Of William's generation of the house of Keith, one biographer observes: "Here we have the father [William Keith], an Episcopalian; his wife [Lady Mary], a Catholic; and their son [James], a Protestant; all of them desperate to have a Catholic Stuart King on the throne."
To this we might add observation that William's first-born George was a deist ... if not an outright non-believer ... despite Robert Keith's undoubtedly fervent religious instruction.
George shared his father's political beliefs from the outset. By 1707, a clandestine Jacobite agent was styling him as 'Chevalier Keith' in correspondence. It was a play on one of James Stuart's titles, the 'Chevalier de St. George.'
(George's cipher names would, in the future, include 'Charpentier,' and '9/m.')
William likely decamped to France, where he acknowledged the Stuart succession. As did Pope Clement XI from Rome. James VII and II's male heir, James Francis Edward Stuart
, added 'Knight of the Thistle' to William's other titles ... in February 1708. For his overt militancy, William, Scotland's 9th Earl Marischal, was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle later that year. Our subject, the likely fatherless James Keith, would have been twelve years old when the head of his household was abducted.
Robert Keith retired from service to the Earl's household in 1710, when he entered the ministry of the Scottish Episcopal Church. George Keith became the 10th Earl Marischal upon William's death in 1712. Robert is to have guided George's brother, James Francis Edward Keith – contemporary of our James Keith – into the study of law at his alma mater, Marischal College (founded 1593 by George Keith, the 5th Earl Marischal). Robert quite likely was stimulus for our subject to study divinity - as
had - at Marischal College at Aberdeen. (Some speculate James' father was, or had been, professor there.) Tumultuous conflict would prevent either James Keith from taking a degree.
 |
| Peterhead, 1715 |
James Francis Edward Stuart, now the
attainted Prince of Wales, arrived at Peterhead on
22 December 1715. Having been passed over to succeed his father as King of Scotland, England and Ireland, Stuart had inspired 'The Fifteen,' a general uprising from northern Scots' strongholds. Some say by the fluke of a storm, Stuart used the Keith’s Port Henry as a means of landing and departing. Contrary to the 18th-century image
(left), James Francis Edward Keith recalled: "The King indeed arrived safely in the end of December 1715, after a great many dangers, but came in a very small fishing barck with only two servants, and without any of those things which we had so much depended on ..."
[See Keith, pg. 24.]
Stuart would have relied on the regalia in the Marischal's responsibility, if he'd gone through with plans to be crowned at Scone. George and the would-be king moved for days among the Earl's various manors. When Stuart made his public procession into Dundee, the Earl Marischal rode at his left hand ... the Earl of Mar (James Francis Edward Keith styles him 'Duke') on his right.
The enterprise failed. Sherrifmuir had not been a decisive victory against English forces. Scottish clans divided, and then sparred among themselves. None claim the sickly Stuart was a charismatic leader. When the Catholic aspirant - expatriate since he was six months old - did not get popular support from sought-after subjects, Stuart retreated to French protection.
For leading troops against his lawful King, George and his family were stripped of their titles and also attainted for treason. As the young Earl Marischal slipped into French exile, the English crown seized his lands. "George Earl Marischal was forfeited by the Duke of Brunswick, and his estate reckoned at one thousand six hundred and seventy-six pounds sterling, yearly; partly in Aberdeen and partly in Kincardin shires; and consisting of ... cash, six hundred and twenty-two pounds; barley, one thousand and seventy-two
bolls; oatmeal, one thousand six hundred and ninety-nine bolls ..." and 640 eggs accruing to more than a thousand fowl.
[See Robertson, pp. 420-21.]
Rev. Robert Keith and other Edinburgh clergy were prosecuted for not praying for the Hanoverian -now styled King George I - in 1716. A Commission of the Judiciary fined him; Robert "was prohibited from ministry."
Lady Mary, George and James' mother, is credited
[by Shield and Lang, pg. 131] with this reflection, after her sons were deprived of nearly all:
"A curse on dull and drawling Whig,
The whining, ranting, low deceiver,
Wi' heart sae black and look sae big,
And canting tongue o' clishmaclaver.
My father was a good lord's son,
My mother an earl's daughter,
And I'll be Lady Keith again,
That day our king comes o'er the water."
Like his cousins, our James Keith embraced the Stuart cause. A trained Protestant defending a Catholic aspirant to power, he risked death in the service of his cousin George Keith, an 'avowed religious skeptic.' Green wrote that young James, “remained for several years among the highland fastnesses; but again proved his fidelity to the Stuarts, by aiding in the abortive attempt of Seaforth and [the attainted 10th] Marischal to raise the highlands in 1719.”
[See Green, pg. 104.]
James Francis Edward Kieth, also in exile, went from studying military tactics at the Paris Academy to join his brother in Spain, which also recognized Stuart as King of England. Spanish authorities entrusted the Marischal's brother with about 18,000 crowns for a "fiery cross mission," to equip two frigates and "raise the Jacobites in France."
