by Diane Bowden | May 18, 2024 | Activity, Adult Spiritual Education, Announcement, History - Quaker, History - RFM
Adult Spiritual Education invites all members and attenders, those new to Quakerism as well as seasoned Friends, to learn more about our history. Mark your calendars and plan on joining us on Saturday, June 22 at 9:30. Our topic will be Quaker History: Evolution and Revolution. Kelly Kennedy will get us started with a Zoom-easy introductory activity. Dan Shaw will cover early history from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and Scott Selby will address Virginia and Richmond history.
While no reading in advance is needed, some may want to brush up on Quaker history in preparation. Attached is an excerpt from Faith and Practice focusing on Quaker history. Feel free to read all, part, or none of it.
This session is ALL on Zoom. Please look for the link in the coming days as well as the day before June 22. We look forward to seeing many of you on the morning of June 22nd!
by Diane Bowden | Apr 10, 2024 | Activity, Adult Spiritual Education, Announcement, History - Quaker
Quakerism 101, a four-session introduction to Quakerism, its history, writings, values, and beliefs held its first session on Sunday, April 28, at 9:30 am with more than 30 friends attending. This session addressed “The Light Within: What Quakers Believe" with a panel discussion from Howard Garner, Steve Humphrey, and Rita Willett. Three other sessions that are planned for later this year:
• Quaker History: Revolution and Evolution on June 22, 9:30 am on Zoom.
• What do Committees Do? RFM Organization, Business Meeting, and Terminology, date TBD
• Living in the Light: Quaker Organizations in the US and Around the World; How Quakers Live in the World Today, date TBD
by Diane Bowden | Sep 15, 2019 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
R. Arnold Ricks III, 94, on February 24, 2018, at home in Bennington, Vt. Arnold was born on August 23, 1923, in Richmond, Va., to Anne Elizabeth Ryland and James Hoge Ricks. His father, a member of Richmond (Va.) Meeting, was from a long-established Quaker family and served as a pioneering judge of the Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for forty years, and his mother was from a Baptist family associated with the development of University of Richmond. A life-long Quaker, Arnold served in the Civilian Public Service as a conscientious objector, in 1941–1943 firefighting and doing reforestation in Oregon’s wilderness region and being an subjecting himself to experiments with hepatitis, which he contracted. In 1945 he joined the British-American relief team in rebuilding Cologne, Germany, where he helped to build a children’s center.
Originally a member of the Haverford College class of 1945, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in philosophy in 1948.. After earning a master’s in European history from Harvard University in 1954, he taught history at Swarthmore College. In 1963, he began teaching at Bennington College, where he also served two years as Dean of Studies. A beloved teacher, he spoke of classes as an “assault on the unknown and the imperfectly known.” In 1972 he married Pat Adams, a painter and colleague at Bennington College, and after a 4-month sabbatical in 1973, traveling through Europe and the Middle-East with his stepsons, Matthew and Jason, they settled in Old Bennington, Vt. Starting in 1974 he served as a trustee of the Village of Old Bennington and as Road Commission, overseeing the design and reconstruction of Monument Avenue, the village road leading to the Bennington Battle Monument, ensuring that the historic road would be in narrow in keeping with its environs, which go back to when the first frame house in Vermont was built in Bennington in 1763--a house still in use.
For decades he made generous contributions to Richmond (Va.) Meeting. He retired from Bennington College in 1992. Three years later, the mayor of Cologne, who as a child had benefited from the British-American Relief team’s work, led a celebration in honor of him and the other surviving team members. When he retired as a trustee of Old Bennington in 2014, the villagers presented him with an inscribed bench on the grass island in front of the Old First Church. As a trustee of the Bennington Museum from 1995 to 2015, he helped initiate a period of growth and revitalization for the museum, for which in 2013 it created the Hiland Hall Award to recognize his service. He lived as George Fox said, “[walking] cheerfully over the world answering that of God in everyone.”
