Mannsfield Hall, a beautiful home below Fredericksburg, owned by Capt. R. Conroy Vance is part of the original grant by the Virginia Company to Major Thomas Lawrence Smith in 1671, his duty under the grant being to keep at the mouth of the Massaponax a troop of 150 sharpshooters and to erect a fort as protection against Indians. For this he was granted land two miles north and two miles south of the Massaponax. The estate was known as Smithfield and the original house was of stone and two dwellings still standing are now being used. The present house built in 1805 was added to in 1906, and Smithfield was joined to Mannsfield, one of the Page family estates. Mann Page in 1749 built the beautiful old mansion of stone as a replica of the home of his second wife Judith Tayloe, of Mount Airy, in Richmond County. This house was burned at the close of the Civil War by accident, by the North Carolina soldiers returning home. The Mannsfield Hall estate of today practically marks the right and left of the contending armies during the battle of Fredericksburg, being bounded on the south by the old Mine Road to Hamilton's Crossing which is on the property. It was at Mannsfield that the great Virginia jurist, Judge Brooke was born, the property being owned by that family until sold in 1805 to the Pratts. [Illustration: THE SENTRY BOX _Below, Where Gen. Mercer Lived. Above, Mansfield Hall, a Splendid Old Home_] _Church and School_ _How They Grew in the New World; Pathways to the Light._ In the spring of 1877, during the rectorate of Reverend E. C. Murdaugh at St. George's Church, questions arose as to certain forms of the Episcopal ritual. Some of the members of the congregation approving Dr. Murdaugh's views, believed them to be in perfect accord with the doctrines of the church, but others felt that the introduction of these debated minor forms was an innovation and tended towards a High Church ritual. These discussions were followed by the resignation of Dr. Murdaugh, and his followers assembled in old Citizen's Hall on the 7th day of August, 1877, and steps were there taken to organize Trinity Church. Reverend Dr. Murdaugh was promptly called to the rectorship of the new church, and Reverend Robert J. McBryde was called from the chaplaincy of the University of Virginia, to fill the vacancy at St. George's. With the kindly good fellowship, the tact, and the piety characteristic of his Scotch ancestry, "he lived in accord with men of all persuasions" both in the Mother Church and the youthful Trinity.