The History of Lynnhaven Parish, Virginia 

In 1637 Virginia colonist and businessman, Adam Thoroughgood and his wife, Sarah, gathered their neighbors and held the first church service for Lynnhaven Parish in their home on today’s Lake Joyce in Virginia Beach. That tiny congregation evolved into the now-thriving Old Donation Episcopal Church.

 

Born in England, where primogeniture, the practice of passing wealth to the first male child, was the law of the land, Adam (his father’s seventh son) must have known his fortune lay elsewhere. Not called to join his family’s long line of Anglican clergymen, Adam left England when he was 17 as an indentured servant bound for the Virginia Colony. He arrived in 1621. He served his indenture, probably a period of five or seven years, to Captain Edward Waters in the settlement known as Kecoughtan, now Hampton, Virginia. At the end of his indenture Adam and Captain Waters were both awarded fifty acres of land. This “headright” system was used to fill the new colony with a steady stream of English workers and citizens.

 

Adam returned to England, where he took up the lucrative headright business recruiting new indentures. He married Sarah Offley, the daughter of a wealthy businessman and in 1628 took her, and her substantial dowry, back to Virginia. Adam’s business thrived and the colony’s population grew. The Virginia Governor granted him 5,350 acres located across the James River from Kecoughtan at the site where the Chesapeake Bay joins the Atlantic Ocean. It was here Adam and Sarah built their home on the body of water that would become Lake Joyce and welcomed their neighbors to Lynnhaven Parish’s first worship service. Adam was not a clergyman so Reverend William Wilkinson, an Anglican priest, to lead those early services.

 

Adam’s home, the site of the fledgling church, did not come to a happy ending. It’s believed the building burned in 1650. Three centuries later, in 1955, a real estate developer purchased the Thorowgood land on Lake Joyce. Ground was broken for the residential community of Baylake Pines. During construction artifacts were found that linked the site to a 17th-century home of what was clearly a wealthy family. Construction was halted, but only for a short time. Archaeologists were not allowed access long enough to verify their strong suspicion that the artifacts were the remains of  Adam and Sarah Thoroughgood's house. Even today historians are left with only circumstantial evidence. In exchange for that sacrifice, Baylake Pines is now a sought-after and picturesque place to live in Virginia Beach. There are no efforts to further explore nor preserve the site, even though from time to time home owners still find curious items on their property. Note: The historic Thoroughgood House, located on Parish Road in Virginia Beach, was not built by Adam Thoroughgood, but by his great-grandson, Argall, in about 1719.

 

Adam died in the winter of 1639/40 at the age of 31 having taken sick on the trip home from Jamestown. No one knows the cause of death. Before he died, Adam made a provision in his will for a church to be built on his property, on the Western bank of the Lynnhaven River. It’s clear the church was at least in the process of construction when Adam’s will was written as it called for some decoration “…to the Parish Church of Lynnhaven one thousand pounds of tobacco in leaf, to be disbursed for some necessary and decent ornament.” And so, the people of Lynnhaven Parish opened “Church One” in 1639. Its church building in place, Lynnhaven Parish became official on August 3, 1640 when its first vestry was chosen at a court held in Lower Norfolk. Two years later the Act of Assembly of 1642 established the geographic boundaries of the parish “upon the petition of the inhabitants of Lynnhaven parish, by the Governor, Council, and Burgesses of this Grand Assembly…”