The Wageners Of Stisted

Middlesex on the Thames

Our ancestor Rev. Peter Wagner (1681-1742) was born in Middlesex, England, a county that survives only on historic maps. After seminary and Holy Orders, Peter was sent to Maryland by the Bishop of London. It was in Virginia, however, where he served as a church rector from 1703 until 1707. A prominent acquaintance later wrote that Peter “was much better remembered here as a bad Painter than as a Divine.” ¹

Stisted in Esssex

Peter was recalled to England where in 1708 he married Mary Elizabeth Paulings (1685-1762). “The Archbishop of Canterbury presented him to the rich living of Stisted“ Parish in County Essex where “he built a notable parsonage.”¹ Their teen-aged son Peter Jr. (1717-1774) was apprenticed to a nearby Halstead attorney in 1733.²

Encouragement in the American Colonies

Rev. Peter was promised the post of Commissary of Virginia upon the death of James Blair, the 81 year-old Bishop’s representative there.³ In anticipation of this promise young Peter, at a similar age to his father a generation before, took his own journey across the ocean in 1738. “He came hither… to practice the law… if the climate agreed with him and he met with encouragement.”¹ An advantageous marital union may have been the encouragement referenced, and indeed within a year a Williamsburg newspaper announced, “Mr. Peter Wagener, attorney at law, only son of Rev. Peter Wagener of Essex, England, was married to Miss Katy Robinson, only daughter of the Hon. John Robinson, a young lady of very amiable qualifications.“⁴ Katy’s family emigrated, likely not coincidentally, from County Middlesex, England. Her father served two terms in the Virginia House of Burgesses and then on the Governor’s Council for decades. Katy’s brother John Robinson Jr. was the powerful Speaker of the House of Burgesses from 1738-1766. Rev. Peter Wagener died in England in 1742, outlived by the older Commissary he was to have replaced.

Colchester on the Occoquan

Peter Wagener Jr. was appointed Clerk of Prince William County, Virginia in 1742, then Clerk of Fairfax County upon its formation in 1752, the Occoquan River being the boundary between the two jurisdictions. In 1753 Peter purchased 350 acres of land at the mouth of the Occoquan where it widened into Belmont Bay and the Potomac River. In 1757 he founded the port town of Colchester on a 25 acre portion of that land. Likely named in honor of the County Essex city near which Peter was raised, the new Colchester boasted a river ferry and the terminus of an upriver mining road along the Kings Highway, then a major stage route. With respect to trade, Colchester only briefly rivaled the nearby ports of Dumfries and Alexandria, though it did enjoy some success as a stopover for travelers. By the early 1800s, Colchester’s ferry was made obsolete, and trade traffic bypassed the town.⁵ Like Middlesex in England, Colchester is all but forgotten today; its remaining structures now carry a Lorton, Virginia postal address.

Major Wagener and the Truro Vestry

Peter’s connections went beyond just his influential Robinson in-laws. His neighbors and peers included George William Fairfax of Belvoir (1724-1787), George Mason IV of Gunston Hall (1725-1792), and George Washington of Mount Vernon (1732-1799), with each of whom Peter served as vestryman for Truro Parish. Peter saw service in the French and Indian War. Referencing the retreat of panicked settlers across the Blue Ridge mountains following Gen. Edward Braddock‘s defeat at Fort Duquesne, the General’s young aide Lt. Col. George Washington wrote in October 1755, “Capt. Waggoner ⁶ informs me that it was difficulty he passed the Ridge for crowds of people, who were flying as if every moment were death.” ¹

The Truro Vestry met at the first Pohick Church (1732, initially known as Occoquan Church). Peter was first elected vestryman in 1765. The Vestry records refer to Peter as “Mr. Wagener” and “Major Wagener,” while historian Phillip Slaughter refers to him as “Dr. Wagener.” ⁷ Peter served on the vestry during the construction of the current Pohick Church (1774).

