Durant settled on Little River, the
religious condition of Albemarle began to improve. In the spring of that
year, William Edmundson, a faithful friend and follower of George Fox,
the founder of the Quaker Church, came into Albemarle and held the first
public religious service ever heard in the colony at the house of Henry
Phelps, who lived in Perquimans County, near where the old town of
Hertford now stands. From there he went into Pasquotank, where he was
gladly received and gratefully heard. The following fall George Fox came
into the two counties himself, preached to the people and made a number
of converts to the Quaker doctrine.

This religious body grew in numbers and influence, and according to the
Colonial Records, "At a monthly meeting held at Caleb Bundy's house in
1703, it is agreed by Friends that a meeting-house be built at
Pasquotank with as much speed as may be." And later, between 1703 and
1706, this plan was carried out, and on the banks of Symons Creek, an
arm of Little River, between the two ancient settlements of Nixonton and
Newbegun Creek, the first Quaker meeting-house (and with the exception
of the old church in Chowan built by members of the Church of England),
the first house of worship in the State, was built.

Rough and crude was this house of God, simple and plain the large
majority of the men and women who gathered there to worship in their
quiet, undemonstrative way the Power who had led them to this land of
freedom. But the Word preached to these silent listeners in that rude
building inspired within them those principles upon which the foundation
of the best citizenship of our State was laid.

The Church of England, though long neglectful of her children in this
distant colony, had by this time begun to waken to her duty towards the
sheep of her fold in Carolina. Somewhere about 1700 a missionary society
sent a clergyman to the settlement, and in 1708 the Rev. Mr. Ackers
writes to Her Majesty's Secretary in London that "The Citizens of
Pasquotank have agreed to build a church and two chapels." As to the
location of these edifices, history remains silent; but that the church
had been sowing good seed in this new and fertile soil is shown by the
account given by the Rev. Mr. Adams of the people of Pasquotank, to whom
he had been sent as rector of the parish in that county.

According to the letter written by Mr. Adams to Her Majesty's Secretary,
there had come into the county with the