King Charles II of England made a large land grant to Lord Culpeper in 1664, which was mapped in the next century.

However, no record exists that Anglican clergy visited the valley in that era, nor that that parish vestry handled social service work expected of the established church.

In 1744, the local Frederick County justices (the court being organized in late 1743) wrote Governor Gooch, who authorized election of 12 vestryman.

The vestry elected as churchwardens James Wood Sr. (who had first come to the area as Lord Fairfax's surveyor) and Thomas Rutherford (who was also the county's first sheriff and lived in what later became Berkeley, West Virginia).

[6] The new 1752 vestry included Lord Fairfax, his nephew Thomas Bryan Martin, Gabriel Jones (the attorney who had prosecuted Campbell) and Captain John Ashby (all of the established church) as well as Quakers James Cromley, Lewis Neill (the sheriff) and Isaac Perkins (all of whom had initiated the complaint against the initial vestry), plus Major John Hite (son of Jost Hite, who may have been still Lutheran), merchant Robert Lemon and Captain John Lindsay (of unknown religious affiliation but also on the County Court).

Lord Fairfax in 1753 donated land as a glebe to support the minister, which remained parish property until the legal divisions of 1770.

Also in 1753, the House of Burgesses decided that Gordon and his Augusta Parish counterpart, John Jones, should each receive a cash salary of £100.

Probably the vestry helped fleeing refugees or made provision for orphans and widows, although those parish records are lost.

Records show that Virginia militia colonel George Washington arrived and set up camp in September 1755 and that with the assistance of vestryman Charles Smith, he was elected to represent Frederick County in the House of Burgesses in 1758, as well as that three of Gordon's horses were conscripted for the war effort.

Meldrum gave up his position, presumably at least in part over ongoing salary disputes, but while the vestry searched for a rector, he farmed nearby and was occasionally paid for clerical services, as were lay readers.

A parishioner, Benjamin Sebastian, wanted to become ordained and agreed to serve as rector, but a year later accepted a position at St. Stephen's Church far to the east in Northumberland County.

The vestry next hired Walter MacGowen, who had tutored George Washington's stepchildren, but after ordination he accepted a position in Maryland.

[9] The somewhat circuit-riding pastor, Charles Mynn Thruston, resigned in 1777 to join Virginia forces during the American Revolutionary War (as did all other 14 Valley rectors).

He returned to farm near Winchester after losing an arm as a result of a battle wound, and continued a political career (which according to new Virginia laws was not permitted for clergymen).

After Jefferson's religious freedom bill became law and established Virginia clergy no longer were paid from taxes, the newly elected county Overseers of the Poor took over the old vestry book, and lay readers probably held some services.

Meanwhile, another long-term vestryman, the elderly Lord Fairfax (who had remained, though a Loyalist) died at his Greenway Court home in 1781, and was buried in the chancel of the Winchester church, the service being read by Rev.

Alexander Balmain (or Balmaine, 1740-1821), a Scotsman who had studied to become a Presbyterian minister at St. Andrew's before becoming successively tutor to the family of Richard Henry Lee, understudy to Jones and then rector of Augusta Parish and later chaplain to the 13th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army and finally Muhlenberg's First Virginia Brigade, became Frederick Parish's rector.

In addition to his meager military pension, he secured subscriptions from parishioners to pay for his services, as well as lived extremely frugally (limiting his wintertime fireplace use and renting out the glebe lands and giving the proceeds to the poor).

He mentored several clergy, including parishioner William Meade, who decided to become a priest, and then served as rector of Cunningham Chapel Parish for 27 years, as well as later became the third Episcopal Bishop of Virginia.

They helped set up a school in Athens, and were soon joined by Mary Briscoe Baldwin of Frederick County (but sent by Augusta Parish in Staunton, where she had moved after her parents' deaths).

[19] Meanwhile, in 1837, Meade consecrated St. Thomas Chapel at Middletown, Virginia, which Christ Church had planted and which remains today as a historic site as well as active parish.

[20][21] However, he too soon left Winchester, to accept a call from Christ Church in Alexandria together with a professorship at his alma mater, Virginia Theological Seminary.

The building did suffer smashed windows, since it was used as a jail at least once (for captured Confederates, as were the Lutheran and Presbyterian churches), and perhaps as a hospital by both armies.

William Meredith resumed his duties as rector, and worked diligently to repair the parish's finances (drowning in red ink) and those of less fortunate Virginia congregations before his death on November 1, 1875.

Hebron) or to their home towns), the Episcopal Church Women helped establish the Stomewall Cemetery section of Mt.

Meredith also spearheaded building a lecture room for Sunday school classes (finished 1872, and the host of the diocesan council the following year).

James Avirrett (the son-in-law of vestryman Philip Williams) began a girls' school, Dunbar Seminary, in Winchester, which he ran from 1864 until accepting a transfer to the Diocese of Maryland in 1870.

Holliday ("one-armed hero of the Shenandoah valley" elected Virginia's governor in 1877) established the Episcopal Female Institute (later Stuart Hall School) in Winchester, with the Rev.

The church consecrated in 1829 was a 1-story brick Gothic Revival building with a gable roof, three bays and carved stone detailing.