Arnold is survived by his wife, Pat Adams; two stepsons, Matthew A. Longo and Jason R. Longo; a niece, Francie Ricks; three grandsons; and many Ryland cousins in Virginia. His remains rest in Old Bennington Cemetery. Donations to American Friends Service Committee or the Bennington Museum in care of the Hanson Walbridge & Shea Funeral Home, 213 West Main Street, Bennington, VT, are welcome.
by Diane Bowden | Sep 26, 2015 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
Few people alive today know that the Powhatan hamlet of Fine Creek was a center of Quaker life in what was once part of Goochland County; then a part of Cumberland County with its formation in 1749; and finally a part of Powhatan County with that county’s formation in 1777. The Fine Creek area was first developed in 1735 by John Pleasants Sr., a member of a prominent and early Virginia Quaker family. He built a gristmill at Lees Landing Road (Rt. 641) and Huguenot Trail (Rt. 711) along the lower falls of Fine Creek. Within a decade a small rural hamlet emerged next to the gristmill with several stores, a cooper’s shop, a blacksmith shop, a small cheese factory, a postal station, and a ferry that provided access across the James River to the northern part of Goochland County. Eventually a one room schoolhouse was also built for the area’s children.
We know from the historical Quaker record that White Oak Swamp Monthly Meeting (aka. Henrico Monthly Meeting) allowed a “particular” (or subordinate) Quaker Meeting, Fine Creek Meeting, to be created in the area in 1746. At that time in Quaker history a new meeting would not have been allowed by the “monthly” (parent) meeting if there were not a good number of Quakers willing to support its ongoing existence. Quaker discipline was strict then and not the laisser-faire culture of liberal Quakerism today. Quakers were required to attend worship every “First Day” (Sunday) at the local meetinghouse if they were to remain Quakers. So, we know that a ready-made and active membership would have been available to provide ongoing support for the new meeting.
White Oak Swamp Monthly Meeting had a dozen or so Quaker meetings under its care during the eighteenth century. Fine Creek Meeting was just one of these, along with its “sister” meeting of Richmond Friends Meeting. Had Fine Creek meeting survived the ravages of history, today it would be 49 years older than Richmond Friends Meeting.
Powhatan County archives do indicate that Fine Creek Quakers were active abolitionists. James Pleasants of Fine Creek (brother of John Pleasants Sr. who was instrumental in developing the gristmill at Fine Creek) began emancipating his slaves around 1800 along with Fine Creek Quakers John Pleasants Jr. and Jonathan Pleasants, both sons of John Pleasants Sr. No doubt they were prompted to do so by a unanimous decision by all Virginia Quakers in 1800 to “disown” (the term then used to revoke Quaker membership) any Quaker who refused to emancipate their slaves. All Virginia Quakers had been asked to begin doing so since the mid 1770’s. County and historical records demonstrate a concerted effort by Fine Creek Quakers to systematically work towards this end. It wasn’t until 1804, however, that the county finally began providing newly freed blacks their certificates of freedom.
Fine Creek Meeting existed from 1746 until 1780 – some 34 years. Yet, there is much mystery surrounding the meeting. At that time in Quaker history, once a meeting was in existence for more than a few years, there was pressure as well as support to build a permanent meetinghouse. Also, Fine Creek meeting was nurtured by the Pleasants family – one of the wealthiest families in Virginia. So, the circumstantial evidence would suggest that a meetinghouse existed somewhere in the Fine Creek area of Powhatan.
Where exactly was the Fine Creek meetinghouse located? Was it in the hamlet surrounding the gristmill; or, was it in the surrounding countryside? Why was the Fine Creek Meeting “laid down” after existing for 34 years? One can only hope that as ancient records become more searchable due to digitization, someone will be able to fill in the missing pieces to this local Quaker mystery.
— Howard Brod, Midlothian Friends Meeting
by Diane Bowden | Apr 24, 2015 | History - Quaker, History - RFM, Peace and Social Concerns
There have been several celebrations and ceremonies marking the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War and the freeing of slaves in the south. These events note an important milestone as a step toward greater racial equality, and Virginia Friends were allies in that equality quest.
Because it was against the law in Virginia to free your slaves, many Friends went to Ohio and Indiana, states that were more open to abolition. Due to dwindling numbers, the Virginia Yearly Meeting joined the Baltimore Yearly Meeting in 1843. Quakers who stayed in Virginia faced a hostile environment and needed to be discreet in their support of African-Americans. One supporter, John Bacon Crenshaw, a member of the Cedar Creek Meeting (mother to the Richmond Meeting) lived on a farm six miles north of Richmond. To help guide fugitive slaves north, he drove nails into fences and posts to indicate the route that led north. He is but one of many Friends aiding escaping slaves.