[See Shield and Lang, pg. 318.]
 |
| Spanish coin defaced by Keith Coat of Arms |
George Keith helped lead a March 1719 invasion force of perhaps 6,000 men, many Irish, in a fleet that included ten ships of war under the Spanish flag. A storm dissipated the ships and "only a small force effected a landing in the Western Highlands, [where] a few [Marquess of] Seaforth Highlanders joined them." Too weak for the erstwhile Marischal's planned assault on Inverness, "the small army took up a position in the pass of Glenshiel, and attempted to make a stand. They were soon attacked by Government troops, driven from height to height, and defeated. George and other officers retired to the Western Isles and, after lying concealed for some time, he escaped to Spain."
[See Mackintosh, pg. 296.] It was George Keith - the last Earl Marischal - who was to have provided the Spanish coin
(above, right) as a memento of his affection for his kinsman and childhood associate ... our James Keith. Perhaps the dispensation was one of the 18,000 crowns.**
Paxton, in his 1885 book, has our subject intriguing with his cousins. Together, they "fomented discontent." After being repulsed in 1719, the Marischal and his brother engaged in "secret correspondence with their friends." It was "conducted through their cousin James, and he, when discovered, took refuge in the Colony of Virginia."
[See The Marshall Family, by William McClung Paxton; pg. 24.] Miles claims our James Keith had been "compromised by the intrigues."
[See Miles, pg 72.] One correspondent asserts James had a 'price on his head.' Amid the continental exodus of Clan Keith, our subject may have also fled to France.
[See The Keith Diaspora (below).] Ambiguity is at any rate concluded: only our James Keith arrived in the New World.
It would not be the end of James Keith intrigues.
 |
| Bishop Edmund Gibson, 1728 |
German-born George II was crowned England's King in June 1727. James Keith is known to have been in Scotland - and ordained an Episcopal Deacon - in December 1728. The Right Reverend
Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London
(right), is to have given license for Keith to preach in the Anglican Church the following month. Incongruous for his earlier opposition to the English crown, in March 1729, the newly Reverend James Keith obtained a King’s Bounty of £20 and secured passage to America.
[See A list of Emigrant Ministers to America, 1690-1811, by Gerald Fothergill; pg. 38 & footnote 25 in Virginia Council Journals 1726-1753, in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography; pg. 327.]
Raised at most on the fringes and perhaps near the center of the sumptuous and courtly lifestyle an Earl could provide, James Keith had also known the deprivations and lawlessness of war. "The great scarcity of good books in this country is a very considerable discouragement ... to the minister," observed one Virginia correspondent, prior to Keith's arrival.
[See Historical Collections Relating to the American Colonial Church, by William Stevens Perry; pg 335.] Purportedly educated by wordsmiths among libraries in one of his native land’s two top-tier, post-medieval, 'civic universities,' Keith would have been one of the more learned among his colonial peers. He would have been nearly thirty-three years old as he took up a new start.
To Keith's advantage, Anglican priests were a relatively rare commodity in Virginia. Before being licensed, native-born colonials were required to "take holy orders" in the mother country. Aspiring, New World clerics had to then twice cross the Atlantic. Survival rates were surprisingly low among colleagues attempting it.
Rev. Keith’s initial ministry was to Henrico Parish. His sphere of influence centered on Curle’s Church (also styled Four Mile, for a nearby tributary) on the James River plantation of
Richard Randolph (1686-1748). Sometimes spelled 'Curls,' and thought by some to describe the river's flow around Curle's Neck; the main,
parish church stood (on the northern bank) about twenty miles downriver from a trading fort that would be laid out as Richmond, Virginia in 1737. Keith became responsible for ministry in 450 square-miles of sparsely inhabited wilderness.
By law, colonial Virginians were members of the Church of England. County courts had it in their power to prosecute and perhaps 'give the lash' those who failed to attend services.
Buonomi and Eisenstadt indicate that while "Catholics and Protestant dissenters represented a significant element in Maryland;" before 1743, "Virginia was the most uniformly Anglican colony."† This is to overlook Fort Germanna, where German Protestants, conveyed to mine iron for Alexander Spotswood had - c1714 - formed the first German Reformed Church in America. Given the interesting mix of beliefs in the Marischal's household, James Keith had fetched himself to an environment of
decreased religious tolerance. Candidates for colonial office were required to meet 'the test' ... which required an oath refuting belief in
transubstantiation in the sacraments. "To profess Catholicism" in Henrico Parish, "was to court social and political oblivion."
[See Fauquier County in the Revolution, by Thomas Triplett Russell and John Kenneth Gott; pg. 15. My post, This Moderate and Less Shamefull Way explores government and Catholicism in the Province of Maryland.]
Government and religion played mutually reinforcing roles in colonial life. Legislators in royalists' "Old Dominion" made it the legal responsibility of ministers to "preach at least one sermon on Sundays, visit the sick, avoid social excesses, and catechize children and non-Christians."
[See Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century, by Jewel L. Spangler; pg 13.]
