| Notes |
- Deed from Alexander Stewart and Elizabeth, his wife, conveyed property to John Hawks in 1768. Deed proved Sept. 1772.
Beaufort County, Court Minutes - March Court - 1758 - The Revd. Mr. Alex Stewart moves to keep ferry over Durhams Creek from Garrison point to Ware Point. Granted and permitted to take eight pence procla. money for man and horse, giving bond according to Law.
Craven County, North Carolina Court Minutes, 1767-1771, Book VII - Marriage settlement from Alexr. Stewart to James Davis, Esquire on Elizabeth Hobbs was proved in open Court by Thomas Haslen. Evidence agreeable to Law and Ordered to be Registered. Dated March 1770.
From the Colonial Records of NC, Vol IX, page 7 - Letter from James Reed to the Secretary: "The Rev. Mr. Stewart, the Society's Missionary at Bath died last spring and has left a widow and four children and his affairs in great confusion."
James Stewart named adm. of estate of Rev. Alexander Stewart in December 1801.
Alexander Stewart is said to have had 4 additional children: Alexander, James, William Samuel and a daughter who married Jordan Shepherd of Pitt County and had three daughters.
Source Information: Scarola, Lisa Wallendorf. "Pitt County Families." Rootsweb.com Worldconnect page. Last updated: 2005-02-28. April 1, 2005. http://wc.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=feonadorf&id=I40869
"Even before Bath Town was incorporated, 'St. Thomas parish in Pamplico' had a jewel in its crown that roused cries of envy from the older Albemarle?a truly princely library of 1,050 books and pamphlets. Dr. Thomas Bray, founder of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.), purchased it in London with funds subscribed to supply libraries and missionaries in the colonies. It may have been entrusted to the care of Christopher Gale in 1700 at his plantation, Kirby Grange, on Adams Creek. Here the books were a source for worship services observed by the Reverend Benjamin Dennis in 1711. "At Major Gale's . . . the people met each Sunday, where a young gentleman, a lawyer [possibly Gale's brother, Edmond] was appointed to read prayers and a sermon, they having no minister."
Dr. Bray had selected the library carefully so that an isolated clergyman would be able "to instruct his People in all things necessary to Salvation," which to him demanded that it be a wellspring of learning in all fields. In addition to religious works, he included volumes on geography, biography, sports, medicine, poetry, and classical literature. For years it provided Bath's only tangible link with the established church except for brief periods when a minister came and soon left the little town where only a few devout souls noticed either his arrival or departure.
When the Reverend John Garzia, from the borough church in Norfolk, Virginia, agreed to be their rector in 1734, it was cause for rejoicing by the wardens and vestry (or at least part of them)! Work began at last on building a brick church on the lot next to the courthouse that John Lawson had surveyed. Worshipers were not as numerous, nor as dedicated Anglicans, as Garzia might have hoped. He told the S.P.G. his chief problem was with "twelve vestrymen whose only endeavor is to hinder." The last subject his congregation wanted to hear about from the pulpit was sin, inasmuch as many of them practiced these sins more devoutly than churchmanship, according to their rector. In spite of this, construction of the church proceeded, with walls two feet thick, with brick laid in Flemish bond, and with square red paving tiles embellished with designs of flowers and dragons.
Meanwhile this clergyman of Spanish origin who could "scarce speak English," and whose salary went unpaid for four years, baptized 635 persons in St. Thomas Parish in one year alone. A special favorite of the Bishop of London, Garzia also brought the parish several lasting and valuable gifts?a silver communion chalice from the bishop and two silver candelabra, said to have been presented by King George II when the church was consecrated about 1740. In addition, a handsome bell, cast in 1732, was purchased for the church through Queen Anne's Bounty, a perpetual fund created by her royal charter to augment the income of poorer parishes. In November 1744, while visiting a sick member of his congregation, Garzia was killed in a fall from his horse. Soon the vestry was appealing to the S.P.G. for a new priest, but no doubt recalling the penniless Garzia's treatment, they were many years in responding.
A decade later, by a stroke of amazing good fortune, the Reverend Alexander Stewart, with his wife and two sons, traveled up the post road to Bath to be their minister. A member of the Royal Stuart clan of Scotland, Stewart had a master's degree from the University of Dublin. The 30-year-old clergyman hailed from County Antrim, Ireland, as did the newly appointed governor, Arthur Dobbs, who had asked Stewart to come to Carolina as chaplain to the Dobbs household. Stewart had planned to settle in New Bern, but finding that the vestry of Christ Church there had just employed a minister, he accepted the offer to serve St. Thomas. His career began in sorrow when the port was swept by a yellow fever epidemic that claimed the lives of his entire little family, as well as one of his parishioners, John Peyton Porter. When the bereaved minister called to comfort Porter's widow, Elizabeth, the two found they had more than their grief in common. After sufficient time to satisfy the amenities, they were married. He plunged immediately into completing the unfinished church that had been "under construction" for so long that many worshipers had forgotten that this was not the intended effect. He got work moving again, and soon the final details were completed.
