Ancestral Ties at Pohick Episcopal Church

George Washington, George Mason, Lord Fairfax, Peter Wagener, and Benjamin Grayson – Colonial Contemporaries

The Colonial Ports of Dumfries and Colchester Virginia

The Occoquan River and Quantico Creek are tributaries of the Potomac River, and lie about 30 and 33 miles south of Washington D.C. respectively. In the mid-1700’s both boasted major ports of trade rivaling Alexandria and Baltimore. Dumfries lies at the head of Quantico Creek, where Benjamin Grayson (1684-1757) began a thriving trade in tobacco and baked goods. Benjamin married the wealthy widow Linton about 1731 – the former Susannah Monroe (1695-1752). The couple, our 6th great-grandparents, built a  a large plantation they named “Belle Air” just south of the Occoquan in present-day Woodbridge. “The residence was a fine large mansion built in manorial style, with lofty columned front, and with massive carved oaken doors, and wainscotting. The estate was largely cultivated and filled with fruit and flowers.”¹

Dr. Peter Wagener II (1717-1774) donated 25 acres of his land ca. 1753 to found the town of Colchester on the Occoquan, it being “very convenient for trade, and greatly to ease the frontier inhabitants.“²  His estate “Stisted” was named for his birthplace in England. Dr. Wagener married Catherine Beverly Robinson (1715-1776), from a politically prominent Middlesex County family. The Wageners are also our 6th great-grandparents, as their daughter Mary Elizabeth Wagener (1741-1810) married their near neighbors Benjamin and Susannah’s son, Reverend Spence Monroe Grayson (1734-1798).

Pohick Church and its Distinguished Vestry

The “new” Pohick Episcopal Church, named for a creek that flows near it, dates to ca. 1773 and sits on a rise off Route 1 in present-day Lorton, Virginia, though the history of the church can be traced back at least as far as ca. 1730. Its immediate predecessor is believed to have been situated about two miles south on Old Colchester Rd. Anglican meeting houses in Colonial Virginia were usually provided by wealthy local landowners, who often later donated land for a central church and graveyard as the community grew. A few of these churches would then be grouped together into a Parish. Pohick belonged to Truro Parish, named for a church in Cornwall, England. As in England, Church and State were closely intertwined.

“The bounds of the Parish were fixed by statute and the Vestry became practically a close corporation of twelve of  ‘The most able and discreet persons’ in the Parish. These divided with the County Court the responsibility of local government. These Vestrymen were described by [Thomas] Jefferson as being ‘Usually the most discrete farmers, so distributed throughout their Parish that every part of it may be under the eye of some one of them.’ No Parish in the Colony had a Vestry so distinguished in its personnel… than the Parish of Truro.”²

The Truro Vestry included at various times eleven men that sat in the House of Burgesses, two that served in “His Majesty’s Council” (the Lords Fairfax), George Mason, author of the Bill of Rights, and the “‘Greatest man of any age,’ the imperial George Washington*.“² Both of these latter men also served on the new Pohick Church building committee. Our ancestor Dr. Peter Wagener II (“Major” being his military title from the French and Indian War) served State and Church concurrently, as Clerk of the Fairfax County Court for twenty years and on the Vestry with these and other legendary men for ten. When he was first elected as the 12th member in 1765, the man who finished 14th was none other than his in-law Benjamin Grayson. Interestingly, the Vestry meeting minutes of 20 Nov. 1767 read “Ordered, that Mr. William Grayson be appointed Attorney for this Parish.”² William was Benjamin’s third son, and was elected the first U.S. Senator from Virginia in 1789, succeeded at his death in 1790 by his cousin and future President James Monroe.

Final Resting Places

Benjamin, Susannah Monroe, Spence, Mary Elizabeth Wagener, and William Grayson are buried in the Grayson family tomb at the former “Belle Air” in Woodbridge. The remains of Dr. Peter Wagener, his wife Catherine Robinson, and their son Peter III, a Revolutionary War Colonel, Truro parish Vestryman, and the last Pohick Church Warden of the Colonial Era, and other Wagener family members were reportedly reinterred in the Pohick Churchyard from “Stisted”  sometime in the mid 20th Century, though one source³ surmises that only a single tombstone was moved and the human remains were lost to suburbanization. In either event, their memorial sites boast prominent places at Pohick. And why not? It is still somewhat remarkable to reflect that our ancestors were contemporaries and friends with George Washington and other men of his stature, serving God and Country side by side at a pivotal point in American history.

* There is an interesting editorial note in the Truro Parish history: “The regularity of [George] Washington’s attendance a the meetings of the vestry is deserving of special notice. During eleven years of active service from February 1763 to February 1774, thirty-one “Vestries” were held, at twenty-three of which he is recorded as being present. On the eight occasions when he was absent, as we learn from his Diary and other sources, once he was sick in bed, twice [at] the House of Burgesses, and three other times certainly [and the other two quite probably] he was out of the country.” Though a nominal Vestryman after 1774 until 1782, our history books will attest that he was rather engaged elsewhere. As Pohick lies ten miles downriver from Mount Vernon (more on horseback), his regular attendance says quite a lot about the Father of our Country, in my opinion.

¹ “The Grayson Family” unpublished manuscript. Likely authors John Breckenridge Grayson, Jr. (ca. 1877) based on the papers of  Peter Lund Washington (ca. early 1800’s)

² “The History of Truro Parish in Virginia” by Rev. P. Slaughter, E.L. Goodwin, Ed. ©1907 G.W. Jacobs Co. Philadelphia

³ “Points of Interest in the Pohick Churchyard” by the Rev. J.T. White, ca. 1998 church brochure