The Vestry Book of Kingston Parish

Description

For this work, Mr. Chamberlayne transcribed the earliest known records of Kingston Parish, Mathews County, Virginia. Though the parish can be traced back to the year 1657, no records have survived prior to 1679, the starting point for the volume. Preceding the transcription of the original two-volume vestry book itself are references to the origins of Kingston Parish, which the compiler found in Hening’s Statutes-at-Large, Bishop Meade’s Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, the Minutes of the Council and General Court of Colonial Virginia, 1622-1632, and so forth. The contents of The Vestry Book are the standard fare; namely, they are minutes of the business meetings of the parish. As such they concern the payments for services to various individuals, levying or collection of tithes, appointment of vestrymen, etc. Appended to the transcription is a list of Kingston Parish clergy arranged in chronological order of earliest date of service. Rounding out the book are a topical index and a name index to some 2,000 persons found in the volume and, therefore, known to have lived in Kingston Parish during the more than 100 years covered.