Not long after the Stewarts' daughter, Rosa, was born, the rector of St. Thomas became a widower again, this time with a small baby to rear. He looked for a new wife and found one?a Miss Johnston, said to be a sister of the late Governor Gabriel Johnston. Turning back to the problems of his parish, he found they were numerous. For one, there was a growing number of "dippers," as he called the Baptist sect, and in 1758 he tried to combat their influence by writing a book, The Validity of Infant Baptism, which was printed by James Davis in New Bern. He was likewise upset over the growing number of "New Lights"?a product of the Great Awakening?who substituted revivalism, dramatic conversions, and emotional religious ecstasy for the time-honored ritual of the Book of Common Prayer, an anchor in stormy seas to devout Anglicans but an empty mouthing of phrases to the unchurched or the backsliders. As a last resort, Stewart even tried "dipping" a few converts himself. He also worried over the inroads made by "numerous sectuaries . . . having strollers" (itinerant clergymen.)
One of these "strollers" was Methodist George Whitefield, who personified the Great Awakening in Carolina. He had visited Bath first in 1739 while Garzia was struggling with the faithless in his congregation. The portly Englishman took the old north-south route from Edenton, "the worst roads they had since they began their journey" and that night in Bath heard "the wolves on one side of them howling like a kennel of hounds." In 1747 and again during Stewart's ministry, he returned, hoping the conversion of "North Carolina sinners would be glad news in Heaven." Legend has it that on one occasion a secular celebration was scheduled in town at the same time as Whitefield's previously announced preaching. This so insulted the fiery evangelist that he left Bath at once, shaking its dust from his heels and calling down heaven as his witness that it would never amount to anything but an insignificant village, which the legend-quoters say stunted its growth from that day forward.
The Reverend Stewart must have groaned aloud when he read a letter from the S.P.G. in 1763 suggesting that he open a school for black and Indian children. Didn't he have enough burdens already? His joints continually ached from getting soaked to the skin as he ferried back and forth across the river on pastoral calls, frequently catching cold. He had only one Sunday to preach on the south shore, where there were thirteen chapels to be served for every three in Bath. As usual, duty triumphed over his cantankerous side. Although one schoolmaster in the parish was willing to teach black children, few slave owners had "the Salvation of Negro Souls at heart," he discovered. Apparently only a few classes were ever held, but he was successful in opening a school at the Lake Mattamuskeet reservation for Indian children.
The poor clergyman had lost his third wife, and once again it fell to his lot to console another widow, Sarah Coutanch, whose late husband, Michael, had built the finest house in town on Water Street [the Palmer-Marsh House] and represented Bath for many years in the legislature. Stewart was engaged at this time in duties more physical than spiritual, as the long-awaited construction of St. Thomas's glebe house got underway after he agreed with the vestry to clear and improve 25 acres of the glebe himself, and donate 140 towards furnishing the house. When it was completed on the glebe land southeast of town along Adams Creek, the Reverend Stewart moved in with his fourth bride, the widow Sarah.
Hurricanes, howling in from the Outer Banks, had battered the Pamlico for centuries. In September 1769, coastal residents were alarmed by "a blazing star or planet" that streaked across the night sky in what they took as an omen of disaster. The next day a hurricane struck Bath with such ferocity that a pounding tide rose twelve feet above the previous high water mark, ripping every ship on the waterfront from its moorings and driving them over the banks into town or the woods beyond. As Alexander Stewart dashed from his house to secure the livestock and outbuildings, he was struck by flying debris that injured his legs so severely he never fully regained the use of them. In 1771, complications from his injury recurred, this time fatally. He was survived by his widow and four children, but most of all by the indelible stamp of his unique personality and tireless work on St. Thomas Parish.
Inside the Church
Artifacts owned by the church include:
* Queen Anne's Bell?18 years older than the Liberty Bell?was cast in 1750 and recast in 1872.
* A slate tablet erected in memory of Col. Robert Palmer's wife, Margaret, who died in Bath in 1765.
* A large silver chalice presented to Reverend Garzia by the Bishop of London in 1738.
* A silver candelabra, ca. 1740, reputed to have been given by King George II. "
Source information: "Everything Needed for Salvation." St. Thomas Episcopal Church Built 1734, Bath Historic Site. North Carolina Office of Archives and History. April 1, 2005. http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/bath/st-thomas.htm
"Rev. Nathaniel Blount, familiarly known as "Parson Blount," was a first cousin of the brothers, John Gray, Reading, and Thomas Blount, all of whom are mentioned in the journal. He was a student for the ministry under Rev. Alexander Stewart of St. Thomas church, Bath. He was ordained in London in 1773. In the same year he built "Blount's Chapel," now Trinity Church, Chocowinity. The families of Mrs. Thomas Kingsbury of Wilmington and Mr. Levi Blount of Mississippi represent his descendants."