After the Civil War, a period called Reconstruction lasted from 1867 until 1875. During this brief time, African-Americans voted and elected legislators, pushing more equal treatment, but the white power establishment reasserted institutional racism by passing a huge body of laws that was called Jim Crow. From drinking fountains to walking on sidewalks, no aspect of civic life was too small to govern. This period, from 1875, lasted until the 1950’s, when it began to crumble with Brown vs. Board of Education. Most Jim Crow laws were finally dismantled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
White Privilege roots are deep and persistent, and as Michele Alexander points out in “The New Jim Crow” and Benjamin Campbell notes in “Richmond’s Unhealed History”, our prison system and zoning and boundary manipulations have been used to diminish the lives of our African-American citizens once again.
Today, in our prison population of 2.3 million, African-American are a disproportionate number of the imprisoned. Outside of prison, these, our brothers and sisters, lead shorter, unhealthier lives, earn less money, have poorer housing and school options than white people. So, 150 years after the Civil War ended, much has been changed, and much more remains to be changed.
Today’s Richmond Friends Meeting continues the work of earlier Friends to advocate for a fairer, kinder and more loving community for all to live and grow in.
by Diane Bowden | Jun 22, 2014 | Adult Spiritual Education, History - Quaker, Library
The Library Committee plans to feature periodically books that may be of particular interest to Friends. Currently featured are two books about Margaret Fell:
Undaunted Zeal: The Letters of Margaret Fell, editor and introduction by Elsa F. Glines
Margaret Fell and The End of Time: The Theology of Modern Quakerism , Sally Bruyneel
They are located along the board with Quaker magazines and other items of interest.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 18, 2008 | History - Quaker, Peace and Social Concerns, Testimonies, Writings - RFM
Friends affirm a Biblical basis for the peace testimony. A Prince of Peace was prophesied who would bring in a Peaceable Kingdom. “Thou shalt not kill” is one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus taught and lived peacemaking and love of enemy. George Fox similarly counseled his followers “to live in the life and power which does away with the occasion for war.”
The material below was prepared earlier by Mary Fran Hughes-McIntyre and is excerpted from her History of Richmond Friends Meeting, 1795-1962, available in the Meeting Library. (or here:THE HISTORY OF RICHMOND FRIENDS MEETING 1795-1962)
Living Out the Peace Testimony
Friends affirm a Biblical basis for the peace testimony. A Prince of Peace was prophesied who would bring in a Peaceable Kingdom. “Thou shalt not kill” is one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus taught and lived peacemaking and love of enemy. George Fox similarly counseled his followers “to live in the life and power which does away with the occasion for war.”
Early Richmond Friends were firm pacifists, disowning from membership those who bore arms. Doubtless knowing Friends from Cedar Creek Meeting who had firmly refused to fight during the Revolutionary War, Friends in Richmond affirmed a pacifist stand in the War of 1812. Friends suffered payment of muster fines rather than fight. As part of Virginia Yearly Meeting, they concurred with the following statement:
While we view with sorrow the awful progress of war spreading desolation and Misery in the human family, let us endeavor to guard our Minds from mixing in the politics of the times, which will insensibly leven into the spirit, and will lead if not to the practice at least to the promotion of that destructive evil.
During the War between the States, some Richmond Friends chose to fight, and some were conscientious objectors. Cedar Creek Monthly Meeting (of which Richmond Friends became a part in 1841) accepted the resignation of three persons who chose to fight, but “earnestly hopes that the day is not distant when those with many others aroused by the awful juncture of war now presented to our view may be enabled to renounce principles which lead to such results and enlist under the banner of the Prince of Peace.”
In the period from 1914-1920 the Peace Committee of Richmond Friends meeting was particularly active workingfor peace and reconciliation in the period of the Great War. Peace literature was distributed in the schools, and prizes were offered in 1916 for the best essays on “Why We Do Not Need a Large Increase in our Army and Navy”: $15 first prize to a boys’ school, $10 first prize to a girls’ school. (Editor: Friends have not been free from societal sexism and racism.) Money was donated for Belgian relief in 1914, for English and Armenian relief in 1916, for French orphans in 1917, and for feeding the German children in 1920. Letters were sent to Senators and Representatives in 1916 urging opposition to the so-called “preparedness” for war. The Friends Peace Committee ran two advertisements in the newspapers, including the following:
PEACE OR WAR?
To our fellow-citizens:
In this time of crisis when our country’s highest good is the common aim of all, we voice this deep conviction of patriotic duty.
