Soon, it will be 161 years since the destruction of our church, and our town, by fire. The fire was not a wildfire or the result of a lightning strike or a volcanic eruption or a friendly fire that got out of control. The fire was set deliberately by men.
Many of the men were from Hampton. Certainly, some of these men were parishioners. The fire symbolized the beginning of an interlude in the history of our parish—an interruption that lasted years after the end of the Civil War. And, it coincided with a time when our cemetery became a campground for soldiers and transients—no longer an active burial ground.
In the summer of 1861, Union soldiers occupied our church and bivouacked in the cemetery. The Boston Evening Extract of 10 July included an excerpt from a letter written by one of the soldiers on 4 July:
“Hampton is of ancient date and contains usually about 1,400 inhabitants; but now there are but about fourteen families left, the remainder having fled precipitantly some three weeks since, on the advance of the Federal troops to the Fortress, leaving nearly every thing behind. From the appearance of the houses without and the furniture within, I should judge that the occupants belonged to the ‘well to do’ class of society. Pianos and other costly articles of furniture are scattered over the floors pell mell. How it is that the inhabitants of a whole town should thus desert their homes, en masse, leaving everything, as though a horde of barbarians or cannibals was approaching, I cannot imagine, but so it is, everywhere on our march. …our present quarters, is located in the midst of the town, and we use the deserted dwellings as tents. Adjoining our company’s quarters stands the Episcopal Church, said to be the second oldest house in the State standing through revolutionary times, and used on one occasion as a slaughterhouse by the British. I am now sitting in a pew of said church, as I am writing this, and it now used by our troops as a guardhouse, and is bristling with bayonets. I cannot ascertain the date of the erection of this sacred edifice, but it must be more than one hundred years ago. It stands within an old cemetery, which contains tombs and inscriptions of ancient date…”
A few weeks later, the troops were recalled to Fort Monroe and Hampton became a ghost town—130 mostly unoccupied wood frame buildings with no more than 60 people milling about—silent and dark.
General Magruder, the Confederate commander in the area, heard a rumor that the Union commander at Fort Monroe, General Butler, intended to occupy Hampton and use it to house Union troops and, perhaps, contraband slaves whose numbers were increasing daily. Rather than allow Hampton to become an asset for the Union army, Magruder ordered that the town be destroyed by fire.
So, on the evening of 7 August 1861, Hampton’s own Captain Jefferson Curle Phillips led Confederate soldiers, many from Hampton and Elizabeth City County, in setting the conflagration that destroyed our church and engulfed our town. (Many of Phillips’ descendants are buried in our cemetery.) The rumor that prompted Magruder’s decision turned out not to be true.
However, the spiraling number of contrabands needed housing. With the town destroyed, former citizens dispersed and without local interference, the contrabands established camps—sometimes called slabtowns. Using whatever materials they could find, like remnants that could be salvaged from Hampton’s destroyed buildings, contraband communities were created. One was situated where Phoebus is today. Another was a stone’s throw from St. John’s at the intersection of Armistead Avenue and Lincoln Street.
With Hampton destroyed and its citizenry cast to the wind—fighting for the Confederacy, living with relatives at points west, some having fled never to return—the Union forces found Elizabeth City County easy to subdue. For the bulk of the Civil War, Elizabeth City County was not considered to be in active rebellion against the United States. Its allegiance to the Confederate States of America was short-lived.
This is why the Emancipation Proclamation, effective 1 January 1863, did not free any slaves in Hampton or Elizabeth City County. The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to areas still in active rebellion.
Although the Civil War ended in 1865, it was not until 1870 that our parish returned to something like normal. Old parishioners returned to St. John’s and new parishioners joined to create the congregation that faced the challenges of Reconstruction and the new realities created by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution: the abolition of slavery, citizenship and equal rights for former slaves, and suffrage for black males.
More important to the returning members of the Hampton and Elizabeth City County communities was the reacquisition of the property they left behind when they fled Hampton. If you abandon your property for 4 years—your home, your business, and your farm—and don’t pay the levied property taxes on time, is the property still yours? That was the vexing question foremost in their minds. And, it took some time to sort this out.
Originally published in St. John’s Newsletter, Summer 2022.