There is an extremely clear and excellent chapter on the vestries of the
Church of England in the colony of Virginia in John K. Nelson, A BLESSED
COMPANY: PARISHES, PARSONS, AND PARISHIONERS IN ANGLICAN VIRGINIA, 1690-1776
(UNC Press 2001).

The  vestry was in effect the governing body of the local church parishes.
It had different responsibilities than did the responsible officials in
English parishes.

Vestrymen from time to time appointed one or more churchwardens who looked
after the church and also attended to other parish business, such as
providing for the education and care of orphans or binding out orphans to
apprentices or presenting moral offences to the grand jury.

When a new parish got formed, and once in a very great while when too many
vestrymen had died or moved off or quit attending, the General Assembly
might pass a special act requiring that the men in the parish elect new
vestrymen. That didn't happen very often. Usually, members of the vestry
appointed new members to fill vacancies, so the vestry acted, like the city
government in Williamsburg or the borough government in Norfolk, as a close
corporation recruited by co-option. That is, legally self-sustaining.

Members of the House of Burgesses were the only routinely elected public
officials in the colony; members of vestries were elected but very rarely,
so rarely that it would be misleading to describe them as elected.

Justices of the peace recommended persons to the governor to fill vacancies,
and the governor usually (but not always) appointed the people named at the
head of such lists. The county courts were by and large self-sustaining,
too, even though the governor technically appointed and commissioned JPs;
not so vestrymen.

Brent Tarter
The Library of Virginia
[log in to unmask]

Visit the Library of Virginia's web site at http://www.lva.lib.va.us

-----Original Message-----
From: Henry Wiencek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 05 February, 2003 12:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: colonial vestries


I have a couple of questions about colonial vestries which I would like
to put to the list.  Is there a difference between a vestryman and a
church warden?  Would it be correct to say that since a county's
justices of the peace and other officials were appointed by the colonial
governor, the vestries were the only local political entities that were
elected?

Henry Wiencek
Charlottesville

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html