The causes for which men fight—liberty, justice, and peace—are noble and Christian causes. But war itself violates law, justice, liberty and peace, the very ends for which alone its tragic costs might be justified…
In World War II, Friends were again active in peace-making. Member Hoge Ricks met at homes in 1940 with young Friends to think through their stands on the peace testimony in anticipation of their being faced with conscription. After the war opposition to conscription continued, with visits to Congressional Representative, and a firm stand against the Selective Service Act of 1948.
A change in Friends’ custom of disowning those who bear arms in evident in 1943. A member wrote saying that he had joined the Armed Forces as a result of personal conviction, and that he doubted the Meeting wanted his membership. The Meeting decided to stay in touch with him, since “to encourage him would do more that to ostracize him.”
(Richmond) Friends were proud of having several members, who were conscientious objectors, serving in Civilian Public Service Camps. Their peace testimony was affirmed.
Thus, Richmond Friends stood consistently against war, and dealt in increasingly lenient ways with Friends who chose to fight.
* * * *
(Editor: During World War II, some 12,000 men who were conscientious objectors to war, served in non-military occupations across the U.S. Under the leadership of Mennonite, Quaker and Church of the Brethren agencies, they were engaged in mental health care and medical experiments, in forestry and diary farming, and in other important civic projects.)
by Diane Bowden | Dec 18, 2000 | Archive, History - Quaker, Peace and Social Concerns
[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
by Diane Bowden | Dec 19, 1800 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
Hannah Watts Clarke
(circa 1754–1843)
Hannah Watts Clarke was a lifelong member of the Society of Friends. Her portrait, attributed to Charles Burton, an English painter, was done about 1840. She is shown in profile looking out on what is thought to be the first Quaker Meeting House in Richmond, built by George Winston on 19th and Cary Streets.
By 1840 Hannah was a widow and the matriarch of a sizable kinship group of Quakers who had emigrated to Richmond from Northern Ireland in the early 1800’s.
The Clarkes (Hannah, her husband, John, and their eight children) were from County Antrim, Ulster. The transfer of their memberships from Lisburn Monthly Meeting to Richmond Particular Meeting was recorded on the 12th of Third Month, 1801. They left a country plagued by poverty and political unrest following the Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1800. The family resided on Main Street between 18th and 19th, where John Clarke worked as a grocer nearby. Their home was only a block away from the Meeting House.
The original portrait, which is done in watercolor and pastel, is in the possession of Eda Williams Martin of Williamsburg, Virginia. The photo print here was made from a transparency of the original portrait loaned to us by the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Colonial Williamsburg. There are seventeen extant portraits of Clarke and Sinton family members done by Burton. Hannah’s portrait is the only one showing the Meeting House, perhaps symbolic of the importance of the Meeting in her life as well as realistic. It is the only known depiction of the Meeting House in existence.
Text was supplied by Eda Williams Martin and is based on research she has done in Quaker records.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 19, 1800 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
The Jacob House
by Harry Kollatz, Jr.
The Jacob House is a small place with a big history. During its most recent years, it deteriorated and got up rooted. Now restored, it’ll be given away to a worthy cause.
Until 1995, Jacob House stood on its original circa-l817 site. Plans for the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Engineering removed it from 610 W. Cary St. across the street to 619 W. Cary St. Preservationists, religious organizations and members of the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council (OHHIC) campaigned to keep the house at 610 W. Cary. Some time later, it came into the ownership of developer Stephen Salomonsky. He was aware of the house’s complex story.
“I knew of its history and all that it stood for,” he explains, “and was also fortunate to acquire the adjacent properties that allowed me to do something interesting with Oregon Hill.”
Richmond master builder and prominent Friend (Quaker) George Winston (1759-1826) built Jacob House as a speculative property for the Town of Sydney, a proposed community for Richmond’s then-West End. An 1819 stock crash halted the plan, however, and Sydney’s planned Street grid formed the template for Oregon Hill and the Fan District.
The house was on an elevated lot, close to town and by the newly established Westham Turnpike (Cary Street). The Quakers were involved in anti-slavery activity, including the employment, rather than bondage, of African-Americans. Winston employed free black apprentices who laid their own handmade brick and raised the house’s pinioned rafters. These same bricklayers constructed the Benjamin Latrobe-designed state penitentiary (where the Ethyl Corp. campus is today) and assisted in the construction of the Virginia State Capitol.
