John Stark Ravenscroft
| The Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft |
|
|---|---|
| I Bishop of North Carolina | |
 |
|
| Province |
The Episcopal Church 
|
| Diocese | North Carolina |
| Successor | Levi Silliman Ives |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | May 6, 1817 |
| Consecration | May 22, 1823 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 11, 1789 Prince George County, Virginia |
| Died | March 5, 1830 (aged 57) Raleigh, North Carolina |
| Buried | Christ Episcopal Church (Raleigh, North Carolina) |
John Stark Ravenscroft (May 17, 1772 – March 5, 1830) was the first Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina and helped organize the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee.
Ravenscroft was born in 1772 on his family plantation near Petersburg in Prince George County, Virginia, to parents (physician John Ravenscroft and the former Lilias Miller) who were both descendants of the powerful Colonel Robert Bolling. Because their Loyalist sympathies made the political situation unstable, when John was an infant his family moved to Scotland, where he received his earliest education.
Upon his father's death in 1788, Ravenscroft returned to Virginia to manage the family lands, as well as pursue their Loyalist indemnification claims. At age 27, he enrolled at the College of William & Mary to prepare for a legal career under the guidance of George Wythe and St. George Tucker. However, the wealthy young man also had extracurricular activities which, with his hot temper, earned him the nickname "Mad Jack". Eventually, he returned to Scotland to finish settling his father’s estate.
Returning again to Virginia, Ravenscroft married well, to Ann Spottswood Burwell, in 1792, and gave up his passions for gambling and horse racing. His wife's father (Col. Lewis Burwell) helped finance construction of their estate near his using locally noteworthy craftsmen Jacob Shelor and John Inge). Soon the Ravenscroft began living at Spring Bank in Lunenburg County. He later claimed that for eighteen years, he "never bent his knees in prayer, nor did he once open a Bible."
Around 1810 Ravenscroft experienced a religious conversion, and he and Ann joined a group known as "Republican Methodists". After three years, he was asked to become a leader of the community, but Ann died on August 5, 1815. About a year later, Ravenscroft decided to become a minister, but harbored doubts as to whether every Christian denomination (including the Republican Methodists) were valid and authorized by scriptures, and especially their fitness to perform sacraments. His great grandfather Capt. Samuel Ravenscroft had emigrated to Boston in 1679 and helped found the first Anglican Church in that city. His son (this Ravenscroft's father) Thomas had moved to James City County, and then Prince George County, Virginia where he represented his neighbors in the House of Burgesses as well as acquired land to the south along the Meherrin River and the North Carolina border. This old-line Virginian family had been long members of the Church of England. However, its successor in America, the Episcopal Church was disestablished after the Revolutionary War in both Virginia and North Carolina, and that denomination almost became extinct in the south. Rev. James Craig had retired or left the Meherrin River/Lunenburg County by 1795, and Evangelical denominations predominated —Presbyterians led by the Caldwells, Baptists founding the multi-ethnic Meherrin Baptist Church as well as the Cedar Creek Baptist Church, and Methodists visiting the area as part of their Brunswick Circuit included Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke. Nonetheless, as the Second Great Awakening began, Virginia's Episcopal Church was reviving. Richard Channing Moore become its bishop and happily confirmed Ravenscroft as an Episcopalian.
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