  The Presbyterian Meetinghouse [In 1928 the church was restored as a shrine and the cemetery put in order by a group of persons, many of whom were descendants of the original society members. In 1940 the Alexandria Association replaced the missing pulpit with one, which while not a replica, conveys the spirit if not the pattern of that destroyed. Ecclesiastical settlement has vested the property in the name of the Second Presbyterian Church of Alexandria. Before this book goes to press the Old Presbyterian Meetinghouse will have opened its doors again for regular services.] One does not associate religious intolerance with America; nevertheless, the Act of Toleration which permitted religious freedom of worship was not signed until 1760. French Presbyterians were seeking refuge in the New World as early as 1562. The Church of England was the official form of worship in Virginia from 1607 until after the Revolution. Prior to 1760 worship not of the Established Church was done secretly and behind closed doors, generally in the fastness of a citizen's private home or place of business, though from time to time one finds permission given to preach. For example, in 1699, Francis Makemie was granted permission from the colonial authorities to preach Presbyterianism at Pocomoke and Onancock on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Francis Doughton preached in Virginia as early as 1650-59, and is considered the father of British Presbyterianism in the middle colonies, having begun his work as early as 1643. Here in the little town of Alexandria, the population was largely composed of Scottish agents, shipping merchants, and sea captains, sincere followers of Dr. John Knox. Outwardly they conformed to the Episcopal Church, punctually attending services, by compulsion or otherwise. At Major John Carlyle, after completing Christ Church in 1772 for his Church of England friends, undertook the direction of the Presbyterian meetinghouse, so-called, doubtless, to distinguish it from the Church of England. According to a report written in 1794 by the pastor, Dr. James Muir, "No church was yet built ... to accommodate them in worship [i.e., in 1772]. It was determined to build one; Mr. Richard Arrell and his wife, Eleanor, presented the Society with a lot of ground ... the members of the Society came forward with generous subscriptions and loans; some assistance was afforded by their brethren of other denominations; they were thus enabled to erect and cover in a brick building sixty feet long and fifty feet broad." The first minister of the congregation, the Rev. William Thom, was ordained in Pennsylvania in 1772 and called to Alexandria. But in one year the "Little Minister" was dead of a pestilential fever. Further steps to improve the House and organize the Society were interrupted, according to Dr. Muir's report, by the war which commenced between Great Britain and the colonies. In 1780 the Rev. Isaac Stockton Keith was invited to remain with the Society during the winter. He remained nine years. The "Contract for the erection of the manse was let in July, 1787, to Mr. Robert Brockett." When Dr. Muir died on August 8, 1820, he was held in such great affection and respect that it was decided to bury him under the pulpit and to erect a suitable monument to his memory. The committee appointed for this purpose was working at least five years and submitted reports again and again on the cost of altering the pulpit for the memorial. The last mention of the subject in the Committee Book reads: "Mr. Mark reports that the bannisters of the Cupola have been taken away as ordered at last meeting ... Rev'd E. Harrison, Mr. Jno. Adam & Mr. Jos. B. Ladd are appointed a Committee to make all necessary arrangements for procuring and erecting a suitable monument to the memory of the late Dr. Muir." An old table gravestone with its inscribed eulogy formerly marked the spot where Dr. Muir was buried under the pulpit. It was removed to the burying ground to the lot beside the tombs of his wife and children after the restoration of the church building following the fire of 1835. A mural tablet under the gallery on the north wall now bears eloquent testimony to his beloved memory. Dr. Muir's widow was allowed to continue on in the manse where she conducted a school for several years. Near the end of her life she moved from the manse with expressions of gratitude, and her daughters took up and continued the school for some years after her death. These ladies might have stepped out of the pages of Barrie's Quality Street so gentle and so inadequately equipped were they to battle with cold dollars and cents and naughty children. Eleven years after the good doctor's death, this announcement in the Gazette shows Dr. Harrison and Mr. Hallowell giving a helping hand: Female Board School (The Misses Muir) Tendering to the public their grateful acknowledgements for the liberal patronage hitherto received, take this method of giving notice that their school will re-commence, on Monday next the 5th of September. The course of instruction will be as heretofore, and very similar to that of all other respectable Female Seminaries in the District. The higher classes besides being examined twice a week by the Rev. Mr. Harrison, will have also the privileges of attending the lectures of Mr. Hallowell on Astronomy and Chemistry. And in addition to all the ordinary branches of a Terms of boarding and tuition, as usual, moderate. On a hot Sunday afternoon in July 1835, during an electrical storm, the meetinghouse was struck by lightning. On that day the pastor, Dr. Harrison, had been invited to Georgetown to preach, and the usual Sunday afternoon services were postponed. Imagine his horror upon returning to discover the "severe and Awful calamity which had befallen the church and congregation." In the session book of the meetinghouse, we find this vivid description: It has pleased God in his inscrutably mysterious yet wise and adorable providence to permit that on this day consecrated to holy rest, and to public services of devout worship in his earthly sanctuary, their venerable Church Edifice—for so many years, the place of hallowed devotion for their fathers and themselves, should be totally consumed by the lightening of Heaven. This melancholly event took place about a quarter before three o'clock in the afternoon—a few minutes previously to the time ordinarily set apart for the ringing of the bell for the exercises of Public Worship. It was just at the close of a refreshing shower of rain, attended as is usual at this season of the year, with peals of thunder and flashes of vivid lightening. The Electric fluid seems to have been attracted by the spire of the Steeple, which—running up from the centre of a four-sided roof rising in the form of a pyramid—was rapidly