Winston also erected the city’s first Friends Meeting House, at 19th and Cary streets, in 1797. According to researchers Dulaney Ward and Charles Pool, under Winston’s direction the free blacks built more than 100 brick buildings in Shockoe Bottom, 30 or more houses in Church Hill and the 1795 mansion of Thomas Rutherfoord (demolished in 1895), at Adams and Franklin streets.
John Jacob (l790-1864), a penitentiary assistant superintendent, was the house’s first recorded resident. A Quaker’s son, Jacob founded what became Grace Baptist Church and lived in the house for many years. During the 1830s he expanded the house to suit the needs of his family of seven. Jacob moved in 1853 to Woodlawn, his estate that stood where Interstate 64 now crosses the Mechanicsville Turnpike.
Another Jacob House resident was French native Lewis Rivalain, whose drawings of insured properties covered by the Mutual Assurance Society of Virginia provide an indispensable record of early Richmond and Virginia buildings, from Mount Vernon to Shockoe’s first 17th Street Market building.
After the Civil War, canal-boat builder John Messier resided in the Jacob House. He enjoyed a short walk from home to his canal-boat building business, which was behind today’s Virginia War Memorial.
Eugene Crehen, another Frenchman, and Richmond’s best illustrator in the mid-19th century, occupied the house from 1886 to 1895. During the Civil War, he was a designer of uniforms and a popular portraitist.
Exactly a century after the brick maker Winston built the house, it became home to brick maker Edward Thurston Mankin, whose kilns fired the brick for the Carillon, the Virginia Museum and many buildings in restored Colonial Williamsburg.
From 1947 to 1974, Jacob House was an urban mission called the Cary Street Baptist Center. While it was variously occupied and neglected, a city university thrived nearby. But pleas to incorporate Jacob House into VCU’s School of Engineering failed.
In 1995, activist John Alan Schintzius stood in front of a bulldozer in an unsuccessful attempt to keep the Jacob House in place. Early this year Schintzius contacted Salomonsky with an idea for allowing the house to continue its tradition of social involvement while recognizing Richmond’s abolitionist and Quaker history.
A commission of 15 people comprised of historians, preservationists and community members are selecting a suitable charitable organization to occupy it. “The idea is that [a nonprofit] would have offices upstairs and [downstairs] a museum dedicated to raising up the memory of what happened there,” Salomonsky says.
From Richmond Magazine, October 2003, page 136.
* * * *
- This photo was taken around 1895 and was given to historian by Bob Willis, who is related to the Duesberries who lived in the house. In the left window is Lislie Duesberry and Sarah Duesberry, and on the front porch is Sadie Duesberry (holding cat), Laura Crehen, and Sarah Wickham (nurse in white apron). Notice the old shutters, the old fence and the carriage stone on the sidewalk.
* * * *
Jacob House Citizens Commission
In 2003, the Richmond Friends Meeting assisted in the selection of a new owner for the Jacob House. Stephen Salomonsky, a builder and the owner of Jacob House, made the decision to give the house to a worthy not-for-profit organization, as he began the construction of a private college dormitory in the adjacent area.
Stephen approached the Friends Meeting and asked our help in choosing a new owner. Alan Schnitzius of the Friends Meeting helped Salomonsky in conceiving the selection process. The Quaker practice of consensus decision-making would be used in choosing the new owner.
The Jacob House Citizens Commission was comprised of some 15 individuals who represented historians, historical preservationists, and Oregon Hill community representatives. David Depp of the Friends Meeting clerked the Citizens Commission and Betsy Brinson, Meeting historian, staffed it.
The Commission selected from a number of applications the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council. The mission of OHHIC is to preserve and rehabilitate old properties in the Oregon Hill neighborhood. OHHIC will use the Jacob House for their office operations. The Citizens Commission felt of all the applicants that OHHIC was not only doing good community work but also knew best how to preserve and care for historical property.
On June 8, 2004, OHHIC celebrated a dedication ceremony at the Jacob House. A number of public officials attended the event, including the mayor, two legislators and the state Secretary for Natural Resources. A historical marker to the Jacob House was unveiled. A permanent one room wall exhibit of local Quaker history is located on the first floor for all to see.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 19, 1800 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
George and Judith Winston were birthright Quakers who were active with Richmond area Quakers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. George was a maker of bricks and a builder so he built the first Meetinghouse at 20th and Cary Street in 1797. This building no longer exists but a needlework sampler sewed by his daughter Mary in 1806 shows us the front and the back of the brick Meeting House. Records also show that the Meeting did not finish payment to George Winston for the 30 by 40-foot square building until 1816.
