by WebPost | Dec 18, 1967 | History - RFM, Peace and Social Concerns, Testimonies
One of the most divisive events in 20th century U.S. history was the war in Vietnam. The antiwar movement gained national prominence in 1965, peaked in 1968, and remained powerful throughout the duration of the conflict. In June 1967, in keeping with our position against war, the Richmond Friends Meeting hosted in our Kensington Avenue building the office for the Vietnam Summer Project, a statewide program opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
In June 1967, in keeping with our position against war, the Richmond Friends Meeting hosted in our Kensington Avenue building the office for the Vietnam Summer Project, a statewide program opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Phyllis Conklin and Marii Hasegawa, representing the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, led the statewide Vietnam Summer Project. (The Richmond WILPF chapter, newly organized by Phyllis and Marie, had about ten active members.) Some Richmond Friends Meeting members were also active in the Vietnam Summer Project along with other community individuals, who opposed the war.
Ben Ragsdale, a young student, was hired to help coordinate the program, which had groups in Norfolk, Hampton, Northern Virginia, Charlottesville, Lexington, Roanoke and Farmville. Ben recalls doing a lot of moving around the state. He indicates that the college campuses were not as active as they were later because it was the summer and students were not in attendance. He also recalls receiving a small paycheck every two weeks.
The Vietnam Summer Project attempted to host a peaceful antiwar rally at the Richmond War Memorial but was denied a permit. The ACLU filed an injunction against the ruling, which found them before the newly installed Judge Mehrige in federal court. Judge Mehrige told them that it was a constitutional issue and refused an injunction until the case could be heard in federal court. When Phyllis and Marii protested that this was a one summer’s protest project and the convocation was to be the end of it, Judge Mehrige told them that he was certain there were enough concerned people to keep the group alive until the case could receive a proper hearing. Bob Conklin recalls that while the Judge was in favor of granting the permit, he delayed the opinion in part because of his newness on the bench and the public controversy over the war itself. The 1967 peace rally was held instead at Union Seminary. The court eventually ruled in favor of the Vietnam Summer Project and the peace rally at the War Memorial finally happened a year later with several hundred in attendance.
Minutes of the Richmond Friends Meeting show that the City of Richmond intervened in the Vietnam Summer Project by sending a letter to Meeting, arguing that we did not have a permit for allowing our building to be used for such a purpose. Since the Meeting had for years allowed numerous groups supporting a wide variety of social issues to use RFM for meetings and office space, we can conjecture that this time the city objected because the war was so divisive in the public mind. The Business Meeting though simply agreed to pay for the permit. Ben Ragsdale and Marii Hasegawa do not recall ever knowing about the permit issue so it may well be that the Meeting quietly went ahead and did their part to help the project without concerning others.
RFM member Peg Spangenthal recalls that her husband Art, who served in Italy in World War II, offered counseling to young men concerned about the draft. She remembers hosting groups at their home, where materials were distributed and young men role-played the offered advice. We believe that Jules Arginteanu from the Meeting also offered draft counseling.
Other project activists spoke to church and college groups and responded to media inquiries about why the war in Vietnam was wrong. Bob Conklin recalls attending a meeting at the Unitarian church, where right-wingers blocked the entrance and the hallways, pushing their cameras to within inches of antiwar activist faces before blinding them with flashes. The right-wingers were anxious to rough it up and antiwar activists expected worse. During the meeting, Bob recalls that the debate centered on who eventually should govern Vietnam. A woman, sensing that Phyllis Conklin would favor the Communists, asked, ” Who is there but the Communists to give it to?” Phyllis’s response was “Why, to the people, of course.” As a result, antiwar activists were not hassled on the way out.
Later the police planted an “informer” in the project. “Ed,” as he was known, was apparently a little too enthusiastic about his new mission. He was very anxious to help with mailings, because he wanted to obtain the WILPF mailing list. Organizers were able to put him off and give him inconsequential jobs. Later that year at a City Hall demonstration, members of the group recognized “Ed”—this time dressed in his police uniform. They had a good laugh as one after another they called out, “Hi, Ed!” Ben Ragsdale recalls another plainclothesman, who appeared at project events. His name was Ricky Duling and he eventually became “Sergeant Santa” at Christmas to area children.
This was also the beginning of the Friday peace vigils at the post office. For four years, Phyllis Conklin and other sturdy souls leafleted in opposition to the Vietnam War. In doing this, they were called many names. Phyllis loved to tell that hostility changed to curiosity and even some interest and support as the national challenges to the war increased. She told about a man who stopped her toward the end of the four years and said that he had been watching them all this time. In the beginning he thought they were crazy, but gradually over the years his attitude had changed and now he really admired their perseverance.
Marii Hasegawa recalls that Richmond Friends Meeting played an important role by providing office space and volunteer support. She also recalls that the key to the side door was often very hard to turn and hopes that we have repaired it.
Thanks to Marii Hasegawa, Bob Conklin, Wendy Northup, Ben Ragsdale, Peg Spangenthal, Ann Lane and others who offered information for the above story. Phyllis Conklin died in 1987. Marii Hasagawa, now age 84, resides in a retirement community in South Hadley, Massachusetts. She continues to be active in social justice issues and sends greetings to all her Richmond friends. Ben Ragsdale is presently the director of the Virginia Civil Rights Video Initiative. Betsy Brinson is responsible for the research and writing of this short article. Readers who have additional information to share about the Vietnam Summer Project are invited to contact her at brinson422@comcast.net
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
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![The Jacob House]()
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.
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- 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.
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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 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)
