History by Donna Strange
Pen and ink drawings by Glenn Lehew
St. John’s Episcopal Church of Antrim Parish may have been
constructed in 1844, but its origins began several centuries earlier. In May
1752, the King of England and the Governor of the Colony of Virginia established
“Antrim Parish,” an area that included Halifax, Pittsylvania, Patrick, Henry
and Franklin counties. This area was named after Antrim Parish in Northern
Ireland, one of few areas in that country where the Church of England (or
Anglican Church) prevailed. At this time in America, the Church of England had
a dominant presence in the middle colonies, especially in Virginia’s newly
settled areas. How the Episcopal Church—in the eighteenth century often called
the Protestant Episcopal Church or the Methodist Episcopal Church—developed in
Antrim Parrish and in particular Halifax County, was due largely to a dedicated
group of vestrymen determined to bring the Word of The Lord to a vastly
unsettled part of the Commonwealth.
The Early Parish
The Book of Common Prayer, first printed in 1549, provided a
framework for worship services that families could use in their homes,
especially helpful when there were no churches or churches were too far away to
travel for Sunday services. The Book of Common Prayer, still used today, serves
as a complement to the Bible and is called “common prayer” because it invites
all people to pray together.
In the early 1700s, the area we now call Halifax County was
sparely populated and had only a few established coach roads. There were no
towns or churches. Those who could read became lay readers, reading from the
Book of Common Prayer to family members and neighbors who gathered in homes. By
the time of the American Revolution, several small churches or chapels had been
built and references to them can be found in the Antrim Parish Vestry Book now
housed in the Halifax County Courthouse.
Antrim Parish vestrymen, who were well respected in their
villages, measured land boundaries and collected taxes to provide for the poor
and support a rector or minister. William Chisholm, a candidate for orders, was
in Antrim Parish in 1752, but boarded a ship for England to be consecrated by
the Bishop of London and nothing more was heard of him. The two first recorded
rectors were Rev. William Proctor, who was paid 2,000 pounds of tobacco for his
services in 1753, and Rev. James Foulis. Rev. Foulis was in the parish until
1759. In 1762, Thomas Thompson, then an old man, served a few months until Rev.
Alexander Gordon was inducted. Rev. Gordon, a Scotsman, served the area until
1775, but became disillusioned as colonists prepared to break away from English
rule, and retired to Petersburg for the remainder of his life.
By the mid-1700s, there were several parish churches. One
was St. Patrick’s, built in 1764 adjacent to Boyd’s Ferry on the south side of
the Dan River. (By 1811, St. Patrick’s Church was no longer mentioned in local
records.) St. George’s Church at Peytonsburg, erected on vestryman Joseph
Terry’s land, was completed around 1765. There was also a church built not far
from the courthouse in the Love Shop area. Parish records list Rev. Alexander
Hay as the rector from 1790 until 1818, followed by Rev. John Stark
Ravenscroft, who moved to North Carolina after several years and was elected the
first Bishop of North Carolina in 1823.
Mount Laurel Church was built circa 1820 with funds
solicited from other denominations and became a “free church” to be used by all
religious groups. A church had also been erected at Meadsville and Reverend
Charles Dresser, rector of the Love Shop area church from 1828 until 1838, gave
his last sermon there before leaving the area. These churches, like the other
early churches are no longer standing.
Rev. Dresser, before leaving to become President of Jubilee
College in Peoria, Illinois, requested vestrymen to raise money for a
“Protestant Episcopal Church” to be constructed in Halifax. (Dresser is also
known as the Episcopal minister who married Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln in
Illinois.) Among the vestrymen at the time were James Bruce, John Wimbish,
William Bailey, and William Clark. A local resident, Samuel Williams, was paid
$5.00 for land on which St. Mark’s Episcopal Church was built in 1828.
Episcopalians worshiping at St. Marks included the Bruces, Chalmers, Edmondson,
Toot, Howerton, Cabaniss, Barksdale, Craddock, Green and Wimbish families.
The Protestant Episcopal Church congregation outgrew the
modest-sized St. Mark’s in a less than three decades. Reverend John Grammar,
who served as rector from 1839 to 1858, asked vestryman Dabney Cosby, Jr., to
build a larger church and land was purchased nearby from Robert and Martha
Gilliland and John and Pamela Wilson for $600.00. In 1844 St. John’s Episcopal Church was completed.
St. John’s Episcopal Church is a classic example of Greek
Revival architecture. The pedimented gable front of the Grecian temple-like
building, features four flat pilasters supporting a massive Ionic entablature
that extends around the sides of the building. Centered between the front pilasters is a tall recessed entranceway
with two handsomely paneled doors that open into the narthex. On each side of
the church are tall stained glass windows topped with plain stone lintels.
(Church windows had triple sashes with clear panes until the latter part of the
1890s.)
The church walls are solid brick, over two feet in depth,
with the exterior covered in stucco and scored to simulate blocks of granite.
