Woodlawn’s Antislavery Community
The Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse, circa 1900. From the Sherwood Farm Collection, Fairfax County Library’s Virginia Room.
In the 1840’s, the Quaker Troth-Gillingham Company purchased Woodlawn from the Lewis family.
Motivated by the idea of establishing a “free labor colony” in a slave state, the Troths and Gillinghams divided the 2,000 acre farm into smaller parcels of land, eventually selling them to both white and free Black farmers, creating an affordable, racially diverse community of family farms. Woodlawn’s Quakers intended to prove that the future of successful agriculture in America was not dependent on enslaved labor.
The Quakers were progressive thinkers; along with their anti-slavery beliefs, they employed new farming techniques to enrich the soil and increase cultivation and productivity on the farmland. Additionally, the Quakers believed in equality and education for all and freedom of religion. At Woodlawn, they used rooms in the home as a school and held religious services there until the Woodlawn Quaker Meeting House was built in 1853. The Meeting House still stands today and continues to host an active Quaker community.
Unidentified Black Farmers in the Mount Vernon area, 1906. From the Rambler Collection, Fairfax County Public Library’s Virginia Room.
Even before the Quakers arrived, many free Black families earned their living as farm laborers. The Quander and Holland families, both descendants of people enslaved at Mount Vernon, took advantage of the opportunity to earn a fair wage and became landowners on the land where their families had been enslaved just three generations earlier.
Alongside other free families, a thriving community was formed, built on the values of freedom, education, and faith. The Holland family spearheaded the establishment of the Woodlawn Methodist Church and Cemetery, along with one of Virginia’s first public schools. Today, the only surviving piece of the Woodlawn Community is the Woodlawn Methodist Cemetery, now within the boundaries of Fort Belvoir, a military base.
In the leadup to the Civil War, many members of the Woodlawn community stood against secession. Jonathan Roberts, a Quaker, publicly voiced his opposition to secession despite threats of violence at his polling place. When war finally broke out in 1861 many Quaker families fled to Maryland, fearing that the Southern government would persecute them for their religious and political beliefs. As the United States government took control of the area a few months later, many Quakers returned to find their homes ransacked.
As the war grew in intensity, Woodlawn and the surrounding areas were targeted by Confederate raiders who saw these peaceful communities as soft targets. In 1864, there were several raids at Woodlawn, including at the Quander family farm. At nearby Accotink, members of the Woodlawn community took up arms to form the Accotink Home Guard with the goal of defending their community. The Accotink Home Guard was integrated, and William Holland stood guard for them to help defend his community.