About four hundred families populated the district when - in 1724 - an unidentified Henrico Parish pastor reported to London: "The masters do nothing for their servants, but let some of them now and then go to church." Styled "Infidels, bond or free" in the original, 'servants' was later euphemism for slaves. "One or two hundred persons are at church [Good Friday and Christmas]. The families are so distant that it is difficult to have the children brought to catechism, and when they grow to any bigness they do not like to be publicly catechized. The teachers and parents do whatever is done in that way. There was no public school for youth. There were only about twenty communicants at a time, when the sacrament was administered."
[See Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, Vol. 1, by William Meade (1878); pg. 137.] The correspondent described his Henrico Parish flock as "not so observant of Devout postures as could be wished." He begged for the means to fund a school and parochial library. Fearing the vestry are "generally too backward" to effect repairs on the parsonage, he may be indicating true power in church administration lay among vestrymen.
[See Perry, pp. 304-05.]
Falls Chapel stood at a cataract that proved the James River's uppermost navigable reach at the time. More substantial was Jefferson's Church at Rock Hall. Future President Thomas Jefferson's grandfather (of the same name) had contracted to build the structure in 1723, six years before Keith preached there as part of his rounds. Vestry funds, for 'ferriage,' compensated Jefferson when Keith used his service to cross the James.
Keith was provided a home, situated between Curle's Church and the falls. "Next to the Varina plantation was the
glebe of the parish, consisting of between 195 and 200 acres, which at an early date had taken the place of the one at Rock Hall, on the southern side of the James." From these farmlands, set aside by colonial officials, the one-time swordsman was to supplement his income and assure himself of fodder, sustenance and firewood. It is unclear whether our subject actually farmed. It was also the custom for ministers to rent to others their glebe lands - and any slaves provided.
[See Annals of Henrico Parish, by Lewis William Burton; pg 13.]
“The oldest extant record book of the vestry of [Henrico] parish begins on October 28th 1730. When this book was begun, the principal church of the Parish was Curie's
[sic] …”
[See Goodwin’s article in Colonial Churches in the Original Colony of Virginia, pg. 52.] Our subject is at last incontrovertibly identified: in it, the Rector styles himself ‘The Reverend Mr. James Keith.’ A state-run church, Keith's work was financed by mandatory 'tithes' generated by a head tax on every male Virginian - and every female slave - over the age of sixteen. Payment was required regardless of a subject's religious inclination. In 1730, Henrico Parish assessed 1,680 'tithables' requiring 25
½ pounds of tobacco be diverted to Keith from each adult parishioner. His annual compensation was 16,000 pounds of tobacco; legal tender permissible even unto taxation. Tobacco prices fluctuated: his salary's buying power in the market was depressed when they declined. It would have been challenging to grow net worth, based on perishable goods.
On Rev. Keith's ministerial staff were three lay readers, with salaries of 2,000 pounds of tobacco. "Many colonists only saw the rector of the parish once every three or four weeks," as they rotated through regional pulpits. Readers provided church services in the minister's absence.
[See 'Church of England in Virginia, contributed by Edward L. Bond to the Encyclopedia of Virginia.] Turnover among Keith's readers may indicate a certain lack of cohesion ... or the whims of a ruling class.
Enter the Randolphs.
Predominant among vestrymen overseeing Henrico parish financial matters was
Richard Randolph (1686-1748), then a member of Virginia's House of Burgesses ... but not yet having succeeded his brother William as the colony's treasurer. About three years senior to our Rector, Randolph was established in 'upper echelons of the colony’s elite.' Upstream from Williamsburg, the seat of colonial power, Keith was fortunate in his clerical assignment. Unless one takes into account that even superior colonial service almost never led to advancement in the greater Anglican Church.
The Rector's role was in large part clerical ... in both ecclesiastic and secular senses. Vestry records delve deep into resolution of land boundaries, for example. Parishes compiled vital statistics for births, deaths and marriages. Assessment, accounting and preliminary enforcement of property rights and revenue collection were all roles required in church administration. In addition to 'reading prayers and preaching;' performing marriages, funerals and baptisms; the itinerant minister and vestrymen were responsible for adjudicating the needs of the feeble, foundlings, insolvents, idiots and bastard children. Vestry records indicate Keith was an able administrator, circulating through various pulpits and undoubtedly into the nearby courthouse.
The position could be tenuous. Local vestrymen had dismissal authority and were not required to make any case of wrongdoing. The vestry were known to summarily expel their ministers, and lower expenses by 16,000 pounds of tobacco. "Vestries could use their ministers and lay-readers how they pleased, pay them what they listed and discard them whensoever they had a mind to it."
[See Perry, pp. 334-35.] In 1734, in nearby St. George's Parish, "Mr. Smith's preaching was so generally disliked," the vestry refused to receive him as their Minister." Bishop Gibson held deep respect for tradition. He bound appointed ministers to strict, formal practices. Vagaries among vestries often led to 'irregular' practices, however. Among them, Ministers were asked "to alter the Liturgy ... at the the dictation of those among whom he officiated; to discard the use of the surplice; to sit during the celebration of the Holy Communion; to administer Baptism, and solemnize marriage in private houses, without any regard to the time of day, or the season of the year; and to bury the dead in gardens or orchards, within temporary enclosures ..."
