Gen 8: Thomas Smith, George Mason and Religious Freedom (1708-1778)
Son of Peter Smith of Westmoreland and Mary Bayly, Brother of James Smith, 5x Great Uncle
There are several characters in our Smith family tree who were major players in historical events that shaped the course of our nation’s history. I have already detailed the adventures of one such family member, William Bailey Smith, son of James of Bull Run. There are many other family members who jump off the page as I look at the details emerging in each of their lives in Westmoreland County. James Smith’s brother is one such a person. My father’s 5x great uncle Thomas Smith (1708-1778), was the fourth of the five sons of Peter Smith of Yeocomico.
Thomas Smith married Elizabeth Fleming, daughter of Alexander Fleming and Sarah Kennedy. The Flemings descended from Pocahontas, but my father did not, nor I. Pocahontas had one son before she died, Thomas Rolfe and he had a daughter Jane who married Robert Boling. Their son John Fairfax Boling had a daughter Mary Boling who married John Fleming who had a daughter Elizabeth. That is a very round-about way of claiming Pocahontas in our family tree. There may be a far more direct connection if you are looking for famous people you can claim as blood relatives. More on that later.
Thomas and Elizabeth had 6 sons and 2 daughters, all of whom made it to adulthood and marriage. It was a prolific family and had the makings of a fine basketball team. The Thomas Smith family was a perfect example of the adage: a family that prays together stays together. They were Baptists at a time when Baptists were proliferating in Virginia. The names of Thomas and Elizabeth Smith and their children appear in the minutes of the Broad River Baptist Church in 1765. The Smiths and 63 parishioners submitted a petition seeking release from membership in the Broad River church and permission to establish and become members of the proposed Chappawamsic Baptist Church, on Chappawamsic Creek in Stafford County, VA.
The congregation of the church included many people found in our tree beginning with Thomas and Elizabeth Smith and their adult sons: Fleming, Daniel, James, John, Charles and Peter of Spartanburg (not to be confused with our great grandparent, Peter of Round Hill, son of James). Also identified in the Chappawamsic Petition are John and Elizabeth Taylor and Thomas, John and Margaret Bland. The Blands and Taylors are the names of aristocratic, upper crust families in Virginia. We have already met the Taylors. The Blands also appear in our tree. Less aristocratic but of equal interest to me are the names of John and Ann Davis, Betty Harper and George and Joseph Williams. These surnames are prominent in family history and I am no longer surprised when I find my wife Nancy’s ancestors (the Williams family for one) sharing village streets and church pews with members of my predecessors.
The petition submitted by Smith was more than just an application to transfer membership from one church to another. Churches in the Virginia colonies were controlled by the British and or Colonial governments. Pastors were assigned by the government, transferred by the government and paid per the policies of the colony. Parishioners abided by the governmental regulation of the church and church attendance. Hymnals, prayer manuals, dogma, liturgy, scripture were subject to state regulation. The petition had to be considered by the government.
George Mason IV
The Father of the Virginia and American Bill of Rights
Thomas Smith’s petition to establish the Baptist Church at Occoquan in 1776 grew into something much larger than Thomas had originally envisioned. George Mason IV (great grandson of George Mason I of Doegs Neck) could not resist the opportunity to get involved. Mason was a neighbor and represented Smith in legal matters. The government of the colony had the authority to designate churches, certify preachers and grant or limit freedoms related to the exercise of religion. Smith petitioned the House of Burgesses to grant a license for his new church to operate. His petition evolved into an article framing the need for religious freedom, not just ‘toleration’ as discussed by Parliament, but religious freedom. There was a difference between the two concepts.
In his epic work, The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia, Michael McConnell articulated the point better than I possibly can. I will let McConnell spell that difference out for you while I nap. The loss of REM sleep last night really destroyed me. I can’t believe I have a ‘great uncle’ who stood before the House of Burgess on the day the Virginians declared independence and demanded respect for Baptists. This seems a bit surreal. Anyway… Here’s McConnell:
“Religious dissenters also made demands, asserting their rights to a full place in the new republic. In the middle of the Fifth Convention, Baptists from the church in Occaquon in Prince William County petitioned the delegates for greater rights. While the colony was ‘contending [for the civil rights] and liberties of mankind against the enslaving Scheme of a power(ful) Enemy,’ they began, it was vital that the ‘strictest unanimity’ prevail. To achieve this, the convention would have to remove the ‘remaining clause of animosity and division’ which for the Baptists and others meant granting them ‘several religious privileges’ that they had never enjoyed in Virginia before. They had not been allowed to ‘worship God in our own way, without interruption’ nor been allowed to maintain their own ministers (and ‘no other’); nor had they been allowed to marry or be buried without paying the Anglican minister. Only when these rights had been granted would they ‘gladly unite with their Brethren of other denominations, and to the upmost of our ability, promote the common cause of Freedom.’”