Source information: Attmore, William. Journal of a Tour of North Carolina, 1787. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 1922. Documenting the American South. UNC University Library, April 1, 2005. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/attmore/attmore.html
"We inherited this Indian ancestory in many ways: Some by direct descent, others by indirect descent. There were many legitimate and common-law marriages between Indians and whites. During the middle to late 1700's, the Indians in this area were so poverty stricken that they often accepted jobs of servitude among the white settlers. The males usually became common laborers. The females became servants, and all too often, the mistress to the "master"of the family. Many children were born as a result of these relationships, and were accepted as family members. During the year of 1763, the Rev. Alexander Stewart, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, visited Hyde County and made the following report: "The remains of the Attamuskeet (Mattamuskeet), Roanoke and Hatteras Indians, live mostly along the coast, mixed with the white inhabitants. Many of these attended the places of public worship while I was there, and behaved with decency and seemed desirous of instruction. They offered themselves and their children to me for baptism...." Similar stories are told of the Tuscarora mixing with the whites after their tribes became disorganized. T'he French and Indians "freely" intermarried, and the offspring became members of our society. For 250 years these Indian genes have been distributed through marriage and offspring. The Cucklemaker story is probably more typical than unusual."
Source information: Hoggard, Stanley. "Chief Cucua Mucua, alias Cucklemaker." 1112 Bull Hill Road, Windsor, NC 27983. Bertie County, North Carolina. USGenweb Project. April 1, 2005.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncbertie/cuckle.htm
"The central cause for all this trouble was the right of presentation to livings. The authorities in England were zealous for the supremacy of the Church and the Crown, and wished to retain it, while the democratic temper of the colonial Churchmen made them equally determined to secure it for the vestry, and caused them to clog their bills “with objections incompatible with the rights of the Crown and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They excluded the Bishop from examining and correcting abuses, and the right of appeal was taken from the Crown. After all these provisions, writes the Bishop of London in regard to the Act of 1754, what becomes of the king’s supremacy or the bishop’s jurisdiction? He thought this model of government might have come from the Presbyterians and Independents of New England. He was astonished to see such a statute in the laws of North Carolina, where conformity is so strongly insisted on” that each vestryman is compelled to subscribe to the same declaration as is required of clergymen in England.
So keen was this jealousy on the part of the home government that the Rev. Alexander Stewart, missionary at Bath, writes in 1760 that within the last six years four acts for electing vestries and supporting the clergy had been passed only to be repealed by the authorities at home because unsatisfactory. To prevent the Church law that was enacted in 1760 from being repealed by proclamation, it was necessary to divide the clauses relating to vestry and clergy, and to pass them separately. These were then referred to the Bishop of London. It was not enough for him that the vestrymen should take the oath of abjuration and subscribe the Test Act. The declaration required, a simple promise not to oppose the Church of England as by law established, he correctly claimed, might have been taken with equal propriety by Presbyterian, Anabaptist, Independent, Quaker, Jew, or pagan. The bishop demanded that the vestry be required to subscribe to the declaration of conformity laid down by the vestry act of 1755. He objected that there was no means provided for the minister to recover dues in case of refusal of payment, and the section in regard to the removal of the minister, he said, tended to take away “the little remains of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, if any is left in that province. The law was repealed."
Source information: Weeks, Stephen Beaugregard. Church and State in North Carolina. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1893. 34-35. Dinsmore Documentation, Digitizers of Documents. April 1, 2005. http://www.dinsdoc.com/weeks-1-3.htm
"In May, 1761, the Rev. Alexander Stewart, a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, wrote of his visit to Hyde County, including this mention:
'I likewise with pleasure inform the Society, that the few remains of the Altamuskeet [Mattamuskeet], Hatteras & Roanoke Indians (whom I likewise mentioned in a former letter) appeared mostly at the chapel & seemed fond of hearing the Word of the true God & of being admitted into the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 men and 3 women & 2 children were baptized by me. I could have wished the adults were better instructed, but their sureties & a northern Indian among them, who had been bred as a christian, promised to take that care.'
Two years later the same clergyman made another voyage to Hyde County and reported:
'The remains of the Attamuskeet, Roanoke and Hatteras Indians, live mostly along the coast, mixed with the white inhabitants, many of these attended at the Places of Public Worship, while I was there & behaved with decency seemed desirous of instruction & offered themselves & their children to me for baptism. & after examining some of the adults I accordingly baptized, 6 adult Indians, 6 Boys, 4 Girls & 5 Infants & for their further instruction (at the expence of a society called Dr. Bray's associates, who have done me the honor of making me Superintendent of their schools in this Province, have fixed a school mistress among them, to teach 4 Indian & 2 negro boys & 4 Indian girls to read & to work & have supplied them with Books for that purpose & hope that God will open the eyes of the whites everywhere that they may no longer keep the ignorant in distress but assist the charitable design of this Pious Society & do their best endeavours to increase the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
The possibility that members of the tribe migrated to Robeson County, where several thousand so-called Croatan Indians now reside, seems very remote."
Source information: Rights, Rev. Douglas L. The American Indian in North Carolina. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, publisher. Carolina Algonkian Project. 2001. April 1, 2005. http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~jmack/algonqin/rights.htm
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Abt 1723 - Abt 1771 (~ 48 years)