[See Anderson, pp. 123-24.]
"Vestrymen tended to belong to the economic and political leadership and might be understood to express the interests and views of the planting elite far more than the plain folk of the parish," admonishes one historian.
[See Spangler, pg 16.] Not only did Keith walk a tightrope with his vestry, relationships with common parishioners were subject to friction as well. Neighboring Curle's Church were the Henrico courthouse and jail. "Abuses that are frequently put upon [ministers] by sheriffs and other Collectors of the Parish Levies," created animosity ... between constituents in general and those responsible for tax assessment and revenue collection. It had lately been practice to station the Sheriff at the church door. Given that attendance was mandatory, it eased his task of serving warrants and apprehending those he sought.
Our subject was a long way from home, and likely lacking any financial resiliency. The risk of vestrymen "shutting the church doors against the Clergyman, and stopping his supplies at any moment," made Keith's position precarious. Raised in an Earl's household, Keith would have known rank, and the merits of appeasing the powerful Randolph family.
Col.
Thomas Randolph (1683-1729, of Tuckahoe Plantation, brother of Richard and William, above), having died two years earlier, his heir, young William Randolph (1713-1745), became a Henrico Parish Church Warden in October, 1731. In addition to parish administration, "Church wardens acted as censors for the church in reporting all swearing, sabbath-breaking, drunkenness and other 'abominable sins,' to the court held in December and April." Our subject was about to collide with this moral surveillance.
[See Life of Commissary James Blair, by Daniel Esten Motley; pg. 16.]
It was a vigorous time for Henrico Parish: 2,200 pounds of tobacco were spent on a floor, and glass was installed in the 'Church Winder' at Curle's. A thousand pounds of tobacco were allocated to repairing Falls Chapel. Settlement proceeded and tithable units rose; individual tithes were assessed at 29 pounds of tobacco. Our Scots immigrant faced pleasing prospects in the church ledger.
That is not to say James Keith had moved beyond all civil strife. In 1732, "some wicked and evil Disposed persons" burned Germanna Church to the ground. Spotsylvania countians complained this seat of administration was convenient to no one but former Colonial Governor Alexander Spotswood and his tenants. Parishioners petitioned for a courthouse and church be built "in their neighborhood."
[See Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia, by Dell Upton; pg 14.]
Our roving parson engaged in deep, personal ministry as well. Keith no doubt offered solace to young William Randolph’s youngest sister,
Mary Isham Randolph (c1718-c1772). If sordid accounts are true, she had must have been traumatized when her family is to have slain her child
and the slave overseer she’d eloped with in 1732. Mary, in some disgrace, had likely returned to Tuckahoe Plantation ... in upper reaches of Henrico sectioned off as Goochland County in 1728.
[See earlier post Young Fellows upon Wrong Pursuits.] One account painted Mary as "scorned and derided for her
mesalliance."
[Italics in the original, see Virginia Council Journals 1726-1753, pg. 395.]
At perhaps age thirty-seven, Keith was more than twenty years older than the teen-aged widow. Gail Raney Fleischaker, a
7th-generation descendant of James Keith, has him “romancing" Mary Isham Randolph.
[Here.] Another source alleges the pair were caught ‘
in flagrante delicto.’ Despite Keith's education and collateral lineage, the Randolphs deemed the Reverend – very likely without land of his own – as poor of a match for Mary as had been overseer Enoch Arden. From the heights of hierarchical, Virginia society, our cleric was in some regard simply a 'clerk.'
The Randolphs did not murder Keith. They did however apply their considerable stature to have the minister ejected from Virginia. Mary’s father Thomas was dead, but Fleischaker reports, “Two other Randolphs were active in the administration of Henrico Parish: Richard Randolph, Mary’s uncle, was a vestryman, and William Randolph, her brother, was Church Warden.” Rev. Dr. James Blair, as his Commissary, was the Bishop of London’s man in Virginia. He reported to the Right Reverend Edmund Gibson - who had (above) ordained Reverend Keith - that the parson was “guilty of fornication with a young Gentlewoman.” Randolph family and friends “did so dislike his character that they would not let her marry him,” wrote Blair. [See John Marshall: Definer of a Nation, by Jean Edward Smith; pg 24.] The Randolphs forced Keith's resignation, which he supplied on 12 October 1733. Brother of the injured party, it is William Randolph’s signature appearing beneath this curt entry in the church record:
"Ordered,
That the refignation of Mr. James Keith as Minister of this Parifh be received.
Ordered,
That the Church Wardens of this parifh in behalf of the Veftry do make a reprefentation hereof to the Governor." [See Burton, Appendix, pg. 16.]
