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Woodlawn’s new exhibit, “Friends Gather Here,” examines an anti-slavery agricultural community formed there by Quaker abolitionists and free African Americans beginning in 1846. The exhibit opened June 27 and is scheduled to remain on view through Dec. 30.
Through property records, books, tools, textiles and artwork, the exhibit recounts how Chalkley Gillingham and Jacob Troth came from Pennsylvania and New Jersey and purchased 2,000 acres from the Lewis family in 1846. Their aim was to demonstrate that farming could succeed without enslaved labor. The land had been part of the Woodlawn estate that George Washington gave to his step-granddaughter Nelly Custis and his nephew Lawrence Lewis as a wedding gift in 1799.
The Quaker settlers joined a free African American community already living in the area, including people who had previously been enslaved by George and Martha Washington. The settlers initially used the Woodlawn mansion as both a meetinghouse and a school.
The exhibit also highlights Black landowners who helped shape the community. William Holland, who was freed in 1799, purchased 20 acres in 1851 and led efforts to establish Woodlawn Methodist Church, a cemetery and a school. Lewis Quander bought 163 acres in 1855 and farmed the property. Streets in Mount Vernon now carry the Holland and Quander family names.
A central surviving landmark is the Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse. Built as a single-cell structure between 1851 and 1853, it was doubled in size in 1869. The building retains its original windows, siding, trim, floor plan and interior partitions, along with traditionally crafted benches. A burial ground containing the graves of community founders lies to its east.
The meetinghouse is listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places. Fort Belvoir now surrounds it on three sides. During the Civil War, Union soldiers occupied the building as the conflict disrupted the community that had developed around it.
Historian Martha Claire Catlin, a lifelong Quaker whose research helped reconstruct the community’s history, described its members as a “unique alliance.” She characterized their Civil War experience as “ten years of harmony tested by war” and called the archival work behind the history “pick and shovel research.”
Pacifist Jonathan Roberts faced some of the community’s sharpest wartime pressures. Confederate soldiers raided his home, and Roberts joined the Union Army while refusing to carry a weapon. He also organized the 200-member Accotink Home Guard to protect the area from raiders. In an 1891 memoir, Roberts described himself as “having a very great trial.”
Objects in the exhibit give the community’s story a material dimension. Displays include the 1846 deed, a certificate recognizing Gillingham for growing the greatest variety of pears, a wedding book, a membership book and Keziah Warrington’s workbook. Agricultural and domestic objects include a grain-harvesting scythe and a hand-embroidered signature quilt.
The exhibit also features quilted works by local artist Sheryl Sims, who has traced her ancestry to Quakers. Her work sits alongside the historical records and objects documenting the community’s families, labor and religious life.
“Friends Gather Here” connects that history with six modern Quaker testimonies known collectively as SPICES: simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and stewardship. Exhibit text says residents “wove these values into their family bonds and the very soil of this community.” Together, the surviving meetinghouse, archived records and displayed objects trace both the ambitions behind the Woodlawn experiment and the strain placed upon it by war.