The house in the photograph was built by George Winston in Church Hill, built about 1810 and was probably used for his business.It was located between 25th and 26th and Broad and Grace Streets in the area we know today as Church Hill. At that time the area was known as Shed Town, perhaps because there were so many sheds in the backyards. Winston used the backyard for his brickyard. The Winstons became strong opponents of slavery and as a result, George did not hire slaves to work in his construction business. Instead he trained free black apprentices for the work. George and Judith may have lived here from 1810-1816 when they moved their residence to 2604 East Franklin Street.
George and Judith were originally members of and were married under the care of the White Oak Swamp Meeting about 15 miles out of Richmond in Henrico county. We believe that once they lived in Richmond and the Richmond Meeting was organized that they probably became active in the Richmond Meeting since it was more convenient. They were the parents of 14 children. Interestingly Judith though in 1810 was placed under the care of the White Oak Swamp Meeting for not attending meetings. She confessed that it was true and accepted the rebuke. However, she did not resume her attendance at meetings and she was condemned for having encouraged her daughter in going to plays and dances. She was dismissed from the Society on July 6, 1811. Judith may well have become disenchanted with her restricted life of constant pregnancy and felt that she wanted more for her daughters. She may have simply been too tired to continue to make the effort to attend meetings.
Henrico County court records show that George took seriously that he should not hold slaves and instead should prepare free black apprentices with job skills. Repeatedly in the records are agreements to teach an apprentice a trade. In June 1804, George Winston had placed with him, Daniel, a free, black, orphan boy to learn the trade and mystery of a house joiner. “Apprentice is to serve from the date thereof for a period of nine years, nine months and seven days or until Daniel arrives at the age of twenty-one.” The 1820 census listed twenty-one male free blacks ranging in age from 14-25 living and working with Winston. George was also a trustee of the Gravely Hill School, a Quaker institution for the education of blacks.
Business was good. George had begun to build houses and stores at a time when Richmond was growing rapidly. He built the block of stores at 14th and Main along with many other buildings. It is said that he also provided bricks and lime for the building of the state penitentiary and for the new Capitol. In 1817, he built the Jacob House, now located at Pine and Cary. This may be his last standing building.
The photograph is provided us courtesy of the Library of Virginia
Our thanks to Charles Pool, Virginia Davis, Gregg Kimball and the Library of Virginia for the above information and for the photograph.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 19, 1800 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
James Pleasants deserves more fame than he has received. He was raised a Quaker and served as Governor of Virginia, 1822-25. He also served in the Virginia House of Delegates, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Within the context of his times, Pleasants was quite reform minded. He was in a unique position to influence change. Through his Quaker father, he was related to many reformers. Through his aristocratic mother, he was a cousin to Thomas Jefferson and related to other rich and powerful people.
As Governor, his most successful reform was the elimination of public flogging in favor of incarceration. His efforts to establish public education, improve roads and attain fairer representation for western counties were less successful.
He spoke out for free blacks at a time when Virginia law required that they be removed from the state. This law was finally relaxed in 1828. Throughout most of his career, Pleasants was a staunch Jeffersonian. However, his opposition to the policies of Andrew Jackson led him to support the Whig Party. His son, John, was the first editor of the Richmond Whig. His Quaker heritage may have contributed to his remarkable personality. A contemporary, John Randolph, said that Pleasants “never lost a friend or gained an enemy.”
In some way, he was only a Friend in the same sense as Richard Nixon. Jay Worrall, in The Friendly Virginian, called him “a Quaker turned politician.” For his law practice, he traveled in a fancy carriage that cost a whooping $250. He held 18 slaves on his Goochland County plantation. As a Congressman, he supported the War of 1812. Still, there is no reference to James Pleasansts that does not mention his Quaker heritage.
Wayne Young has provided us the information above on James Pleasants, a Virginia governor, who was influenced by Quakers..
