In this book, John Nelson reconstructs everyday Anglican religious practice and experience in Virginia from the end of the seventeenth century to the start of the American Revolution. Challenging previous characterizations of the colonial Anglican establishment as weak, he reveals the fundamental role the church played in the political, social, and economic as well as the spiritual lives of its parishioners. Drawing on extensive research in parish and county records and other primary sources, Nelson describes Anglican Virginia's parish system, its parsons, its rituals of worship and rites of passage, and its parishioners' varied relationships to the church. All colonial Virginians--men and women, rich and poor, young and old, planters and merchants, servants and slaves, dissenters and freethinkers--belonged to a parish. As such, they were subject to its levies, its authority over marriage, and other social and economic dictates. In addition to its religious functions, the parish provided essential care for the poor, collaborated with the courts to handle civil disputes, and exerted its influence over many other aspects of community life. A Blessed Company demonstrates that, by creatively adapting Anglican parish organization and the language, forms, and modes of Anglican spirituality to the Chesapeake's distinctive environmental and human conditions, colonial Virginians sustained a remarkably effective and faithful Anglican church in the Old Dominion.

BY: George Harrison Stafford King, Pub. 1966, reprinted 2021, 236 pages, Index, soft cover, ISBN #0-89308-580-4 Richmond County was created in 1692 from Old Rappahannock County. This is a very important research tool when working in Richmond County as it contains: Births, Baptisms, Marriages and Death records as recorded in their original order with a complete index.

Some of the descendants of William Hearne, born about 1627 in London, and died in 1691 in Maryland are also listed. This is the author's maternal lineage.

Published in 1910, this volume contains an abstract of North Carolina wills. Compiled from original and recorded wills in the office of The Secretary of State.