Keith once again took flight. Smith asserted he “departed for
Maryland immediately thereafter.” William Randolph no doubt shared his umbrage with Sir William Gooch, Royal Lieutenant Governor of Virginia (the actual Governor lived in England).
On 14 Jan 1734 Gooch described mutual political favors in correspondence with Bishop Gibson. When he referenced a Maryland appointment, Gooch noted: “to which province Keith saw fit to retire with his guilt."
[See The Fulham Papers, item 215-16.] All Church of England ministers and missionaries were required to be presented to the pertinent colonial governor before assuming their position: it is likely Gooch personally knew whom he disparaged.
 |
| Rev. James Blair (1656-1743) |
On 24 March 1734 Rev. Dr. Blair
(left) countered the governor's report in his own letter to the Bishop, contending Gooch had actually
recommended Keith to Maryland's Governor.
[See The Fulham Papers, item 231-14.] Nearly two years later, Gooch wrote of a ministerial replacement finally provided Henrico, "the parish Mr. Keith has left, a very good one, where, I make no doubt, [the new appointment's] Conduct will make amends to the People for the failings of that unhappy Gentleman." Blair alluded to Parson Keith.
[See The Virginia Clergy, G. McLaren Brydon, ed., in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 32, No. 4; pp. 333-34.]
Blair had been dealing with errant clergy since he pulled a minister's concubine from her pew soon after his arrival in Virginia. In 1724 he reported to the then newly-installed Bishop Gibson on a pair of ministers, "very scandalous for drunkenness & fighting & quarreling publicly, in their drink." "For want of clergymen we are obliged to bear with those we have," wrote Blair, before circumstances made Keith available.
[See Perry, pp. 252-3.]
Perhaps to improve the quality of their ministry, or to take leadership from a minister forged with a colonial perspective, parishioners had recently (and
clandestinely, according to Blair) sent a Virginia schoolmaster to take holy orders in England. He "took their money and has never returned."
[See Perry, pp. 358.]
Scandals had been
so prevalent, Virginia's House of Burgesses had legislated relief after receiving (likely Blair's) 'Proposition for supplying the country of Virginia with a sufficient number of much better Clergymen than have usually come into it.' The proponent cited "fornication, adultery, Blasphemy, ridiculing of the Holy Scriptures," in a category before "cursing, swearing, Drunkeness, [and] fighting," as "unbecoming the Gravity of a minister." Drunkenness being "most common," the author went to great lengths proposing proofs of such conduct, "such as sitting an hour or longer in the Company where they were a drinking strong drink and in the meantime drinking of healths or otherwise taking his cups as they came round like the rest of the company; striking, challenging, threatening to fight, or laying aside any of his Garments for that purpose; staggering, reeling, vomiting, incoherent, impertinent, obscene or rude talking."
[See Perry, pg. 342.] For his role in the community, Parson Keith navigated a social environment bearing strict moral expectations. It's hard to fathom the depth of transgression he had engaged in.
Blair was aware that the Bishop had received an anonymous communique maintaining, “If you sent a dozen clergymen hither every man would have a parish.” Wrote Blair, “I believe he did not mean that there were there so many vacant parishes but, in disparagement of the present Clergy, he meant that if they had better men to substitute in their places they would turn out some that they have & take in others.” Blair admitted to Gibson "there may be some truth in what [the writer] objects to [amid] the Clergy; in the point of drinking, it is neither so general nor to such a degree as he represents it." As church administrator, the growing need for pastors plagues him. “We have now the most vacancies I have known in the Country,” he bemoaned, after specifically noting Keith’s removal.
[See Perry, pp. 357-8.]
Blair openly equivocated as to the disgraced Reverend Keith: "I gave your Lordship an account of the misfortune which occasioned [Keith's resignation] tho' I did not then know what I have learned since … from some of the circumstances in his case …” Conjecture here may be that a) Blair realized Keith intended to remain in ministry, and b) the couple married.
Smith opined on what was not specifically conveyed: “The circumstances are not mentioned by Blair, but presumably pertained to the fact that James Keith and Mary Randolph were deeply in love.”
It is likely that the couple
had legally married. One online database gives the wedding date as 1733; more commonly accepted is 2 March 1734. All are vague on citations, but generally indicate a Virginia license, and infer capitulation by the Randolphs. Birth dates for first-born son, James Keith, Jr. (c1734-1824), are also vague, and generally approximate the wedding dates.
[See Virginia Council Journals 1726-1753, pg. 395.]
A popular author has Mary Isham Randolph accompanying James Keith to Maryland. The excitable Paxton wrote of Mary, “It is charged that her marriage to Parson Keith was concealed from her brothers, and that she stole away to accompany her husband, when he returned to Scotland for orders.”
[See Paxton, pg. 25.]
Keith may have sought the intervention of his cousin and childhood Preceptor. The Right Reverend Robert Keith had by then been appointed Bishop of Caithness, Orkney and The Isles, and was soon to add the diocese of Fife to his portfolio. While it is feasible for James Keith to have twice again crossed the Atlantic, the known timeline makes it unlikely.