conducted by means of a large quantity of iron used for the security of the timbers, to the shingles and other combustible materials of three of the corners of the building, almost directly under the eave. There entirely inaccesible for some minutes to any efforts which could be made use of for the purpose of quenching it, and continually fed by the qualities of the matter with which its work of desolation, with a rapidity which was truly awful and appalling. In a space of time too brief almost to be deemed credible by such as were not witnesses of the sublime and fearful spectacle, the entire roof exhibited to the immense multitude gathered around to mingle their sympathies and tender their assistance, nothing but one mighty map of living fire—curling in rapid and terrific volumes around the still suspended tho tottering steeple; and smiling at every effort towards extinction, save that of Him—that Dread and Aweful Being, by whom the flame had been enkindled. A period of two hours had not elapsed from the commencement of the conflagration, before the whole edifice except the walls, was involved in one shapeless mass of smoking ruin, presenting a scene, as desolating and repulsive to the common citizen, as it was tearful and heart-rending to the church and congregation. Our holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised the Lord—to use the language of the Prophet,—was thus burned up with fire; and all our pleasant things laid waste. With the exception of the lamps, a venerable clock in front of the Gallery The house had been standing for more than 63 years—the steeple and galleries had been built somewhat later—and except the Episcopal church on Washington Street, generally known by the name of "Christ's Church"—was the oldest of all the ten places of religious worship in town. For many years its bell was the only Church-going signal within the limits of the corporation; and owing to this circumstance, connected with its peculiarly clear and inviting tones, the destruction of it—which was caused by its fall from so lofty an eminence—seemed the occasion of regrets to the public at large, more immediately expressed than for the edifice itself. To the congregation, no loss besides the house, was more deeply deplored than that of the large and richly toned Organ. Not only because of its superior worth as an Instrument of Music, the difficulty of replacing it by another, and the sacred uses to which it was applied, but equally because it had been presented by a few venerated and much esteemed individuals, most of whom are now sleeping in the dust. For several years, there had been an Insurance effected on the building to the amount of five thousand dollars—two thousand five hundred on each of the Offices in town. But it so happened in providence, that one of these Policies, which had expired about four or five months previous, had never been renewed;—so that with the exception of twenty-five hundred dollars, the loss to the congregation was total. Yet there was one circumstance which ought to be recorded with emotions of adoring gratitude. The calamity took place at a time when on ordinary occasions, some individuals would have been in the house—as it was so near the hour of the afternoon's service,—and had that been the case now, there is much reason to fear, that it would have been attended, if not with loss of life, at any rate with serious injury to not a few. But it had been so ordered by Infinite Wisdom no doubt, that, for the first Sabbath in more than two years, the Church was closed during the whole of that day—the Pastor having been providentially called away to supply the pulpit of a sick brother in the neighboring city of Georgetown. So that no individual was in the house, and no serious injury occurred to any individual during the progress of the fire—and thus, while there is much to produce sadness and to call for deep humiliation before God, the Session would feel, that there is still something to awaken emotions of gratitude and praise; and that however severely the loss may be felt, yet it has not been unattended with significant expressions of kindness and regard. church The old Presbyterian Meetinghouse showing the new tower Dr. Harrison's lamentations, while justified, were not for complete demolition. In the minutes of the trustees, the fact is stated that the roof and cupola burned and fell in, destroying much of the interior woodwork, Part of the congregation wished a new building site and it was given some thought, but the "siller" [silver] was found to be inadequate for the purpose. The amount in the treasury did cover the cost of restoration, and on April 5, 1836, it was "Resolved, That the congregation of the Church be called to meet at the Lecture room on Friday evening next at ½ past 7 o'clock, to decide permanently on the location of the Church." It is distressing to think of the eighteenth century interior destroyed on that hot afternoon of July 1835, but we must be grateful for what the rebuilders of 1837 preserved as an outstanding example of Georgian architecture. In 1843 the tower was added: it was in the approximate location that the pulpit had stood for many years. In 1853 the front vestibule was constructed. Dr. Harrison was a delicate man and for a long time his health was far from good. In 1848 he was so wretched that it was recommended he go south for his health. The firm of Lambert & McKenzie offered Dr. Harrison a free passage to and from the Barbados on the barque Archibald Gracie. The minutes of the committee record the motion of appreciation to the owners. Mr. Robert Bell of the old printing firm of that name made a gift of letter paper to Dr. Harrison every Christmas for many years. In his latter years the Doctor in thanking Mr. Bell always said that he never expected to see another Christmas. He saw at least three after the first of these communications, for that many letters exist containing the same mournful allusion. In 1862 the Civil War disrupted the Church. Dr. Elias Harrison died The cemetery lies between the Church and the manse. Here John Carlyle sleeps. Cofounder and trustee of Alexandria in 1748; son-in-law to Colonel William Fairfax; brother-in-law to Lawrence Washington; commissary of the Virginia forces under Braddock in 1755; collector of customs on the South Potomac, and major in the Revolution; a Scottish gentleman, heir to a title, he cast his fate with the colonies. Nearby lies the tomb of William Hunter, founder of St. Andrew's Society, and that beloved friend and physician of General Washington, Dr. James Craik. Ramsay, McKenzie, Muir, Vowell, Harper, Hepburn and Balfour are among the names found inscribed upon the old stones. Their dust makes of this soil a part of Old Scotland. ship engine |
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