The Town's Chapel

The building that was home to Beale Memorial Baptist Church was Essex County's second courthouse.  The Baptists purchased it from the county which had already occupied a newer structure.  A tower, bell and steeple were added to the front and remain to this day although the congregation has moved away to a new lot and buildings a mile north on the "the Tidewater Trail."

When those earliest Baptist preachers were jailed and tried for the offense of preaching without license the person who brought charges against them was the rector of the parish, then known as South Farnham Parish, Upper Piscataway and Lower Piscataway. 

From the history of St. John's Parish Church:

2. With roots in a church of the 1660s, known as Piscataway, the established colonial (Anglican) church presence in South Farnham Parish/Essex County (1683) comprised two sites, Upper and Lower Piscataway. At the time of the Revolution, the rector, Rev. Alexander Cruden, a Scotsman true to his oath of loyalty to the Crown, returned to England in 1776, leaving the parish “without benefit of clergy.” In 1785, with the organization of the successor Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, the parish sent two delegates as its representatives. In 1791, Andrew Syme, tutor to the Brockenbroughs, a local family, was persuaded to be ordained; he served as rector for two years, followed by a hiatus of twenty years or more, climaxing in 1802 with the seizure by Virginia of glebes and other church properties of the former established church. Revival seems to date from the coming from Maryland of the dynamic leader, Richard Channing Moore, as second bishop of Virginia. In 1817, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Henley deeded a lot on the edge of Tappahannock to be used as an interdenominational house of worship, to be known as Tappahannock Chapel (referred to variously over the years as the Town Chapel, the Free Chapel, etc.). Grantees of the deed were the Protestant Episcopal Church and Episcopalians were given the lead role and use, but not to the exclusion of other denominations: it was to be open also, in order, to “Baptist, Methodist & then to the Presbyterians” in that order. 

The "Town Chapel" was built and until St. John's had their own structure, begun in 1849 Episcopalians shared a worship space with "Baptist, Methodist & then to the Presbyterians” in that order." 

By 1967 just about every denomination had a place of worship, including the Seventh Day Adventists who staffed the only hospital in the county.

St. John's Episcopal Church was the place of my first experience of prayer book worship.  A community wide inter-racial youth group formed under the leadership of Father Daniel Montague gathered there to plan activities including highway trash clean-ups, fund raising for Project Hope, performing a version of Jesus Christ Superstar and most importantly defusing the tensions that rose out of and made desegregation of the schools so difficult.

We were idealistic and hopeful and determined at the very least to "get along."  We did more than that and our reunions are evidence.  But our conversations are tinged with sadness that so much still remains to be done.

Baptists jailed by Anglicans, Episcopalians and Baptists using the same interdenominational chapel, Episcopalians hosting a Baptist's preacher's son at Evening Prayer.  What next?