Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 2.djvu/313

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VIRGINIA DIOGRAPHY

synod, settled at Xew Market, Virginia, and was ordained in Philadelphia, June 6, 1792. He established several churches in the vicin- ity of Xew Market and in Augusta county. Virginia, and Rowan county. North Caro- lina, where he labored subsequently. While in Xorth Carolina he helped to form the synod there. He returned to Xew Market ir. 1S05, and made missionary tours through western X'irginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, In- diana and Ohio. He was a fervent speaker and writer, both in English and German, a man of earnest convictions, who roused much oi)position by his insistance on the conserva- tion of the original confessions and rites of the church. He published a work in Ger- man on "Baptism and the Lord's Supper," 1S09, which was afterward translated into English ; a German hymn book, 1810 ; and one in the English language, 1816, in each of which were included many hymns com- posed by himself. He also issued a German Catechism, 1814, followed by one in Eng- lish, and was the author of a German sa- tirical poem entitled "Zeitvcrtreib." He died at Xew Market, Virginia, November 17, 1825.

Wccms, Mason Locke» born in Anne Arun- dell county, Maryland, about 1760. He stud- ied theology in Edinburgh, took orders in the Protestant Episcopal church, and for some years was rector of Pohick Church, Truro parish, Virginia, at which Washing- ton was an attendant. About 1790 neces- sities of his family obliged him to resign this charge, and he became a book agent for Mathew Carey, the Philadelphia pub- lisher. He was remarkably successful in that employment, "travelling throughout the south with his books in his saddle-bags,

equally ready for a stump, a fair or a pul- pit." He was eccentric in mind and man- ner, and whenever he heard of a public meeting he would attend it, and, collecting a crowd about him, urge on his hearers the merits of his books, interspersing his re- marks with anecdotes and humorous sallies. With his temperance pamphlet, entitled "The Drunkard's Glass,*' illustrated with cuts, he would enter taverns and, by mimick- ing the extravagances of the drunkard, so amuse and delight his audiences that he had no trouble in selling his wares. He was an expert violin player, on which he performed for young people to dance, thereby causing much scandal in pious communities. On one occasion he had promised to assist at a merrymaking, but fearing for his clerical character, he decided to play behind a screen. In the course of the evening it was over- turned, disclosing the parson to the jeers jO^ the company. On another occasion he was obliged to pass through a dangerous district of South Carolina, which at that time was infested with robbers. Just at nightfall his wagon sank into a quagmire; two ruffians appeared and were about to sieze him, when he took out his violin and so charmed them by his music that they lifted his wheels out of the mud and let him go. "I took precious care," said Weems, "to say nothing of my name. When they pressed the question my fiddle drowned their words and mine too." Of his temper- ance tracts Bishop William Meade says in his "Old Churches and Old Families of Vir- ginia:" "They would be most admirable in their effects but for the fact that you know not what to believe of the narrative. There are passages of deep pathos and great elo- quence in them." This charge of a want of

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