Excerpt from a Southside Sentinel Article by Larry Chowning - Nov 1, 2018

During the colonial period in Middlesex, the area known as Christchurch became the center of religious and social life in Middlesex County, and its prominence lasted for over 100 years.

The Honorable Henry Corbin of Buckingham House established Lancaster Parish covering the area from central Middlesex to Laneview.

Early districts within Middlesex were formed by the creation of two church parishes.  On May 27, 1657, the area from central Middlesex to Laneview was established by Henry Corbin and others as Lancaster Parish.  Probably a little before that, Edmund Kemp on the Piankatank and others in the lower end of the county had already started forming what would become Piankatank Parish and Lower Church.  

The early Anglican parishes in Virginia had the power to collect taxes from their congregations.  Tithes were a tax used to support the church facilities, to hire ministers, to purchase glebe land (home for the minister and a parcel of cultivated land, belonging to and yielding revenue for the parish church), to maintain roads and to provide social services for the poor, orphans, and bastard children living in the parish.  

Shortly after the formation of the two parishes, an issue arose as to just where the parish lines in the center of the county ended, and this grew into a nasty feud between the two parishes.  This feud would become so heated that it eventually ended up before authorities in Jamestown.  In 1661, Charles Hill, an attorney, was employed by the Piankatank vestry to go to James City “for the defending of some differences” between the two parishes.  The parish boundary dispute was centered in the middle of the county where two of the largest plantations were located. The Wormeleys at “Rosegill” owned 3,500 acres extending from the Rappahannock to the Piankatank River.  The other was Lady Lunsford’s “Brandon” that was located at the end of what is today Burhan’s Road.  She owned 1,700 acres and dozens of servants.  

The tax revenue from these two properties was considerable and each parish wanted it.  Sir Henry Chicheley had married Ralph Wormeley’s wife after Wormeley died.  He was living at Rosegill.  Sir Chicheley served as a member of his Majesty’s Council and was serving as Deputy Governor of Colonial Virginia.  He quickly grew tired of the bickering between parish officials and was also tired of traveling on Sundays to far-away churches.  Arguably, Sir Chicheley single-handedly took away the two parish system in the county to form Christ Church Parish, the “Mother” church of Middlesex, just down the road from Rosegill.

The new parish was confirmed by order of the Grand Assembly, October 23, 1666.  The order stated, “Whereas the parishes of Lancaster and Payanketank having been divided into two parishes . . . it is granted that the parishes be reunited and to be called by the name Christ Church Parish.  Christ Church remained the Mother church in the county until after the Revolutionary War when the Church of England fell into disfavor with a victorious American nation.  The church building and graveyard eventually were taken over by the Episcopal Church as it is to this day.  

The graveyard at Christ Church has tombs of early colonial settlers of Middlesex, of a Virginia governor (Andrew Jackson Montague); a lieutenant governor (Robert Latane Montague); an attorney general of Virginia (Colonel John Richardson Saunders); and is the final resting place of the famous Lt. General Lewis Burwell (Chesty) Puller, the most decorated marine in U.S. Marine Corps history.