| Notes |
- Col. Robert "King" Carter was America's first millionaire!
Obituary:
Headline:
SACRED GEOMETRY' RETIREE BELIEVES CHURCH IS ARCHITECTURAL
CALENDAR - Publication Date: April 23, 2000 - Source: Richmond
Times-Dispatch
Page: C-4; Subjects: ARCHITECTURE; RELIGION; BUILDING; SCIENCE
HISTORY
Region: Virginia
"Thou has ordered all things in number, weight and measure," quotes
Stephen Stewart from the ancient apocrypha's reference to God that he
said the British royal architect Sir Christopher Wren adopted as his
motto. Wren died in 1723,at least seven years before Lancaster County's
historic Christ Church was begun. But Stewart, who has pursued the
oft-referenced but never proven connection between Wren and the famous
Colonial church, thinks the motto is apt. "Number, weight and measure"
he believes describes the architectural masterpiece right down to the
curious symbols engraved in the metal key escutcheon on its front door
and the church's decorative sunburst pattern of wooden inlay above its
three-tiered pulpit.
Stewart is convinced the 265-year-old registerednational historic
monument is an architectural calendar. He believes it was deftly created
to tell time and celebrate the glory of Easter. It does, he maintains,
through a number-crunching design created with the use of what he calls
"sacred geometry" - the golden ratios of proportion that have existed in
architecture since earliest times. He says Christ Church is adjusted just
slightly south of an east- west alignment. It's the only way possible to
do what it does, he says. Among many things he has cataloged, it allows
the sun toshoot
a beam of light precisely upon the altar table during the midpoint of the
days reserved for Easter in the church calendar.
The building, he says, was carefully planned so its high west elliptical
window can capture the western sun beginning April 4, the midpoint of
Easter according to the moon phase, and continuing through April 8, the
midpoint among the span of days betweenMarch 22 through April 25 that
Easter can fall. The beam slants down to glisten on the altar table or
cross, depending on the day.
Whoever designed Christ Church "was building a house of worship including
all of God's geometry found in nature," says Stewart.
Stewart is not without his critics.
Officials associated with the church foundation say there has never been
a hint that Christ Church was designed to be anything else but a supreme
example of structural art.
"You would expect you'd find some mention" in records that Christ
Church was deliberately calibrated to capture sun rays, says Robert A.
Cornelius, the church foundation's director."
But, in the course of dogged day-after-day observations and record-
keeping over the years, Stewart says he's found that the building is
alive with solar phenomena and references to calendar numbers 52, 365 and
multiples of 13.
He has documented sunbeams striking, fourtimes a year, a tombstone
that's precisely in the center of the church's cross- shaped
intersection. The beams center the tombstone on May 6, Aug. 7, Nov. 7 and
Feb. 5. The dates are referred to in astronomy as "cross-quarter dates,"
Stewart says. They mark the midpoints of spring, summer, fall and winter.
Outside, shadows from the eaves on the west-facing wing move in tandem
withthe beam inside the church, Stewart said. The shadows trace the
course of spring to summer and back to fall as they are cast upon the
west faces of the south and north wings, he says.
There are an average 93.5 days from spring to summer and 93.5 days from
summer to fall. There are 93.5 courses of bricks on the building's walls,
Stewart says. But the tomb, which contains the remains of David Miles, a
former indentured servant who was a county justice, holds aspecial
interest for Stewart, who measured the dimensions of everything in the
church and its church yard before the foundat
|
1665 - 1732 (69 years)
Has 8 ancestors and more than 100 descendants in this family tree.
[2] 
Abt 1635 - Bef 1662 (< 26 years)
