Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1883 — First Sermon in Virginia. [ARTICLE]

First Sermon in Virginia.

On the 13th of May, 1607, more than 100 Englishmen landed on a slightlyelevated peninsula on the right bank of the “River Powhatan,” Virginia, forty or fifty miles from its mouth, chose the spot for the capital of a new colony, cleared the trees from the ground, and began the building of a village, which, in compliment to their King (James I.), they named Jamestofrn. They also gave his name to the river. The spot is more of an island than a peninsula, for the marshy isthmus .that conn'ects it with the main land is often covered with water. The Rev. Robert Hunt, the pastor of the colony, preached a sermon and invoked the blessings of God upon the undertaking. Then, in the warm sunshine, and among' the shadowv woods and the delirious perfume of flowers, the sound of the metal axe was first heard in Virginia. The first tree was felled for a dwelling on the spot first settled, permanently, by Englishmen in America. The Indians were at first hostile, and the settlement built a stockade. Their first church edifice there was very simple. “When I first went to Virginia," says Capt. Smith, “I well remember we did hang an awning (which was an old sail) to three or four trees to shadow us from the sun; our walls were sails of wood; our seats unhewed trees, till we cut planks; our pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighboring trees; in foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few- better. This was our church till we built a homely thing, like a barn, set upon chrotchets, covered with rafts, sedge and earth; so were also the walls. The best of our houses were of the like curiosity, but, for the most part, of far worse workmanship, that could neither well defend wind or rain. Yet we had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months communion till our minister died.” The church—“the homely thing like a barn”—was burned while Capt. Smith was a prisoner among the Indians.