Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/55

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Parish Register, containing the name of George Washington eleven times and it tells of the baptism of 1,122 negro servants within a period of twenty years, with many pages of this part of the record missing.

Besides these, the church is the inheritor and custodian of other sacred memorials of the past. The old Jamestown baptismal font and Communion silver are still in use at Bruton Church, together with a set of Communion Silver, made in 1686, given by Lady Gooch to the College of William and Mary, and a set bearing the royal arms of King George III. These memorials will be preserved in the future in the fireproof crypt built beneath the chancel of the church.


Innovations of 1840

It seems almost incredible that the need of a Sunday-school room should have led the congregation in 1840 to yield to the spirit of innovation, and destroy, as they did, the interior form and appearance of the church, but at this time a partition wall was built across the church; the high corner pulpit, the colonial pews and the flag-stone chancel and aisles were removed; the chancel, which enshrined the graves of Orlando Jones, progenitor of Mrs. Martha Washington, the graves of the Blairs and Monroes and of Rev. Dr. William H. Wilmer, was removed from its ancient place in the east end of the church and affixed to the wall of partition, and the interior of the building furnished and decorated in modern style with money secured by a church fair.


The Restoration of 1905-07

The work of restoration, inaugurated on May 15, 1905, by a sermon preached by Rev. Beverley D. Tucker, D. D., now Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Southern Virginia, has been planned and executed with absolute fidelity to colonial type and historic verity, with the endeavor to reproduce the