* * * *
“The Religious Society of Friends in Virginia has long standing interest in penal reform. For example in 1788 of 66 criminals tried, twenty-five were convicted and executed, three imprisoned, one burnt in the hand and thirty-seven discharged. In 1796, Virginia reformed its penal laws so “that no crime whatsoever committed by any free person should be punished with death, except murder in the first degree. In 1799, Virginia abolished capital punishment and replaced it with one to ten years in the penitentiary (operated in part by Richmond Quakers) “fearing that some unfortunate victim might be deprived of life, contrary to those (humanitarian) principles.” In 1802 capital punishment was reinstated for treason. James Lownes and Thomas Ladd, two members of the Richmond Meeting, regretted not making a deeper study of capital punishment and thus refrained from making a recommendation about it to the legislature.” (History of Richmond Friends Meeting, 1795-1962) by Mary Fran Hughes McIntyre, 1979.
Author and RFM member Margaret Edds continues in the tradition of those two Friends’ concerns about capital punishment with her new book An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr.. (New York University Press, 2003). She provides readers a clearer understanding of the history and the modern day reality of the Virginia justice system as evidenced in the case study of Earl Washington, a 23-year-old black man from Culpeper, who by his own confession was sentenced in 1985 for the murder of a young white mother. He was incarcerated for 18 years and spent nine years on death row. The defendant was mentally retarded with a 69 IQ (age 10 equivalency). What we learn is that people with this level of retardation are usually very agreeable and willing to say what they are asked to say. His legal team argued that this was cause for his confession. Not surprisingly Earl Washington was a model prisoner with no infractions and liked by guards and inmates alike. DNA evidence eventually proved him not guilty. Washington now lives in Virginia Beach, where he works as a handyman and is newly married to a woman he met through his community mental health program.
This chilling story also provides insight into a system of representation where appointed legal counsel can be inadequate, why videotaping a confession to insure accuracy as well as to show body language is important, and how gubernatorial politics can play a part. Governors Wilder and Gilmore both were asked to assist with pardons. In 1994, on the eve of departure from office, Wilder granted immunity from the death penalty based on new DNA findings but offered life in prison for Washington, who had rightfully been convicted in a second case for burglary and assault. In 1999 a filmmaker raised the inadequacies of the legal findings and the frailties of the justice system in the PBS Frontline series, helping once again to open up the legal process for Earl Washington. A public campaign, which included editorial support from many Virginia newspapers, followed. On October 2, 2000, Governor Gilmore granted an absolute pardon but gave the state parole board the question of when to release Washington. Four months later Washington was free.
Richmonders Marie Deans of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons and local attorney Jerry Zerkin are among the cast of characters who made up the legal team from around the country that spent years defending Earl Washington. Ironically it was Joe Giarratano, another inmate on death row, who authored Washington’s early appeal for habeas corpus since Washington was intellectually unable to handle the research and writing for such an appeal.
Edds relates not only a fascinating story of injustice but does a fine job in helping readers to understand the intricacies of the Virginia justice system and the improving changes in DNA testing. Readers who are especially interested in the Virginia history of capital punishment will find some of that story also. She helps us to understand why capital punishment is wrong and how death penalty law and protocol can frequently be in error.
In June 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court banned capital punishment of offenders who are retarded. Edds argues that this is just a beginning. “The key will be in the extant to which defense attorneys are able to get skilled assessments of clients and persuade juries of intellectual deficits and gaps in adaptive behavior,” she says.
Margaret Edds has provided a free copy of her book to the RFM Library.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 18, 1800 | History - Quaker, History - RFM
Robert Pleasants, who was born at Curles in Henrico County, Virginia in 1723 and died in 1801, was one Virginia’s most noted Quaker abolitionists. As one of the founders of the Virginia Abolition Society in 1790, he served as president. In 1782 he successfully lobbied for the Manumission Act, which, within one decade, was responsible for freeing over ten thousand slaves in Virginia. In 1792 Mr. Pleasants submitted a petition to the U.S. Congress from the Virginia Abolition Society calling for the end of the slave trade. Mr. Pleasants went to court repeatedly to free hundreds of slaves. He wrote to Virginia leaders such as George Washington and Patrick Henry, asking that slavery be abolished. (See links below.)
In 1784, two years after manumitting his slaves, Mr. Pleasants founded the Gravelly Hill School, the first school for free blacks in Virginia, and set aside 350 acres of land to maintain the schools. Henrico Parks and Recreation dedicated a historic maker on the Gravelly Hill Site in 2003.
The Oregon Hill Neighborhood Association successfully petitioned the Richmond City Council in 2003 to name Pleasants Park at 401 South Laurel Street for Robert Pleasants.