The Smiths and others were along for the ride at this point. George Mason IV was trumpeting their cause. He bought into their vision for Virginia churches and he became the front man, a very effective voice for their cause. Blessed with the right to petition their government, they were not necessarily putting their lives on the line as they would have in England in prior decades.
To put things into historical context: Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, suspended the House of Burgesses in 1774. The Burgesses took it upon themselves to continue meeting in a pub crawl across Virginia. They called their meetings ‘conventions’ and held their first at Raleigh Tavern on the very day Dunmore chased them out of the Legislative House. “If we can’t meet here, let’s head over to Raleigh Tavern and hash this out!” was sort of the mantra that day. Over a robust stout they agreed to 1) pray for Boston, 2) cut trade with Britain and 3) refuse to pay any debt owed to Britain.
The Brits had previously put the screws to Boston following the Tea Party fiasco. What scrawny white guy dresses up like an ‘Indian’ and honestly thinks he can pull off that stunt and why? Virginia showed solidarity with Boston and got props for that. Prior to this Fifth Convention the good people of Virginia had already agreed: Dunmore sucked, Britain sucked, King George sucked, Boston was good, and independence necessary. With that attitude firmly in place, the colonists of Virginia put their lives on the line.
In this Fifth Convention, Thomas Smith was bartering with the delegates who were all about the business of declaring independence. He was saying basically, “Look. You guys are all accusing Britain of stepping on your various rights and yet I don’t have, as a devout Baptist, the privileges you bloody Anglicans have. Cut us some slack. If you want us to send our sons into battle and our families into turmoil alongside your families, let us do so with the same privilege you have to carry God with you as you go forward into perilous times.” It would have been a great speech. He was a Smith. He must have had the gift to gab.
Again, it was George Mason IV who tied Smith’s issue into a variety of other issues within the Virginia Commonwealth in his effort to secure consensus and support for independence. Mason’s viewpoints related to freedoms and liberty would reverberate across the 13 colonies and create world headlines over the centuries as the American Bill of Rights was later attached to the Constitution. But it was Smith, the Dissenter, who was active on the streets of Virginia, peddling the need to allow the Baptist faith to grow and multiply. According to G. Hugh Wamble in an article he submitted to the Journal of Baptist Studies, 1 (2007): 38 – 55, Smith and his two sons:
“also took the lead in gathering about 10,000 signatures on a 1776 petition which protested ‘the Burden of an Ecclesiastical Establishment’ and asked for ‘Equal liberty! That invaluable blessing,’ so that, ‘every religious Denomination being on a level, Animosities may cease, and that Christian Forbearance, Love and Charity’ they borrowed from Virginia’s new constitution.”
On June 12, 1776 the House of Burgesses voted to cut ties with Britain. Thomas Smith watched as the locals tore down the union jack from the Williamsburg town pole and celebrated what appeared to some as a momentary lack of sanity, a naive worldview and a vitriolic fever lathered up in liquid refreshments.
Thomas Smith and George Mason IV were engaged in a dialogue that is missing in our nation today (2017). Mason understood the need to respect diversity. Smith wanted respect for his congregation. The unresolvable issue that set his congregation apart, as outsiders was simple: The Baptist didn’t believe in the baptism of infants and the Anglicans did. This one issue divided a Christian nation and fired up prejudice and discrimination! It had been a heated debate topic a century earlier in Reverend Wetherell’s Scituate Congregation in Plymouth Colony.
Petitions flowed into the Fifth Convention from around the Virginia colony; Smith’s petition was one of many. The petitions revealed a concern among the public that would eventually lend itself to the very construction of our Constitutional foundations and principles. After four conventions, a lot of pamphlets, public stump speeches, and letters to the editor the Virginia citizenry was trying to maintain some sensibility while maintaining a fever pitch. It must have been like watching Bill Belichick masterminding the end to that Super Bowl victory against Seattle in 2015: fever pitch of battle, maintain order, stay calm, stay focused, straight ahead vision and victory in sight.
Father’s Great Uncle (5x) Thomas Smith was bold enough to demand equal rights as a citizen who wanted to worship his God in a manner consistent with his Baptist faith. Cool stuff. His children wandered off to South Carolina and my tree (that of his brother James) headed into North Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana. Our awareness of the Baptist faith held by the Thomas Smith family does not necessarily mean that Peter of Yeocomico was Baptist. It does say something however about the home environment that shaped Thomas and his siblings. They possessed the ability to speak their mind, stand for justice and respect. It was a trait that has endured through the centuries.
ONE LAST EFFORT TO LOCATE PETER’S FATHER
