RFM Religious Education Building Renovation Kickoff Dinner
Beyond All Expectations II By Grace Palmer
Beyond All Expectation II
In need of companions for the path,
I was drawn by a Friend’s example
Toward Meeting’s open door…
Where beyond all expectation
I found myself at home!
It seems my heart was read at once
By this company of seekers,
For beyond all expectation
I was welcomed as true seeker,
Fellow traveler for the path.
This home, these Friends have shown me
What I’ve come at last to see:
That what is meant by path
Is simply a way to learn and grow
Beyond all expectation.
Grace Palmer
Minuted Concerns To The Meeting
RFM Minute Prepared for Baltimore Yearly Meeting — Sixth Month 2004
RFM Minute Regarding Contribution to FUM — Twelfth Month 2004
Letter to the Editor, Richmond-Times Dispatch — Third Month 2005
RFM Minute Regarding Genocide in Darfur – Eleventh Month 2006
RFM Minute Regarding Torture – Eleventh Month 2006
Friends Association For Children and Richmond Friends Meeting
By Donna Knicely, member of the History Committee
If you have lived in Richmond very long at all, you have probably heard of the Friends Association for Children. And, as a Quaker, you have probably wondered what the connection is between the two. The following history was provided by staff of the Friends Association for Children.
Friends Association, currently located at 1004 Saint John Street, was founded shortly after the Civil War. A group of black civic workers, the Ladies Sewing Circle for Charitable Works, recognized the need for an orphanage for black children who were left homeless following the War. Turmoil surrounding the abolition of slavery left many children in the Richmond area without parents, relatives or guardians.
Mrs. Lucy Goode Brooks, the Sewing Circle leader, convinced the members of her group that support was needed from community groups to undertake the project. She sought the endorsement and financial aid for the orphanage from the Richmond Society of Friends. It is believed that Society was approached because some members of the Sewing Circle had lived with Quaker families before and during the War and recognized their humanitarian interest in the less fortunate and oppressed. The group was also aware of the financial contributions Quakers had made to the education of black children in other communities.
Under the direction of John Baker Crenshaw, the Quakers became active in the effort to find relief for black orphans in Richmond. Mr. Crenshew was the minister of the Richmond Society of Friends and grandfather of former Judge J. Hodge Ricks of the Juvenile and Domestic Court. The Quakers agreed to sponsor the orphanage project and raised money in Virginia and in the Northern States. On August 12, 1867, the Richmond City Council voted to deed the “Old Orphan Asylum” lot at the corner of Saint Paul and Charity Streets to the Trustees of the Society of Friends for the construction of an orphanage for black children. The building was completed in 1871, and the Friends Asylum for Colored Orphans was incorporated by the Virginia General Assembly on March 26, 1872.
The organization was governed by white trustees until 1889. At that time, the composition of the Board of Trustees was altered to include only representatives of black, Richmond area Baptist churches. The number of trustees was determined by the financial support provided by each church. In recognition of this change, the Richmond City Council deeded the property to the Friends Asylum for Colored Orphans. Increased funding was granted to the Asylum in 1926 following a study by the Community Fund and the Child Welfare League of America, which concluded that the orphanage was vital to the city. After another study in 1929 it was determined that foster home care was more needed than an orphanage. In 1931 the orphanage was closed and the group became a foster care agency under the supervision of the Children’s Aid Society of Richmond.
In 1932 after separating from the Children’s Aid Society, the group was renamed the Friends Association for Colored Children. About this time services began to change in order to respond to the needs of the community. An adoption service was started in 1938 and a program providing counseling services to children in their homes was initiated in 1940. In 1947 Friends Association began the evolution of its current Child Care Program by opening the Community Day Nursery. In 1955 the foster care program was replaced by a pre-adoption boarding home and services for the unwed mother.
Today the Friends Association for Children is guided by three basic tenets: “child care is our business, the family is important to us, and we make it possible for children to reach their potential.”
1802 Quaker Petition Against Slavery
[Below a transcription of the 1802 Quaker petition against slavery presented to the Virginia legislature. Among those signing this petition are Samuel Parsons (the father of Samuel Pleasants Parsons, whose house survives at 601 Spring Street in Oregon Hill) and James Ladd (the uncle of Elizabeth Ladd, who married Samuel Pleasants Parsons).]
(Source: Miscellaneous Petitions to the Virginia Legislature, December 17, 1802. Archives of the Virginia State Library.)
To the speaker and House of Representatives of Virginia.
The memorial and petition of the religious Society of Friends.
Respectfully shew:
That your memorialists, estimating the importance of those concerns, which must necessarily engage the Legislature – feel no disposition to intrude upon your valuable time, or request your attention to subjects of a trivial nature but where grievances affecting any class of the community, arise from a partial construction of the laws, or exist because the laws have provided no remedy, we conceive it to be a duty, congenial with the spirit of legislation, and due to the House, faithfully to represent the same – and solicit such redress, as justice and equity require. Impressed with these sentiments- and feeling moreover the impulse of Religious duty, on behalf of the helpless, and unprotected – your memorialist beg leave to represent, certain cases of suffering, for which (in the opinion of some of the Courts) the laws have provided no effectual relief.
* Such we apprehend is the case of minor slaves, left free by will, but committed during their minority to the care of legatees – such minors notwithstanding their undoubted rights – and a clear conviction in the Courts of their claim to freedom – merely for the want of a legal prohibition – and on a ground of a temporary claim to their service – have been carried out of the State, and beyond the reach of testimony establishing their title – with the evident risk of being forever deprived of their freedom.
II Your memorialist beg leave further to represent that the practice of steeling, and selling free people of Color, continues to be carried on in some parts of the State; encouraged, we believe, by the little danger of conviction the law appearing to require evidence that free persons were stolen, or sold with a Knowledge of their being such. The difficulty, or rather their impossibility of adducing such evidence, we trust, will be sufficiently apparent, as well as the necessity of effectually restraining a practice which operates directly against the dignity of the Government – and contrary to the interest and spirit of the law, violates the first principles of justice with impunity. Your memorialist represent these subjects – with a full confidence that the justice, humanity, and sound policy of the Legislature will meet them with approbation. It cannot be supposed that the Representatives of a free, and enlightened people, can fail to appreciate the value of liberty, to whatever description of persons it may legally belong, or that they will not extend the barriers of the law around this inestimable privilege.
Interested as men and Christians, in the sufferings of our injured fellow creatures, and on behalf of numbers, who stand exposed to the same dangers – and may be involved in the same calamity – we therefore respectfully petition – That the law providing for the emancipation of slaves by will, and the law, respecting the stealing and selling free persons may be revised and amended – or that the legislature may make such provision for these cases as in their wisdom shall seem just and expedient.
Signed by order, and on behalf of the Representatives of the aforesaid Society
by James Ladd
Micajah Crew
Samuel Parsons
Jesse Copeland
Benjamin Bates Jr.
* See proviso to the law allowing emancipation. Abridgm’t of the permanent public laws, page 281.
II “If any person shall hereafter be guilty of stealing or selling any free person for a slave, knowing the said person so sold to be free, and thereof shall be lawfully convicted , the person so convicted, shall suffer death without benefit of Clergy.” Abridgment of the laws, page 280.
Friends Memorial. Mem. of L. to Riddick, Dupree, Dulaney, Allen, Sheffey, Shackelford, Aylett, Dunton, Jennings, Gee, Sebull, Blow, Josiah Riddick