Kitchen, stable, barn, milk house, hen house, two porches added to the
mansion house, heart of pine shingles, brick floorings, and underpinnings: it
would be difficult to read this description (notwithstanding the clerk s free-
wheeling spelling and lack of punctuation) and not discern an intention to
provide the parish minister with handsome quarters. Dozens upon dozens of
similar vestry-book entries offer a compelling picture of the determination
to erect physical facilities that would represent the high value placed on the
church and the ministry and, coincidentally, the good sense, cultivation, and
responsibility of the vestries. With evident pride, Price Davies, Blisland Parish
parson, recounted to a Welsh curate friend that he had a glebe   with every
other necessary convenience and about 200 acres of land. . . . My dwelling
house is a modern brick building with a spacious garden contiguous to it.  32
Glebe lands, mansion houses, and their sets of outbuildings were, along with
churches and chapels, tangible symbols of parish identity. Glebes often served
as important points of demarcation in the network of roads that crisscrossed
the Old Dominion s parishes and counties. In a landscape dotted with the scat-
tered dwellings of planters, farmers, and slaves, churches and glebes visually
represented community and afforded travelers a sense of location and direc-
tion. Even today, commuters and travelers may find themselves on a   Glebe
Road  in the Old Dominion.
Glebes cost money. Pride and comfort much less the minimal require-
ments of the law were not satisfied without large expenditures. Land had
to be acquired, construction costs met, and, once built, these facilities had to
be maintained and repaired. Parishes dealt continually with glebe upkeep and
eventually had to repeat the whole process when the existing glebe no longer
served its purposes. St. Peter s Parish s new glebe house in 1713 cost 49,500 lbs.
of tobacco, three times the annual salary of its minister.33 It was paid for in
two years by twice adding 24,750 lbs. to the annual parish levy. A decade later,
the parish began incurring annual charges averaging more than 1,000 lbs. for
repairs and additions to the glebe house. Because the vestry was never success-
ful in replacing its undersized glebe land, it made up for that deficiency by
an annual salary supplement (initially in 1737 1,664 lbs., and then increased to
1,728 lbs. in 1751) to the parson.34
Glebes could also be a headache for all concerned. Lands wore out or came
to be perceived as deficient in size, location, or productivity. Replacement
meant getting General Assembly authorization to sell the current holding,
a time-consuming procedure. Moreover, fresh lands had to be sought not
in newly settled regions to the south or west but within the existing parish
.
Provisions: Parsons 53