A Long Time Ago/30 Bruton Parish Churchyard

From Wally Atkins Family Wiki

Bruton Parish Churchyard

This page is part of A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families, the chunked book edition on the Wally Atkins Family Wiki.

  • Book section: Bruton Parish Churchyard
  • Page range in the book: 211-216
  • Chunk order: 30 of 36

This section has been lightly cleaned and reconstructed from the working transcript seam where the churchyard and parish material survives most clearly. It preserves the strongest readable church, burial, and memorial context relevant to the allied Virginia families in the book.

Source note

  • Book: A Long Time Ago: A History of the Atkins-Paynter and Allied Families
  • Transcript source: `029-bruton.md`
  • Editorial note: the local transcript begins with carryover from the end of the Waller section and then moves into church/parish material that overlaps with Old Donation and Lynnhaven history. This page focuses on the memorial and burial context that matters to the family network.

Cleaned import

The Bruton Parish Churchyard section functions in the book as part memorial record, part church history, and part reminder that many of the allied families of the Virginia branch lived not only on land but around specific churches, parish grounds, fonts, and burying places.

The old churchyard and the water

The surviving text describes how waters from the bay, driven by an easterly wind, broke through and opened what became the mouth of the Lynnhaven River. In the process, nearly the whole burying ground adjacent to the church was carried away, leaving the church standing on the left bank of the newly formed river.

The chapter says records do not show precisely when the flooding took place, but that the destruction of the churchyard and eventually the earlier church itself seems to have happened over a period of years. Court records still called for repairs to the first church between 1613 and 1689.

Old Donation Church and the surviving font

The text then shifts to the construction of the later brick church in Lynnhaven Parish, now remembered as Old Donation Church, located at the intersection of Witchduck Road and Independence Boulevard in the City of Virginia Beach.

One of the most vivid details preserved in the section is the old baptismal font. The book says this was the same font used in the first church founded by Adam Thorowgood. After the earlier church building was destroyed, the font was taken from the waters of the Lynnhaven River and placed in Old Donation Church, where it remained in use.

Families tied to the font

The book says that because the Thorowgoods, Lawsons, Gookins, and Moseleys were prominent members of Old Donation and of the earlier Lynnhaven church, there is little doubt that many of their children were baptized from this same font.

Among the children named in the surviving text are:

  • the children of Captain Adam Thorowgood and Sarah Offley Thorowgood
  • the children of the later Adam Thorowgood and Frances Yeardley Thorowgood
  • the children of Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Lawson and Mary Gookin Lawson
  • the children of Thomas Lawson and Rose Thorowgood Lawson

This makes the church and its font more than an architectural detail. In the book, it becomes a physical witness to the very kinship network that later feeds into the Wally Atkins family story.

Parish memory and Virginia society

The chapter closes with broader observations, drawn from parish history, about the life of the Tidewater gentry in Lynnhaven Parish. It describes a world of interrelated families, river travel, manor houses, tobacco, shipping, and parish-centered life. Names such as Lawson Hall and other estate houses are preserved in this memory.

In that sense, the churchyard chapter is valuable not only for burials, but because it ties the family network to ritual life: baptism, worship, burial, and reunion.

Why this section matters

This chapter matters because it gives the book one of its strongest reminders that family history is not just descent. It is also churchyard ground, parish memory, and the survival of objects like fonts, walls, and graves even when the landscape itself changes.

Context notes

Related pages

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