Prior to the American Revolution, the Anglican Church, also known as the Church of England, was the established church in several colonies, including Virginia. The church parish, overseen by a vestry, was an essential element of geographic organization and governmental administration in Virginia. In addition to being a community of worship, before the disestablishment of the Church of England after the Revolution, the parish for 150 years played a crucial role as a quasi-government entity, collecting taxes, establishing and enforcing property boundaries, and acting as a robust social services agency to assist the poor and sick within the parish’s geographical boundaries. The parish was “the layer of government closest to the people, and for many, it probably had a greater day-to-day impact on their lives than the county or colony-wide government.”(1)

The parishes fortunately kept exceptionally good records. As a result, where those records survive, they provide unique insight into how early American society was organized, the growth and geographic migration of the population, the daily lives of members of those communities, and the names of the inhabitants well beyond clergy and lay leaders of the parishes. While deeds and other records often document the names and holdings of wealthy male landowners, parish records capture the names of laborers, the poor, women and children, and some cases, enslaved persons.

This exhibit explores the early history and lives of the inhabitants of two parishes in Tidewater, Virginia from 1723 to 1831. Due to its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay, this region was enormously important in the economy and development of what became the Commonwealth of Virginia following the Revolution. It was among the oldest and most populous areas of colonial settlement in Virginia, an area rich in maritime and agricultural resources, including the essential commodity (and currency) of early Virginia, tobacco.

The two parishes whose vestry records are highlighted in this exhibit (and digitized and available in full here) are:

• Lynnhaven Parish, established prior to 1643 and contiguous with then-Princess Anne County. The vestry records featured here cover the period 1723-1829; and

• Elizabeth City Parish, established in 1619 and then containing all of the original Elizabeth City on the northside of the James River, or what is known today as Hampton Roads. The vestry records featured here cover the period 1751-1831.

Churches whose origins can be traced to those early records are still extant today.

In an impressive act of early historic records preservation, in 1906 the Diocese of Southern Virginia, where the parishes are located, commissioned a handwritten transcription of the parish records so that the information would be accessible in the future.

This exhibit highlights some of the valuable information contained in the records and includes sections about:

• The parishes themselves. [link]

• The Vestries’ duties with respect to Processioning (confirming the boundaries of the properties constituting the parish) and adjudicating boundary disputes among landowners. [link]

• The appearance of George Wythe and his family in the Elizabeth City Parish Vestry Book. [link]

• The process of “Laying the Leavy” in which the vestry determined the resources needed each year to meet the parish’s financial obligations—including paying clergy, maintaining church properties, and caring for the poor, orphaned, and infirm—and then established the necessary tax rate and collected the taxes to fund the obligations. The section includes examples of the ways ordinary citizens’ names and details are captured in the records. [link]

• The way the records reflect the evolution of the pre-Revolution Anglican parish through disestablishment of the Church of England as the official religion of Virginia to the creation of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. [link]

We invite you to explore the records further in this exhibit.

The digitization and publication of these records and this exhibit were made possible through grant funding from Virginia Humanities. We are grateful.

1 Bond, Edward. "Parish in Colonial Virginia, The" Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (07 Dec. 2020). Web. 25 Mar. 2026