor as he does himself; but some of their intolerant clergy, nursing jealousy, loving blindness and perversity, delighting in persecution, would provoke from the Savior of the World, that scathing denunciation: ‘Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites—woe for your injustice and oppression; woe for your hair-splitting doctrinal folly, which strains the gnat and swallows the camel.’
“Today the old issue of intolerance is resurrected and becomes a vital one by the pending bill to regulate, ‘His Majesty’s Protestant Subjects.’ If necessary to bury it past disinterment, many of the people of the Colony [pg 103] will support the new issue: That the Burgesses of Virginia shall take precedence of authority over the King; and if need be, these two issues, religious liberty and self-government for the Colony, shall become yoke-fellows to drag to destruction giant oppression.
“The Presbyterian Church recognizes the divine origin of government; and that each subject must ‘render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s;’ but the right to worship God as God commands and as conscience dictates is more sacred than obedience and allegiance to the King. We love peace, but more our freedom; we love our home, but more our equities in the Kingdom of God; and we will give all for civil and religious freedom.
“It is as great to give your life to, as for a cause. In the Beatitudes we are told: ‘Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake; rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.’
“Visions come with persecution. Paul tells how, after the stoning at Lystra, he was caught up into Paradise and saw unutterable things. Again in the account of Stephen’s stoning we are told how he looked steadfastly up into heaven and saw the glory of God; and while they stoned him he called upon God, saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ and he kneeled down and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord lay not this sin to their charge;’ and when he had said this, he fell asleep.
“He fell asleep. While asleep, the tears were wiped from his eyes; his vision was strengthened; he awoke in a land where there was no night, in the presence of God, who said unto him: ‘I will be your God and you shall be my son.’”
[pg 104]