Rev. Dr. James Blair is portrayed as one of the few persons in Virginia who could have openly defied the Randolphs. The Bishop's Commissary had long held a secure position on the Governor’s Council; he’d been the principal founder of the College of William and Mary. “Blair was regarded as the éminence grise of Virginia politics,” Smith declared. A native Scot, he'd become a missionary after being deprived of his Edinburgh parish for taking the losing side in a split of the Episcopal state church, rejecting Roman Catholic influence. Blair had placed Keith in his own former pastorate of Henrico Parish, a plum position, rife with social opportunity. “Circumstances suggest that Keith may have been Blair’s protégé or that Blair at least had a special interest in his well-being.”
[See Smith footnote, pg. 25.] Blair had graduated from the College of Edinburgh: Smith contended he had been a classmate of James Keith’s mysterious father. Paxton went so far as to posit Bishop Robert Keith (who was - by 18 years - James Keith's senior)
was our subject's father.
Virginians had - only two years prior - gone to great lengths following another scandal with an Anglican cleric. After Blair had "taxed him with rumours of 'scandalous conversations' with a gentlewoman," a minister named Wright had gone to Maryland in 1732. Blair had "forewarned Commissary Henderson, so [Wright] went on to Pennsylvania, where he was exposed by Colonel Spotswood, who happened to be there."
[See The Fulham Papers, item 178-9.]
Instead of hounding him, Blair
rescinded Keith's exile to
Maryland.
Parson Keith's new appointment was further removed from the center of civil society. Given that trade and intercourse largely followed navigable waterways, the distance between the Randolphs, on James River, and Keith's new assignment, along the northern Potomac, was more substantial than eighty miles as the crow flies. “Hamilton Parish contained in Prince William and [later] Fauquier [Counties] a … large area to be served by a church, situated on the Quantico …”
The date given in the following account is troubling. “It was at the church on the Quantico that Mr. Keith assumed his duties in 1733, and he preached there ...”
[See The Journal of the 135th Annual Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia; pg. 76.] Either the date is a year premature, or Parson Keith - discharged in October - had been recalled from Maryland (if he ever went) by year's end.
Virginia's General Assembly had ordered - after 1 January 1730 - Overwharton Parish be divided. Land south of a line drawn from the head of the north branch of Chopawansick Creek, southwest to Hanover Parish, "shall thereafter be called, and known by the name of Hamilton." Freeholders and 'housekeepers' of the new parish met at the "church above Occoquan ferry" to elect vestrymen and hear their oaths of office. As seeming vindication of Blair's contention about the scarcity of available ministers, those in the new parish may have waited years for an inaugural appointment.
[See An Act for making a new parish, on the head of Overwharton Parish, in Stafford County, here.]
Overwharton Parish had centered on Potomac Church, which remained in their keeping. When the legislature ruled "Whereas, the inhabitants of the new parish have born a great part of the charge and expence of the building and repairing of the glebe of the parish of Overwharton, and other houses belonging thereto; and now, by the division thereof, must be at the charge of purchasing land for a glebe and building convenient houses on the same," Overwharton parishioners were ordered to raise 10,000 pounds of tobacco ... for Hamilton Parish vestrymen to use in providing their own glebe.
Writing of Hamilton parish six years earlier, Meade explained “Being then a frontier-county, its limits were not known, but it was inhabited about eighty miles along the Potomac and from three to twenty miles in the interior. There were six hundred and fifty families, eighty to one hundred communicants in attendance, one church and several chapels.” Quantico harbor had boomed in 1731, with erection of a public tobacco warehouse and royal customs house. Surprisingly, "Throughout the mid-17th century, the port on Quantico Creek was one of the busiest in colonial America, comparable to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston in terms of its shipping trade," according to Historic Dumfries Virginia.
Originally called 'Occoquan Church,' for it's location on the River of that name (from an Algonquian-speaking Doeg Peoples' depiction of "the end of the water"), it was soon referred to as 'Pohick Church' because of its proximity to Pohick Creek. Organized in 1724, Pohick is referred to as "the Mother Church of Northern Virginia." Falls Church historians (in the town of that name) report: "Until 1734, this area was served by clergyman who lived near present-day Quantico, and the nearest church was Occoquan Church near Lorton."
[Here.]
In 1732 the Assembly divided Hamilton Parish "by the river of Ockoquan and Bull Run (a branch thereof), and a course from there to the Indian Thoroughfare of the Blue Ridge of Mountains." Hamilton would retain lands south of this line; the new Truro Parish became responsible for the rest of Prince William County.
[See here.] Diocesan historians describe settlement patterns: "In the 'back country' of what remained of Hamilton after its separation from Truro ... settlements had already covered the lands of the upper Rappahannock drainage and had passed beyond the Pignut Ridge, while the movement from the Potomac below the Pignut had followed the Occoquan and its tributaries to meet the earlier spread from the western waterway (perhaps the Rapidan River)." Truro Parish and its inaugural appointment had not been a long-lived partnership. After a year, vestrymen began agitating for a replacement.
