Week 17 2022: Document #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

Down, down, down the rabbit hole I go.

The ancestors of my husband who settled in Maryland did so in the 1660’s and all of them settled in Charles or Prince George’s counties. They all also belonged to the same Episcopal church: St. John’s, also called King George’s Parish, Broad Creek Church, Piscataway Parish.[1] Located about twenty miles south of Washington, D.C. in what is currently the town of Fort Washington, the church served members of the Church of England from both counties. One of its most famous attendees was George Washington whose Mount Vernon estate was across the Potomac. Previously lead by Bishop Mariann E. Budde (Washington’s first female diocesan bishop), the church is still very much active today.[2]

I’d found many birth, baptismal, and marriage records for these ancestors in the vestry records dating back to the earliest days of the church in the late 1690’s to early 1700’s. Most helpful in this endeavor was an 1884 handwritten transcription of most of the vestry records starting in January of 1693 and ending in 1805.[3] Bless the person who wrote out all 457 pages, I cannot even imagine how long it took. The handwriting remained perfect throughout and I noted no errors when compared to the original.[4]

A couple of weeks ago, I started reading the vestry minutes (vs. the register). Why? I can’t say, but by page four, I was hooked. At the vestry meeting held on March 4, 1699, John Hawkins, my husband’s seventh great-granduncle, was elected vestryman. I found other Hawkins family members, Stonestreets, Lowes, Pickerills, and others. I discovered that the first minister to preach at the church was George Tubman, another of my husband’s seventh great-granduncles.[5] These vestry minutes contain all sorts of vital statistics and are a census of sorts, placing people in a certain place at a certain time.

While the minutes show that the vestrymen were primarily focused on the church buildings, land, and revenue, it was fun to read that they dealt with a fair number of church members living as husband and wife when they were not. They also spent a fair amount of the local currency (tobacco) on wine. I was gratified to read that in April of 1722, the vestry was quite vexed that a great number of parishioners failed to register the births of their children and threatened to certain inflict penalties (well no wonder I can’t find them all!).

It’s going to take me some time to digest all the information I gleaned from the minutes (I have over 300 tags on the document thus far), but I thought I would share this great find!

___________________________

[1] The Piscataway were the predominant Native Americans in the area. Wikipedia.org, “Piscataway People,” rev. 01:43, 7 May 2022.

[2] “Welcome to St. John’s Broad Creek Episcopal Church,” St. John’s Broad Creek (https://stjohnsbroadcreek.org : accessed 23 June 2022). Wikipedia.org, “Mariann Budde,” rev. 07:16, 24 March 2022.

[3] “A True and Exact Journall and Record of the Proceedings of the Vestry of Piscataway Parish,” St. John’s Parish (Prince George’s County, Maryland: 1884); digital images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CS3G-66PN?mode=g&cat=66369 : accessed 1 June 2022), FHL microfilm 7,835,979.

[4] “Piscataway Parish and St. John’s Parish now King George’s Parish, Prince George’s Co., Parish Register 1689-1801, Vestry Minutes 1693-1779, 1789”; digital images, Maryland State Archives (https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccolm/m0000/m0200/m229/pdf/m229.pdf : accessed 1 June 2022).

[5] The church’s own history fails to note George Tubman as the first minister. “St. John’s 325 Years of History,” St. John’s Broad Creek (https://stjohnsbroadcreek.org/about-st-john/st-johns-325-years-of-history/ : accessed 23 June 2022).