Stisted near Colchester

Peter and Katy Wagener built a home on their 325 acre parcel adjoining Colchester in the late 1750s and named the estate “Stisted” in honor of the English parish. One history describes the dwelling as “a rambling dormer-windowed colonial house.” It continues, “The Wageners lived comfortably at Stisted. They had a chariot drawn by four horses and a riding chair for individual travel. Some of the furniture may have been made on the plantation, for Wagener’ s inventory mentions three walnut tables and a walnut desk. They had nearly two dozen Queens china plates and 35 made of pewter, and the house was heated by a cannon stove . Peter had a silver watch and wore silver stock buckles but his reading matter was “The Compleat Farmer.”⁵

Stisted was passed down to their son Col. Peter Wagener III (1744-1798), and remained in the family into at least the late 1800s, despite the decline of the adjoining town. Col. Peter’s great-granddaughter remembered Stisted in the years before the U.S. Civil War: “Across from Occoquan, but of unpleasant notoriety, was the little village of Colchester, where I was born…. I remember the old house built after the English style, with lovely grass in which no weed was allowed to show its head, and sprinkled with wild Hyacinth from England. Luscious pears grew by the old well and a giant black walnut tree in the near field. How delicious was the rice and syrup Aunt Mary Lee [nee Mary E. Wagener, 1807-1870] used to fix for us after our long tramp along the River and Bay! And how fine the “sugar pears” we stole from the chest up in the room under the rafters!… [T]he old house is gone, and the railroad runs through the once tender, green grass!” ⁸

The Wagener Family Cemetery

The precise location of the old house at Stisted is not known, but that of the homestead is rather clear. The railroad came through in 1872; its original trestle across the Occoquan is now used for U.S. Route 1 vehicular traffic with the rail bridge shifted closer to Colchester in 1915. The Wagener family cemetery was surveyed at least five times between 1955 and 1998 and was located “Near Colchester, NW of Richmond Hwy (Rte 1) and 100 yards north of bridge over the Occoquan River…. PETER WAGENER [III] (1744-1798) was a Revolutionary War Veteran and Clerk of Court for Fairfax County. Wagener’s remains were moved to Pohick Episcpopal Churh (FX141) in 1973 where a military style headstone was placed in his honor. A 1994 survey of this site found a 50′ x 50′ plot enclosed by a chain link fence containing the gravestones of MARY E. LEE (1807-1870) and ELIZABETH FRAZIER (1797-1834). In July of 2001 a team supervised by Dr. Douglas Owsley removed 30 burials from this site. The remains were reinterred at Pohick Episcopal Church.” ⁹

Pohick Memorials

Peter III was appointed Fairfax County Clerk and elected to the Truro Vestry upon the death of his father in 1774, and his military headstone is near the vestry house in the Pohick Churchyard, not far from where the rest of the Wagener clan were said to have been re-interred. Peter Jr. – Attorney, Militia Officer, County Clerk, Vestryman, Town Founder, friend of Washington, Mason, and Fairfax – has a memorial pew plaque inside the historic church. The old house is gone, the family cemetery removed, and Colchester is little remembered; yet and still, these small memorials to the Wageners of Stisted remain.

¹ Harrison, Fairfax, Landmarks of Old Prince William, A study of origins in Northern Virginia Vol II, (1924, Old Dominion Press, Richmond VA)

² UK Register of Duties Paid for Apprentices’ Indentures, 1710-1811 via Ancestry.com

³ Letter of Peter Wagener to Bishop of London 6 Jan 1738/9, Virginia, U.S., Colonial Records, 1607-1853, Library of Virginia SR 00575 via Ancestry.com

⁴Virginia Gazette, 20 July 1739 pg. 3

⁵ Sprouse, Edith Moore, Colchester: Colonial Port on the Potomac (1975, Fairfax County Historical Commission)

⁶ The family name is most commonly spelled Wagener in historic documents, secondarily as Wagoner or Waggoner, and in later generations occasionally as Wagner. Rev. Peter and Mary Elizabeth are our 7th great-grandparents, Peter Jr. and Katy our 6th. We are descended from their oldest child Mary Elizabeth Wagener Grayson (1741-1810).

⁷ Slaughter, Phillip, The History of Truro Parish in Virginia (1907, G.W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, PA)

⁸ “Childhood Recollections as told by Mary Catherine (Shreve) Birch” [1846-1919], typescript, Lebanon file, Virginiana Collection, Fairfax County Central Library

⁹Fairfax County Cemetery Survey, Wagener Family Cemetery (FX213), Fairfax County Central Library