Thank you usaPetticrew for that link. Archive.org is a marvellous resource but I often find it difficult to get the right search terms to get a manageable number of results.
Thanks to your link I have now managed to find the rest of the Vestry Book which appeared in 8 parts in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography from 1904 to 1906:
Volume 11, 1904, pp 289-304, (covers 1707 – 1711);
Volume 11, 1904, pp 425-440, (covers 1707 – 1713);
Volume 12, 1904, pp 17-32, (covers 1714 – 1719);
Volume 12, 1905, pp 241-256, (covers 1720 – 1725);
Volume 12, 1905, pp 369-384, (covers 1725 – 1731);
Volume 13, 1905, pp 65-80, (covers 1731 – 1735);
Volume 13, 1905, pp 175-190, (covers 1735 – 1743);
Volume 13, 1906, pp 265-280, (covers 1743 – 1750).
It was translated from the French original (the property of Miss Lelia Walker of Ft Estill, Ky) and annotated by Prof. R.H. Fife, Wesleyan University and with an introduction by Col. R.L. Maury, Richmond, Virginia.
It appears from Bishop William Meade's “Old churches, ministers and families of Virginia" 1857 that church documents and registers being in private hands was not uncommon. So my original request that started this topic has been partially answered - there does not seem to be any organised system of depositing such documents in a county/state record office, as there is in England.
The Vestry Book says that William Nairn was paid 120 bushels of wheat for twelve sermons commencing 4 Sep 1727. However only nine sermons are recorded in the Vestry Book. The annotator Prof. Fife quotes two sources for his notes about Nairn – Meade’s book, and a collection of documents edited by Robert Alonzo Brock for the Virginia Historical Society in 1886.
Fife and Meade both refer to a farewell letter written by the vestry to William Nairn asking him to intercede with the Bishop to maintain the French settlement as a separate parish. An excerpt from the letter is printed in Brock’s work which in turn has been sourced from “Papers relating to the History of the Church in Virginia, Vol 2” by William Stevens Perry, privately printed in 1870:
“INHABITANTS Of King William Parish, In Manacan Town, Virginia, To Mr. NEARNE.
[Extract.]
4th July, 1728.
REVd Sir:
Your near departure out of this country obliges us, the Church Wardens and Vestries of King William's Parish, with humble submission, to beg your Assistance when, please God, you are arrived in London. We are very sorry that we can no longer enjoy the pleasure of your good presence and Education. We thought ourselves happy in our late settlement with your Reverence____.
_____We never had above 110 or 120 tithables, but at present our number is 130. You see, therefore, the impossibility for us to raise a Sum Sufficient to keep our own Minister, and since we are conformed to the Laws and Disciplines of the Church of England, and that our Parish is a Royal Gift to us French Refugees, we think we ought not to consent to be dissolved and incorporated into another Parish.
Many of our Parishioners understand no English; but for the sake of our Children and the English Families settled amongst us, we should be heartily Glad to have the Common Prayers and Sermons in English as well as French.”
The original letter is contained in the letter books of The Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and was transcribed by an American, Rev. Francis Lister Hawks on a visit to England and to whom Perry dedicates his collection.
The successive transcriptions of the letter introduced some errors – Brock breaks the excerpt into more paragraphs than Perry and leaves out the word “never” in “We never had above 110 or 120 tithables…” and Meade says the letter said there had never been more than 30 tithables.
Brock also includes a transcript of the baptism register of King William Parish originally published in 1860. This contains 5 baptisms performed by Rev. Mr Niern/Nairn in 1727 and 1728, with two of them stating that he was minister of Varaine [Varina?]. The baptisms do not include his own child Frances, so this presumably occurred at one of the other parishes with which Nairn was associated.
I have so far been unsuccessful in finding any copies of marriages at King William Parish or any registers or vestry books for 1727-28 for Varina or Henrico parishes.
Nelson’s book (which I will get to next week) shows there does exist some document involving William Nairn in marriage(s) – his own or of parishioners
