While the 1607 service at Jamestown marked the start of a permanent Anglican presence in the New World, nearly 75 years of short exploratory visits, followed by tentative colonies, preceded it. After Frobisher had held services in the Canadian Arctic, and Drake in California, attention returned to the eastern seaboard. Exploration of the North Carolina coast by Phillip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe in 1584, included a thanksgiving service held by Barlowe, or his chaplain, upon reaching land. Their survey on behalf of the Virginia Company of London bore fruit in 1585. Richard Grenville established Roanoke Island colony-Fort Raleigh- near North Carolina's Albemarle Sound, with Rev. Richard Hariot as chaplain. The colony failed, and was largely evacuated by Sir Francis Drake the next year, but was then reestablished in 1587. An Anglicized Croatan native, Manteo, was baptized ('christened') at Roanoke on August 18, 1587, becoming the first Anglican native-American. On August 23, Virginia Dare, the first English and Anglican child born in the New World, was also baptized. The name of the chaplain of the reestablished colony who performed these first New World baptisms is not recorded. In 1590, delayed relief ships returned to find the colony had disappeared. The fate of the 126-member Roanoke "lost colony" remains a mystery to this day. Further English exploration of the eastern coastline included Richard Strong's 1593 visit, Bartholomew Gosnold's summer encapments near Cape Cod in 1602 and 1603, and Martin Pring's New England visit in 1603. No chaplains are recorded with them.

April 26 reenactment commemorating the very day in 1607 when the first English settlers made landfall. Photo by Sharon Rasmussen, Communication Director, Diocese of East Tennessee

Four years later, the Virginia Company of London, in a new effort, arrived at Cape Henry, Virginia, seventy-five miles north of the lost Roanoke colony. Chaplain Hunt erected a cross and held a service on April 29, 1607, before the group sailed upriver in search of a more sheltered site for the subsequent Jamestown colony. That August, the Popham colony, sent by the Virginia Company of Plymouth, arrived at Monhegan Island (Isle of St. George), Maine, where explorer George Waymouth had set up a large cross on June 18, 1605. His chaplain led thanksgiving prayers for safe passage onboard his ship, The Archangel. Upon arrival at the island cross, on August 9, 1607, the Popham colony chaplain, Richard Seymour, a young un-ordained Oxford University lay reader, preached a sermon and led the colony in a thanksgiving service for safe arrival. The colony settled at the mouth of the nearby Kennebec (Sagadahoc) River, where Waymouth had earlier erected a second cross on June 23, 1605. A chapel was soon built within Fort St. George, the settlement's large stockade. Torn by disputes, and having produced no return for its investors, half the Popham colony left in 1607, and the rest in 1608.

Such were the tentative and precarious beginnings of Anglicanism, itself a new path, in the wilderness of the New World. In time, New World Anglicanism set down deep roots, especially near Jamestown in colonial Virginia, and its firm foundations of scripture, reason and tradition helped create a culture in which men such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe would shape the future of a new nation. There remained, of course, much room for spiritual growth- African-American slavery and the ethnic cleansing of native Americans were open wounds- and there would be many other future challenges. Yet American Episcopalians, and Canadian Anglicans, would tackle them all, in time. How amazed, and moved, Wolfall, Hariot, the unnamed Roanoke chaplain, Hunt, Seymour, and especially Fletcher, would be to see, four centuries into Anglican-American/ Episcopal history, their work expanded across the continent, and a great Anglican/Episcopal cathedral standing on a city hilltop, on the far western shore of the New World.

Read Part one of this article...

 
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