In mid-April, Billie Einselen spoke to a small and scattered group of teachers and students in St. John’s. The visit was requested by Mr. Michael Harper, a sponsor of HAPPY (Historic Aberdeen Project Promoting Youth), with the objective of learning about the relationship of the Tucker family, their educational focus, to St. John’s.
William Tucker, the first documented African baby born in English-speaking North America, was actually born in Elizabeth City Parish, where the site of our second church can be seen on what is now the campus of Hampton University.
William was named for Captain William Tucker, who in 1610 was sent down from Jamestown to build a community on the southern part of the Virginia Peninsula, where Hampton Roads, the harbor, meets the Chesapeake Bay. In 1619 the first documented Africans arrived unexpectedly on a pirate ship at Point Comfort, now part of Fort Monroe. Captain Tucker took two of the arrivals, Anthony and Isabella, as indentured servants to join his other indentures. From that union came their first-born, a son, whom they named for Captain Tucker.
In 1620, Captain Tucker thought the village needed a name change, and he asked the House of Burgesses in Jamestown to change the name of Kecoughtan to Elizabeth City in honor of a daughter of James I, their king. Captain Tucker was also asked to build a new church for Elizabeth City, which was finished in 1624. As one of Captain Tucker’s indentures, Anthony would certainly have helped in the building of the new church, where undoubtedly his son was baptized after it opened by the current rector, the Reverend Jonas Stockton, who also likely baptized the fourth daughter of Anne Burris and John Laydon, who had moved to Elizabeth City in 1622.
After their visit to St. John’s, the HAPPY group continued to the landing site of the White Lion at Fort Monroe and a drive-by of the site of Elizabeth City Parish Church. (Susan and Billie have given numerous tours since the Heritage Group began in 2010. Along with Sylvia Edgar and Carolyn Hawkins, they have been reading the vestry books of St. John’s during this pandemic. As a local fire in the mid-eighteenth century destroyed the early books, the first volume of vestry minutes begins in 1751.)
Originally published in St. John’s Newsletter, June 2021.