In a letter to Increase Mather, written July 22d, 1684, from Elizabeth River, Virginia, he speaks of a voyage engaged to South Carolina, but he met with contrary winds and was driven as far north as Delaware Bay and eventually had to put into Virginia, where he was persuaded by Colonel Anthony Lawson and other inhabitants of the Parish of Linhaven in lower Norfolk County to stay that season. Their pastor, formerly from Ireland, died the August before and left them without a leader.
Makemie seems to have remained at Elizabeth River for a considerable time. He writes again from there to Increase Mather, Boston, N. England, under date of July 28, 1685, in which he acknowledges the receipt of a letter and three books and refers to a Mr. Thomas Barret, a minister living in South Carolina and from whom he had received a letter from Ashley River, stating that he was about to take shipping for New England and for whom Makemie enclosed a letter. Just how long after this he remained with this people is not known, only that in the following year he made an extended preaching tour southward to Carolina, ministering to the spiritual necessaries of the people in neglected communities and performing the other duties devolving upon a true minister of the Gospel. It was no easy task that confronted him, while nearly three fourths of the population were dissenters from the established church.
“It is safe to say,” says Cobbs, “that no small proportion of the people were without any definite religion.” This was especially true of North Carolina.
As late as 1729 Colonel William Byrd wrote of Edenton, then capital of North Carolina: “I believe this is the only metropolis in the Christian or Mohammedan world where there is neither church, chapel, mosque, synagogue, or any other place of worship of any sect or religion whatever.
“They pay no tribute either to God or to Cæsar.”
With a knowledge of such conditions before him he put himself forward in 1686, with that fearlessness characteristic of his race, to preach the Gospel to the regions beyond.
How long he labored here is impossible to tell, but he returned and took up his residence on the eastern shore at Matchatauk, Virginia. His name appeared for the first time on the court records of Accomac County, Virginia, in 1690, and John Galbraith’s will, made August 12th, 1691, refers to Makemie as Minister of the Gospel at Rehoboth town. In that year he made a visit to England and returned either that autumn or the following spring, after an earnest endeavor to inspire interest in the religious life of the new colony. It was during the year 1692 that Makemie visited Philadelphia and planted the seed of Presbyterianism by preaching the first sermon in the Barbadoes store, northwest corner of Second and Chestnut streets, after which, in the autumn of this year, he sailed for the Barbadoes, where he remained several years, combining the life of a minister and a merchant, as shown by letters dated December 28th, 1696; January 17th, 1697, and, February 12th, 1697, which are still preserved.
It was either during the year 1697 or the early part of the succeeding, 1698, that he returned to his old home on the eastern shore and married Naomi Anderson, according to Dr. Hill’s “Rise of American Presbyterianism.”
In a will signed by William Anderson, July 23d, 1698, and recorded October 10th, he refers to Mr. Francis Makemie and Naomi, his wife, my eldest daughter. Again, the will says, “If my daughter Naomi have no issue,” showing that no children were born at that time.
In Virginia he suffered much annoyance from the authorities, but was the first dissenting minister to obtain a certificate under the toleration act, 1689, of William and Mary, having previously a certificate of his qualifications at Barbadoes, yet it was not until ten years later, 1699, that the Virginia legislature grudgingly granted this with licenses for two houses in Accomac, as places of dissenting worship, to which another was added in 1704.