Page:Annals of Augusta County.djvu/65

 The vestry of the parish held no meeting during the year 1749. At their meeting on May 21, 1750, it was ordered that £64, 17s. 1d. be paid to Colonel John Lewis, the balance due to him on the glebe buildings.

On the 16th of October, 1752, Governor Dinwiddie wrote to the vestry introducing the Rev. John Jones "as a worthy and learned divine," and recommending him to them as their pastor, "not doubting but his conduct will be such as will entitle him to your favour by promoting peace and cultivating morality in the parish." Mr. Jones was accordingly inducted, November 15th, with a salary of £50 a year. The glebe buildings not being finished, Colonel Lewis, the contractor, agreed to allow Mr. Jones £20 a year in the meanwhile. A "Reader to this parish, to be chosen by Mr. Jones," was allowed pay at the rate of £6, 5s. a year. A cellar under the minister's house was ordered to be dug. Many poor children, male and female, were bound out by the church-wardens from time to time.

Of the Rev. John Jones we can obtain no information whatever, except from the records of the vestry. Bishop Meade, in his voluminous work called "Old Churches and Old Families in Virginia," gives sketches of many ministers, relating with perfect candor the bad as well as the good, but he could find little to say about Mr. Jones. Although the latter lived here and held a prominent position for more than twenty years, no anecdote or tradition in regard to him has come down to us. He was probably a bachelor, and a man of mature age when he settled at Staunton. We should judge that he was a kindly, good man, generally respected, though possibly, from physical infirmity, not very energetic. There is no record of the date of his death, and at the close of the old vestry book he disappears from view as mysteriously as he came, leaving no representative, successor, nor estate behind him.

Up to the year 1760, and indeed for long afterwards, there was no meeting-house for religious worship in the county, except those of the Presbyterian denomination. The Church of England, established by law, had a rector and vestry, as we have seen, but the building of a church was not begun till 1760, and the rector officiated in the courthouse and such dwellings as he had access to. The first meeting-houses of Tinkling Spring and Augusta were probably built before the year 1740.