[See Episcopal Journal, pg. 77.]
 |
| Extant Cemetery, site of Quantico Church. |
By the time of the Keith's arrival, vestrymen had likely sited their new Hamilton Parish Church at Quantico. Graves at the site
(left) on Quantico Creek, near what is now The Town of Dumfries, date from 1667. An undated silver plate remains, an inscribed gift to the congregation. Quantico Creek presented a harbor and landing to the Potomac River. A customs-house and warehouse had been sited there in 1731: more and more water-powered mills were cropping up along this estuary among tidewaters. Settled by Scots, "It was for a while the centre of a considerable trade."
[See Potomac Landings, by Paul Wilstach; pg. 143.] Shipping huge quantities of upland tobacco,
Wikipedia reports Dumfries at some point became the
second leading port in Colonial America. This augured well for Pastor Keith and his bride. Says Wilstach: "A parish which raised poor tobacco seldom got a good preacher. It was reported, "some parishes are long vacant upon Account of the Badness of the Tobacco.""
[See Wilstach, pg. 245.]
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| Occoquan (later) Pohick Church became part of Truro Parish in 1732. |
When researching
The History of Truro Parish in Virginia, Rev. Philip Slaughter discovered “James Keith, of Hamilton Parish ... also officiated in this Parish, when it was without a minister." On 23 Sep 1734 "an order was entered to pay the Rev. Mr. James Keith 10,544 pounds of tobacco for services rendered.”
[See pg. 12.] George Washington's father, Augustine, was then a vestrymen. Apparently, Parson Keith was not in contention for permanent assignment among the powerful Mason, Lee and Fairfax families. The following week, vestrymen authorized a representative to approach Bishop Gibson in London for a "discreet and Godly minister."
[See Truro Vestry Records, pg 8.] Keith was not shunned. He returned to baptize a child in 1736.
[See Births from Truro Parish Vestry Book, in The William and Mary Quarterly, Second Series, Vol. 10, No. 2; pg. 190.]
Slaughter also informs us James Keith was on a 1744 list of voters in an election of the House of Burgesses. In order to qualify, Keith would have been a land-holder. "An elector could vote in every country in which he owned a freehold of 25 acres of improved land, or 100 acres if unimproved."
[See Slaughter, pg. 128.]
Authorities again divided Hamilton Parish in 1744 or '45. "Mr. Keith was a worthy man," declares a modern author, "utterly frustrated by the immense size of his parish." "Partly as a result of his urgent pleas, Hamilton Parish was split." Strangely, it was often the case that parish realignment, approved by the legislature, predated lawmakers' subsequent creation of new counties.
[See Russell and Gott, pp. 15-16.]
Quantico, and a chapel at the confluence of Broad and Cedar Runs (variously called Slaty and Slater's Run) were removed from Keith's responsibility and assigned to a new parish of Dettingen. At the division, Keith 'was retained' by Hamilton parishioners. This might be an indication of preference for the 48-year-old Parson ... or a known quantity, or simply that vestrymen did not want to wait for a new minister to be appointed. Freeholders were beginning to anticipate how the division of parish boundaries preceded new opportunities in the formation of new posts in local government. As new civil centers were erected, land values increased thereabouts.
"It was necessary also to provide a new parish church, as Quantico church was situated in Dettingen and had been taken over by that parish. The site selected was at Elk run about eight and a half miles south of the parsonage where an Overwharton chapel probably stood ..."
[See Fauquier During the Proprietorship, by Harry Connelly Groome; pg. 138.]
In 1745, Parson Keith settled his family near what may have been a simple, frontier chapel. A wooden structure certainly existed by 1744 when a Prince William County Minute Book describes road repairs carried out in front of the Elk Run Chapel, which lay on the on the primitive Falmouth-Winchester Road.
That organization under Keith, his wardens and vestrymen was able, is evidenced by the expansion of their endeavor. “The Church served respectively as a governing and administrative body under British colonial rule, and the bustling village of the 1750s boasted a tavern, a blacksmith shop, an ordinary, and was a stopover point for travelers going north or west in the constant expansion into what later became Fauquier County,” say church historians.
[Here.]
The diocesan journal relates, “Church wardens of
Hamilton [Parish] purchased new glebe for that parish consisting of three parcels of land on Licking Run, being part of the original
Germantown tract. The purchase was made in 1746 and the parsonage, when completed, was occupied by the Rev. Mr. Keith, whose services had been retained by
Hamilton.”
[See Episcopal Journal, pg. 78.]
Fleischaker disagrees. “Keith had purchased adjoining parcels of land south of Pignut Ridge in the summer of 1747, and he could well have moved his family there in anticipation of the old glebe’s sale before a new parsonage could be constructed. The new parsonage, 'about eight and a half miles' north of
Elk Run Church, was not finished until the 1750s, and it is unlikely that the Keith family ever took residence there.”
