This map is a zoomed-in copy of the map I used for my essay on February 18 – “The Path Behind My House.” Today’s essay is going to focus on another part of the path, marked here by the darker line that terminates on the lower right side of the map marked “Church on the Main.” For reference, my house is near the top left of this portion of the map, on the road beneath the label Jamestown Hundred. I’ve marked it with a star.
I want to talk first about the Church on the Main. This was a brick Anglican church built by the 1750s to serve James City Parish as a replacement for the church on Jamestown Island, which had become difficult for communicants to reach. The Rev. James Madison (1749-1812) was its best-known rector, serving the church from about 1777 until it fell into disuse after the American Revolution and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. Madison became president of the College of William and Mary (1777-1812) and Virginia's first Episcopal Bishop in 1790. This James Madison was the first cousin of the more famous James Madison, the fourth president of the United States. Their common grandfather was Ambrose Madison – who is also my 8th great-uncle. His sister, Catherine Madison, was my 8th great-grandmother.
By 1857 all aboveground traces of the church were gone. In recent years, “a partial reconstruction, with handmade bricks, of the corners and doorways of the church, and the recreation of the aisles and several benches within the chancel were made possible through gifts of funds and labor,” according to Alain C. Outlaw, the archaeologist who has researched and dug the church site over the years. In June 2007, the church site was dedicated by the Most Rev. Bruce Cameron, Bishop of Aberdeen and Orkney and Primus of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, who was visiting the area.
This site is about a 20-minute walk from my house. I walked here with my grandchildren last summer.
According to an 1857 book Old Church, Ministers and Families of Virginia by Bishop William Meade, a bishop of the Episcopal Church in Virginia after the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Virginia in 1786, (later Bishop of Virginia and abolitionist), this is how the grave of Mrs. Elizabeth Bland was discovered:
“It is proper to state . . . that at a later period, the date not known, a brick church was built on the road from Jamestown to Williamsburg, called 'Main Church', in which Bishop Madison preached in the concluding years of his ministry. He doubtless preached at Jamestown in the earlier part of it. The Main Church has recently disappeared. Underneath it was found a brick vault, containing the remains of some unknown ones who were buried there."*
"Since the above was written I have received the following information: - 'The last minister of the 'Main Church' before Bishop Madison was the Rev. Mr. Bland, afterward of Norfolk. His wife was a daughter of the Rev. William Yates, who was for a short time President of William and Mary College. When the church was taken down, a piece of timber broke the arch of a vault containing a coffin, with a plate on which was inscribed 'Elizabeth Bland,' with a vacant space sufficient for another coffin.”
There’s more going on in this general location, however. The 1781 Battle of Green Spring, an important preliminary engagement before the siege of Yorktown and the subsequent end of the American Revolution, took place in this area.
This next marker is on the church grounds, just across the path from the pews and brick reconstructions you saw in the earlier pictures.
Here’s how Wikipedia summarizes the Battle of Green Spring:
On July 6, 1781 United States Brigadier General Anthony Wayne leading the advance forces of the Marquis de Lafayette, was ambushed near the plantation by the British army of Earl Charles Cornwallis in the last major land battle of the Virginia campaign prior to the Siege of Yorktown.
Following a month of marching and countermarching in central Virginia by Cornwallis and Lafayette, Cornwallis in late June moved to Williamsburg, where he received orders to move to Portsmouth and send some of his army to New York City. Lafayette followed Cornwallis fairly closely, emboldened by the arrival of reinforcements to consider making attacks on the British force. On July 4, Cornwallis departed Williamsburg for Jamestown, planning to cross the James River en route to Portsmouth. Lafayette believed he could stage an attack on Cornwallis's rearguard during the crossing.
Cornwallis anticipated Lafayette's idea and laid an elaborate trap. General Wayne's forces were very nearly caught in the trap, and only a bold bayonet charge against the numerically overwhelming British enabled his forces to retreat. Cornwallis did not follow the victory with pursuit, instead following his plan to cross the river. The action reinforced the perception among contemporaries that justified the moniker "Mad Anthony" to describe Wayne, although opinion on the merits of his actions was divided. The battlefield has been partially preserved, and reenactments are sometimes staged.
The simplified map on the left below shows the forces that were engaged in this battle. The map on the right provides a modern view of this location.
Here’s how a local marker describes this battle:
In 2016, archaeologist Dr. Alan Outlaw led a re-internment ceremony for one of the Pennsylvania continentals killed in action at Green Spring. His bones had been recovered over thirty years ago on the Harris farm (about ¾ mile to the west of the Church on the Main). After being studied by the Smithsonian Institution and being properly identified as one of the Pennsylvania continentals, he was re-interred with a proper Christian burial near the battlefield in the graveyard of the Church on the Main. Here is the marker that was erected at this site.
If you don’t like history and you’re living in this area, you’re missing out on a lot.
Did you buy your house knowing it was located in a spot so close to so much history? Do I? I’d better check it out.