by WebPost | Dec 18, 1962 | History - RFM, Writings - RFM
THE HISTORY OF RICHMOND FRIENDS MEETING
1795–1962
by
Mary Fran Hughes
Richmond, Virginia
1979
Since joining Richmond Friends Meeting in 1976, I have wondered about the history of my new spiritual family. A sense of our history might give us an appreciation for who we are and can become. Realizing that hardly any of the present active members had been in the Meeting prior to 1960 left me wondering about the danger of our being cut off from our heritage — no one even seemed to know how long it stretched back. (Photo 2003)
My interest was encouraged by Jay Worrall, official historian for Virginia Friends, who generously opened his card files on Virginia Friends’, history. Patricia Hickin, a historian who has worked with the Virginia State Library, likewise shared her historical resources and her enthusiasm for the project. Eda Martin whose interest in family history led to study of Quaker ancestors in Richmond Friends Meeting brought forth notes, books, watercolor portraits, a pilgrimage to Friends’ graves in Hollywood Cemetery, and a deep concern for historical accuracy. The occasion for the history-writing was James Smylie’s American Religious History course at Union Theological Seminary. His insistence that I learn about the broader contexts of Virginia, Richmond, national, and American religious history added depth and occasional discoveries about the topic itself. These persons and William McIntyre read the following history and offered editorial suggestions.
Discovering a history which went hack all the way to 1795 and which was passed down through a single family for about 150 years was breath-taking. With the Meeting’s current Friends General Conference (more Hicksite) orientation, we have a long heritage of Orthodoxy through the lifetime of the Crenshaw family in the Meeting. Our testimonies on peace and reform of the social order have been faithfully lived out as Friends have met silently to wait upon the Lord. From worship came fresh strength and perspective.
Since no systematic history of Richmond Friends Meeting has been previously written, I feel a responsibility to choose themes and to organize them in a way which grows out of the history itself. The hope is that contemporary and future Richmond Friends may gain insight through what has been lived out before. Yet, the focus is on issues alive today. With the current efforts to revive the draft, I have focused on our pacifist history which responded to each war or rumor of war with a peace-making stand. The Meeting’s recent sponsorship of eleven Cambodian refugees is in harmony with Friends testimony on race relations and the abolition of slavery. As we wrestle with our ministry in the prisons and in opposition to capital punishment, we look to our predecessors who did likewise.
May our history move us to “walk cheerfully over the world, looking for that of God in every person.”
Read full paper (PDF)…. THE HISTORY OF RICHMOND FRIENDS MEETING 1795-1962
by WebPost | Dec 21, 1930 | History - RFM
Where the Money Went
A Brief Look at Richmond Friends’ Spending
In the Early Years of the Last Century
The responsibility of a treasurer is to keep careful track of the money coming into and going out of an organization. But the legacy of a treasurer also can be a rich historical record of the values and behavior of a group of people. What a society values is what it spends its money on. It’s true of nations, states, and cities. It’s also true of groups like the Religious Society of Friends.
In 4th month 1917, for instance, Richmond Friends’ treasurer Edwin A. Russell recorded a payment of $46.80 to Richmond Dairy Company for “Colored Orphanage Milk Jan, Feb & Mar.” In 5th month he paid for April: $16.80 for 120 quarts of milk. A few months earlier, he had paid $25.00 to the YWCA to support its “Colored work” – probably its Phyllis Wheatley branch. He also sent $50.00 to the American Friends Service Committee.
The Friends Meeting budget from October 1917 through July 1918 was $981.70. Of that amount, $408.15 was carried forward to the following budget. Most of the money went to support social causes, especially needy African Americans. Some of it went to rent the Blue Room of the YMCA where the Friends met: $2.50 a week. But substantially more than half the actual expenditures of the Meeting were to charity and in support of humanitarian causes.
There were few contributions from members: only an occasional sum for some specific project or group like the Board of Foreign Missions. The Meeting had invested funds in loans secured by real estate: either mortgages or what we now might call home equity loans. The interest supported the operating expenditures.
1918 brought the end of World War I. Friends almost immediately began to support various refugee projects, recognizing the enormous ruin that had been done to property, economies, and human lives. Treasurer Katherine Ricks carried on Friends’ support of local social programs. But she also paid $75.00 for Syrian relief in 1st month, 1919. In the next several months, Friends contributed money to help German and Austrian children and “Sufferers in Near East.” The Meeting also placed advertisements in the Times-Dispatch seeking contributions to these causes from the general public. Soon the needy of Russia and Armenia were added to the list.
1918 also was the year in which a virulent strain of influenza struck the United States, killing thousands. The Meeting contributed funds for the “Nurses Settlement during epidemic,” probably a temporary headquarters for nurses trying to contain the virus.
In 6th month 1920, the Meeting contributed $25.00 to the American Union Against Militarism. The organization is still around. Today, it is known as the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.
After 1921, the treasurers’ entries become much less neat and much more sketchy. It’s difficult to know what is happening but the Meeting still paid rent to the YMCA. No expenditures are recorded for milk for the Colored Orphanage or to support the Phyllis Wheatley branch of the YWCA. Nor are there expenditures for international relief.
But on October 31, 1929, the Meeting paid $17,002.45 to the Trustees of the Christian Science Church to purchase a building at the corner of Park and Meadow in Richmond. From that point on, expenditures are recorded for coal, wood, electricity, and water.
Richmond Friends have had a Meeting House ever since, except for a period during World War II when Friends rented worship space at the YMCA and Covenant Presbyterian Church in order to conserve scarce fuel. It is interesting that the Meeting bought a building in 1929 for $17,000 and then bought another, its present Meeting House, for the an almost identical amount in 1957.
The purchase in 1929 came as the nation slipped into the Great Depression. There is little record in the treasurers’ accounts of the great suffering of that time.
But there is one record. On the 8th day of 5th month, 1930, the treasurer noted simply:
“Money given a stranger – $2.50.”
Contributed by Gordon Davies
* * * *
by WebPost | 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 WebPost | 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 WebPost | 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.