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| Portion of Fry-Jefferson Map, charted 1750-1752. (1755 edition) |
Preaching responsibilities may have increased. The parsonage, three miles from Germantown, is visible on the Fry and Jefferson map
(left). It was "conveniently situated between the two churches of [Hamilton] parish, Elk Run ... and St Mary's, better known as the Turkey Run Church." The wood-framed structure, "... stood on the then Rappahannock-Dumfries road, about a mile and a quarter below the present site of Warrenton."
[See Bulletin No. 1, Fauquier Historical Society, pg. 68.] Cartographer Peter Jefferson; son of Thomas, contractor for the Rock Creek Church
(above); would have been familiar with the area.
Family researchers muse that these were pleasant times for the couple, and that their love had endured its rocky beginning. Alexander, James and Mary’s last of eight surviving children, was born following their 1747 relocation. Mary Isham (Randolph) Keith’s mother,
Judith (Fleming) Randolph (1688-bef 1743) had provided for Mary in her will. Mary may have inherited something upon Fleming's death, but her mother had remarried a man only 8 years older than Mary.
In the 1750s Parson Keith supervised the construction of a 'substantial,' brick church at Elk Run. "An examination of building materials of parish churches shows that framed buildings were most common throughout the colonial era, and that few brick buildings were built before the 18th century."
[See Upton, pg 11.] Vestry in Pohick, Quantico, Broad Run and Falls Church also rebuilt - in brick - during this era.
[See Groome, footnote pg. 185.]
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| Foundation, Elk Run Church |
More, the
form of the building, built in the shape of a Greek cross - sections thirty-four feet on each side and fifty-four feet at their full length - was architecturally distinguished for it's time and location. Keith and his vestrymen showed leadership, later emulated by
Aquia Church. Says Upton: "The decision to build a church was a momentous one for any parish. It involved a commitment of supervisory time ... and parish money far beyond that demanded under ordinary circumstances." In the period of Elk Run's re-construction, Upton rules out a boom in economic cycles as instigation. Overwharton parishioners protested the cost of
their proposed church to the House of Burgesses in 1745. We might assume Parson Keith and his vestry helped inspire parishioners to go to sufficient trouble and expense.
On 28 July 1752 a 'John Neavill, Junr.' (also seen as Neville) was given permission to bring a suit of trespass against 'James Keith, clerk.' A Price William County court record of 31 May 1753 declares "the suit abates the defendant being dead."
[See Miscellaneous Prince William Minute Books, pp. 38 & 146.] James Keith would have been perhaps 56 years old at his death.
James Keith's will is missing. Probate records first appear 25 Jun 1753. They indicate some prosperity. Inventory records show Keith willed his land be divided evenly between three sons. Four lots - Roslin, Stony Wood, Soldiers Retreat and South Run, all beginning at the foot of Pignut Ridge - spanned more than 1100 acres. He was also holding Huntly, 543 acres on Battle Branch. Keith may have acquired slaves.
None of James and Mary's surviving children (between the ages of 4 and 18) had married by the time of their father's death. As executrix of her husband's will, Mary continued appearing in court as late as 1762. "Mary Isham lived into old age, residing in Leeds Parish under the guardianship of her son Thomas who, with his wife Judith, was then residing on a portion of the Pignut Ridge land inherited from his father," says Fleischaker. Financial difficulties caught up with Mary in 1772. On 22 August the "widow and Relict of the late James Keith, Clerk" entered into a covenant with her son, Thomas Randolph Keith (c1736-1805). Thomas covered her debts of £150 and agreed "to support and maintain the said Mary Isham Keith in a decent and genteel Manner." In return, Mary signed over five slaves (including Beck, Finder and Amos), and any inheritance from her mother, due upon her step-father's death.
[See Fauquier County Minute Book, Part 2; pg. 762.] Though her precise death date is unknown to me, Mary would be gone about twenty years before whatever property was to pass through Nicholas Davis/Davies could be inherited.
Family historians often relay that James and Mary Isham (Randolph) Keith were laid to rest beneath the chancel of Elk Run Church.
Excavation, begun in 2009, revealed a cavity in that location ... but no remains. Ground-penetrating sensors did locate a few burial sites, but it may be the Keith's bodies were exhumed from the building after it fell into disrepair in the 19th century.‡
There will be a final, disturbing chapter to Mary and James Keith’s saga.
==30==
* There is some disagreement regarding the Keith succession as Earls Marischal. Some accounts, such as the seminal text A System of Heraldry by Alexander Nisbet (1722), record only nine Earls Marischal before the title was taken away. Other accounts, such as Burke's Peerage and The Scottish Peerage, record ten Earls. In accordance with the Countess of Kintore's The Keiths, this post follows the more inclusive list of ten Earls Marischal.
"Whether or not the white hind ever appeared we are not informed – but one thing is certain, that the threshold was broken in three, and that the keystone has been out of its place," observes Anderson.
+PORT.jpg "From Ecclesiastical Chronicle for Scotland, Volume 2, by James Frederick Skinner Gordon; pg. 187.")