This treatment is called roughcasting, and was introduced in the area by Dabney
Cosby’s father, Dabney Cosby, Sr., who helped the younger builder during the
church construction. Cosby, Sr., a brick mason who had worked with Thomas
Jefferson on the construction of the University of Virginia. He and his son had
recently completed construction on the county courthouse and built several
large brick homes in the county.
In the
narthex identical winding stairways are located on either side of the entrance
leading to a balcony at the back of the nave (sanctuary). Originally the
balcony was horseshoe shaped and extended along the sides of the nave atop the
upper third of each window. The area was reserved for slaves who attended
church with their respective families. Under
one of the balcony stairways is a winding stair that leads to an undercroft that
features a choir robbing room and a large room supported by eight round columns
of stuccoed brick.
In the narthex, two doors, each aligned with the aisles,
lead into the nave. Inside, the church retains its original painted wooden pews
and a chancel arch that features reeded pilasters supporting an entablature
embellished with laurel wreathes and a heavy molded cornice. In the center of
the nave is an exceptionally large
plastered ceiling medallion with egg and dart trim, rosettes, and a raised Star
of David design in the center.
Those serving
on the Vestry when St. John’s was consecrated included William Bailey, Thomas
G. Coleman, James Coles Bruce, William Holt, Phillip Howerton, Charles H.
Cabaniss, Elisha Barksdale, Jr., Judge William Leigh, Thomas J. Green, John
Sims and David Chalmers. In 1852, there were 82 communicants, 65 white and 17
colored. There had been three marriages, one white and three colored, and seven
funerals, three white and four colored. By 1856, the congregation had grown to
111 communicants and in 1860, an increase of four new members were noted in the
diocesan report.
Rectory Completed
St. John’s Rectory, also built by Dabney Cosby, Jr., was
completed in 1845. It is built of brick laid in Flemish bond, but unlike the
church was not covered with a stucco or roughcast finish. Built in the classic,
symmetrical Greek Revival style, the two-story, three-bay, central passage
dwelling sits on a high English basement with porticos covering the front and
back entrances. The front and back entrance doors have transoms, and windows on
all floors are capped with stone lintels. The house has a hipped roof, two
interior chimneys, and a wide central hallway. Flanking the hallway are two
rooms on each side downstairs and upstairs. The large basement once served as
the church’s parish house and occasionally, when St. John’s furnace did not
function properly, the basement was used for church services.
The Rectory also served as a home for young boarders who
attended the Halifax Episcopal Male Academy from September 1895 to 1900. J. G.
Shackleford, who was St. John’s rector at the time, was a faculty member and
served as President of the Academy’s executive committee.
Extensive alterations took place in 1890s, when Rev.
Shackleford served as rector. Balconies along the sides of the church were
removed and the center portion of the chancel arch was extended to include an
enlarged chancel or altar area, with a semi-circular apse and three stained
glass windows. A sacristy was built on the west side of the apse and on the
east side, a rector’s vesting room. In the early 1900s, the triple sash
multi-pane windows were replaced with stained-glass windows including the three
pictorial windows in the apse area.
Various renovations have been made from time to time to
update the facilities, fixtures and furnishings. St. John's rectory was sold in the fall of 2017.
St. John’s Parish House, built in 1962 provided much needed
space for Christian Education classrooms and an office for the Rector. In 2013,
the parish house received a major renovation. The nursery was refurbished and
classrooms updated for children on the lower floor. On the first floor, on one
side of the hall, the Rector’s office was redesigned to have a sitting
area/office and boardroom with small kitchen, and the other side of the hall
was reconfigured to include two spacious offices and a chapel with stained
glass windows.
Some of the
most noticeable changes included the installation of a handicapped ramp at the
entrance and the much needed landscape renovation and tree removals in St.
John’s churchyard. Gravestones and memorials were cleaned and repositioned and
shrubbery pruned. Today, the graves of many members are easily accessable and
the pleasant surroundings encourage family members to keep graves clear of
debris. Many notable Southside Virginians are
buried at St. John’s, including John Ragland, an early vestryman and
Revolutionary War patriot. Ragland was born in 1751 was a member of Antrim
Parish for fifty years. Others buried at St. John’s include members of the
Dabney Cosby family, builders and brickmasons who built St. John’s Episcopal
Church and rectory and many homes and public buildings of note in the area. Jefferson
Davis VanBenthuysen, nephew and namesake of the President of the Confederacy is
buried at St. John’s as are many ancestors of current members.
St. John’s has a long line of faithful communicants and many nineteenth
century families such as the Holts, Easleys, Edmunds, Owens, Colemans and
Faulkners join those early parishioners and vestrymen listed previously who
have all provided leadership, monetary support and spiritual guidance. Men who
were childhood members of the church and later became priests include four
Kinsolving sons (two of whom became bishops). Charles Clifton Penick became a
missionary bishop to Liberia and George Purnell Gunn became Bishop of the
Diocese of Southern Virginia. Two Ribble sons became ministers and Robert Soper
was also ordained a priest.