Colonial-era vestry books digitized and available online: Preserving Lynnhaven and Elizabeth City parish records
The Episcopal Project (EP) in partnership with the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia (DioSoVa) and with grant support from Virginia Humanities has digitized and made available to the public the content of vestry books of two parishes in Virginia’s Tidewater: Lynnhaven Parish (established pre-1643) and Elizabeth City Parish (established 1619). The approximately 500 pages of records document people and events in the parishes, as well as Lynnhaven and Elizabeth City’s evolution from their original status as colonial Anglican parishes to becoming two early U.S. Episcopal parishes following the American Revolution. The records are a rich primary source of information on the lives of individuals in the pre-Revolutionary and Early National eras.
In March 2025, EP was awarded a Virginia Humanities grant for the project in collaboration with the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia, which owns the records. EP also created an online exhibit featuring stories from the records, including the transition from Anglican parishes to Episcopal churches following the Revolution. The exhibit also shows how the parish in the colonial period served in effect as the government social services agency, providing essential financial assistance, health care and support to the poor.
The records in their entirety, and the exhibit, are available via the EpiscopalProject.org website.
The vestry book pages are also transcribed, making them searchable, for names or places or special terms. For example, George Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and historically significant lawyer, judge and teacher in the colonies, appears in the vestry books as a landowner in Elizabeth City Parish, today’s Hampton, Virginia.
“I am pleased that Virginia Humanities has recognized the historical significance of the information contained in these vestry books,” said The Rev. Bill Taylor, historiographer of the Diocese of Southern Virginia. “The value of the information is why the Diocese commissioned this 1906 compilation of the original manuscripts, which was, at that time, state of the art preservation. In that same spirit, we are now digitizing and making the information widely available. The records are a treasure trove of information that will have value and interest well beyond Episcopal history.”
The Episcopal Project, a non-profit based in Richmond, Virginia, digitized, catalogued and published the book in the Digital Archive in late May. The EP Digital Archive is an online repository for Episcopal church records, stories, ephemera, and places. Each page of the vestry books, as well as transcriptions of the handwritten text, are now publicly available.
EP and the Diocese earlier collaborated to digitize the vestry records of four other historic churches, including Sapony (built in 1725-26, Dinwiddie County) and St. Stephen’s (the oldest Black church in the Commonwealth, est. 1867, Petersburg).
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About The Episcopal Project
The Episcopal Project is a private 501(c)3 charitable organization.
The mission of the Episcopal Project is to preserve and protect episcopal church history for future generations. Digitization of fragile records is the first step in making this history available to researchers and historians in the future.
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About DioSoVa
The Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia includes approximately twenty thousand Episcopalians in 100 congregations between the Dan River and the Eastern Shore. We are a diocese of The Episcopal Church in the United States, a province of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.