Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/203

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Three Hundredth Anniversary Memorial Communion Service held at Jamestown on the Third Sunday after Trinity, 1907.


On the Third Sunday after Trinity, June 21st, 1607, Rev. Robert Hunt administered the Holy Communion for the first time in Virginia, on the Island of Jamestown, in an improvised Church in the unbroken silence of the primeval forest.

This Communion was received as an outward and visible token and pledge of reconciliation, without which, Capt. John Smith says the whole enterprise might have been overthrown,

The service was first held beneath the trees, to which was hung an old sail awning, with the pulpit lashed between two neighboring trees.

On Saturday, June 15th, 1907, this improvised Church was reproduced beneath the trees on the island of Jamestown, on or near the spot where the service was held by Rev. Robert Hunt, and on the day following, being the Third Sunday after Trinity, 1907, the Rector of Bruton Parish Church, assisted by Rev. Edgar Hunt Goold, of Albany, New York, said Morning Prayer and administered the Holy Communion to about one hundred and fifty persons who had come from many places, but chiefly from Williamsburg and Norfolk, to participate in the Memorial Service. Under the trees, which sheltered us from the sun, the service was held as it was three hundred years ago, and was characterized by a deep tone of solemn reverence. Out upon the broad river, by a strange coincidence, were anchored three sailing vessels which recalled the three ships which brought the Colony from England, and among those present at the service was an Indian, suggestive of the red men of the primeval forest, who according to an old