settlers from the West Indies a
learned, public-spirited layman named Charles Griffin, who, seeing the
crying need of the people, had established by 1705 a school on Symons
Creek, for the children of the settlers near by.

Being a loyal son of the Church of England, he insisted upon reading the
morning and evening service of that church daily in his school, and he
required his young charges to join in the prayers and make the proper
responses. So faithful and efficient a teacher did he prove that even
the Quakers who had suffered many things from the Church of England, as
well as from their dissenting brethren, were glad to send their children
to his school.

The Colonial Records contain many references to the wide and beneficent
influence exerted by Mr. Griffin while acting in his two-fold capacity
of teacher and lay-reader in Pasquotank.

Governor Glover in a letter to the Bishop of London in 1708 writes: "In
Pasquotank an orderly congregation has been kept together by the
industry of a young gentleman whom the parish has employed to read the
services of the Church of England. This gentleman being a man of
unblemished life, by his decent behavior in that office, and by apt
discourses from house to house, not only kept those he found, but gained
many to the church."

Again and again in the pages of the Colonial Records, Vol. I, are the
praises of Charles Griffin sung; though, sad to say, in the latter days
of his life he seems to have fallen from grace, and to have become
involved in some scandal, the particulars of which are not given. This
scandal must have been proved unfounded, or he lived it down; for we
hear of him in after years as a professor in William and Mary College.

History contains no record of the location of Charles Griffin's school,
but according to tradition, and to the old inhabitants of that section,
it was located on Symons Creek, not far from the ancient Quaker
meeting-house. This latter building, erected somewhere between 1703 and
1706, was standing, within the memory of many among the older citizens
of our county, some of whom retain vivid recollections of attending,
when they were children, the services held by the Friends in this house
of worship.

It may be of interest here to mention that the heirs of the late Elihu
White, of Belvidere, to whom the property belonged, have lately donated
the site of the meeting-house on Symons Creek to the Quakers of that
section, of whom there are s