Robert Pleasants Links:
1777 Letter to Patrick Henry (transcribed)
1785 Letter to George Washington (transcribed)
1790 Abolition Society Advertisement (original)
The Virginia Abolition Society (Article)
1790 Letter to Virginia Independent Chronicle (Transcribed)
1791 Memorial of the Virginia Society (Transcribed)
by Diane Bowden | Dec 18, 1800 | History - Quaker
March is Women’s History Month as declared by Congress, the Virginia legislature and the Richmond City Council in the 1980s. Thus, we want to share with you this month the stories of 19th century Quaker sisters Lucy and Sarah Chase, Eunice Congdon and Sarah Smiley (photo left), along with others. These women traveled to Virginia during the Civil War to be of assistance. Our thanks to authors Jay Worrell and Linda Selleck for the material presented below.
In 1862 Sarah and Lucy Chase from Worchester, MA arrived in Norfolk, Virginia. Lucy was age 39 and her sister, Sarah, age 25. Right after Union troops got control of the area around Norfolk in December 1862, Lucy and Sarah appeared in their Quaker bonnets. They came as emissaries of the Boston Education Commission. General Ben Butler, military governor of Norfolk, assigned the sisters to work with 2,000 ragged and bewildered Contrabands on Craney Island, six miles from Norfolk.
Craney Island’s muddy crudeness shocked the sisters. Late into the night they heard swelling spirituals sung, the chant and response sermons of black preachers. They survived severe homesickness. Army regulations frustrated them. They scourged for supplies, acted as teachers, nurses, mediators, counselors, and comforters. When a delegation of
New York Friends came to build them a schoolhouse, they were glad.
By early 1864 the Union armies had pushed up the James River from Norfolk halfway to Richmond. A company of eight or nine Friends came then to set up a Contraband area. The newly formed Friends Freedman’s Association of Philadelphia sent them. By this time the Chase sisters were seasoned refugee workers so they were invited to relocate to Slabtown, a new village for 400 refugee black families, near Yorktown.
Here they organized parties of black men to build a community center, a warehouse, and schoolhouses. Other work parties tended truck gardens for Slabtown’s food supply. A medical dispensary was established. Eunice Congdon from New England headed up the Quaker teachers at Slabtown. Lucy was so impressed with the teachers that she wrote home, saying, “The Friends have already done great work here. They have nearly 300 pupils in their day school and a large night school of adults.”
In 1865, within a week of surrender, Lucy and Sarah Chase visited Richmond. Soon they had a school underway in Richmond’s First African Church, enrolling a thousand black children and seventy-five adults.
Sarah Smiley joined the Chase sisters in Richmond to start her industrial school for adults there. She bought nine young Quaker teachers from the north to Richmond. She established a “Teachers’ Home” in Richmond and very likely was the person who established the shelter for abandoned black children that John Crenshaw and Richmond Meeting later made the Friends Asylum for Colored Children. Sarah Smiley joined Richmond Meeting in First Month 1866 and the Meeting later recorded her as a minister.
These Quaker women were among the many, who were excellent representatives of the sort of independent-minded women the Society of Friends were capable of producing in the first half of the 1800s. Their early exposure to religious thinking produced an ability to clearly define and obtain their own spiritual, intellectual, and professional needs. They had learned to coexist in the midst of controversy with dry charm and flexibility.
These women were not without friendly encouragement. From a distance their enlightened sisters steadily maintained personal communication and financial aid. Numerous northern-based support groups of Quaker women corresponded regularly with their transplanted Friends. Over the years, their contributions of funds enabled the women to focus immense energies into the cause of black assistance, despite the lack of white fellowship found in most southern communities.
SOURCES:
Selleck, Linda B. Gentle Invader:” Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Athens, GA, Friends United Press, 1995.
Worrall, Jay, Jr. The Friendly Virginians: America’s First Quakers. Charlottesville, VA, Iberian Publishing Company, 1994.
by Diane Bowden | Dec 18, 1600 | History - Quaker
In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson reflected on the religious intolerance in seventeenth-century Virginia, specifically on the anti-Quaker laws passed by the Virginia Assembly from 1659 onward. Jefferson apparently believed that it was no more than an historical accident that Quakers had not been physically punished or even executed in Virginia as they had been in Massachusetts.
From “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic” pages on the Library of Congress website.
