Families at St. Peter’s – First Fifty years

At the time St. Peter’s was consecrated in 1836 a limited number of families were in leadership roles of the church for the next 50 years.  They bought/rented pews, served on the Vestry and in some case were buried here. Families often perpetuated their roles down through later generations.  This was helped by lack of Vestry rotation in those years. 

Jim Patton did work on compiling the families in 1836 and then 1850 and then separately in the parish register 1871-1888 looking at the leading families. The 1836 and 1850 lists were compiled from pew records. The 1871-1888 register was a reconstruction of his notes since the original volume was lost. We can correlate his work through the following Parishioner table which represents Parishioners active during these years:

Another place to view the role of local families is in the graveyard.  If we look at the current graveyard, 48 of the 77 graves or over 62% are from 8 families:

It must be remembered that not all the people buried at St. Peter’s were members of the church. In 1886, the cemetery resolutions were amended to allow members of other families of other churches to obtain lots.  Still many of the above names are present in the earlier table.

If we take two or more appearances from Patton’s work and the families from above you have 15 leading families during the first 50 years of the church: Bernard, Care, Catlett, Farish, Fitzhugh, Gravatt, Gray, Holloway, Lightfoot, Powers, Pratt, Robb, Thornton, Turner, and Urquhart.

The only relatives still active today from this group in the church are Genevieve and Cookie Davis who are directly connected to the Powers family. The last Pratt departed a decade ago after the family was active here for over 150 years.

The Powers family demonstrates another characteristic – linkage among families. The key player was David B. Powers (1834-1910), owner of a general store. He lived on Lot 21 on the corner of Main Street (Hwy 301) and Water Street:

His marriage to Mary Rosina Thornton (1849-1993) linked him by marriage to the Thorntons  (daughter of Champe Brokenbrough Thornton, Sr. 1820-1900). Then, Powers’ daughter Rosina Powers (1879-1969) married William T. Holloway (1880-1936). Holloway was the son of Dr. Robert Green Holloway (1832-1919) and Eliza Amiss Holloway (1845-1929), also buried in our graveyard. William T. Holloway’s brother Cleveland married a Powers (Fanny Brockenbrough Powers 1878-1970) which brought them back to the Powers’ family. 

Another son of David Powers, Charles Presley Powers (1884-1964) had a daughter Doris (1925-1999) who married Beverly Pratt (1914-2005). That’s the connection to the Pratts. 

Looking at St. Peter’s now, it is clearly a church of many families rather than a few.  We don’t have extended generations living in the village. So what happened?  The economy expanded rapidly in the first part of the 20^th century and opportunities developed elsewhere taking people away, encouraged by the development of the automobile. Augustine (“Gus”) Turner, for instance, moved to Fredericksburg.  Professions changed. Farming gave way to host of local businesses – restaurants, service stations and motels.  Newer families came into Port Royal and environs with the development of subdivisions.  Vestry members are now rotated.