Local Historical Marker: First Quakers
Behind the sign is Franktown Town Hall. Photo credit: Jean E Flynn
Location: Corner of Bayside Rd and Franktown Rd in Franktown, VA
Inscription: South of here was the first Quaker Meeting House on Virginia's Eastern Shore, built in the late 1600's on Meeting House Creek. Northampton County Tourism Fund
The following is an excerpt from Virginia Places: Quakers in Virginia webpage:
"The Quaker beliefs in equality between races and sexes were non-traditional, and the Somerton group experienced local hostility when it taught freed slaves after the Civil War ended. The school and meeting house was burned in 1866. The current Somerton Friends Meeting House on Quaker Drive, east of Quaker Swamp, was constructed in 1867, and a historical marker was installed next to it in 2016.
In Virginia, the counties that exported the most tobacco developed the strongest economic and cultural ties to England in the 1600's, and had the most traditional social structure tied to the Anglican church. The areas in Virginia with poor soil for growing tobacco, particularly south of the James River (at Lower Norfolk, Nansemond, and Isle of Wight) and the Eastern Shore developed their trade with other colonies in North America and the Caribbean islands.
Commercial links reinforced religious links. The counties with a higher percentage of intercolonial trade interacted with more diverse cultures, and had a higher percentage of resident Quakers and Puritans. The first Quaker preachers came to Virginia in 1650's, mostly from England via Barbados.
Quakers on Virginia's Eastern Shore were concentrated in 1657 at the mouth of Nassawadox Creek. What may have been the first Friends meetinghouse in America was built near there, opposite Warehouse Creek according to one report. Another suggests it was a "ten foot house" used for meetings until it was required for grain storage. Otherwise, private homes were used for meetings at Nassawadox and elsewhere on the Eastern Shore until 1679.
The first documented Quaker missionary was William Robinson, arrested on the Eastern Shore in 1658. He as accused of denying the humanity of Christ and being "a seducer of people to faction." The Puritans had seized control of the colonial government, and Quaker preachers were judged to be felonies.
Puritan and then Anglican officials in colony pushed back against Quakers, ordering preachers to leave and threatening to fine ship captains who brought Quakers to Virginia. Quakers threatened the traditional hierarchy of the gentry by claiming everyone had a universal inner light. Because Quakers rejected the need for a paid minister or a parish vestry, growth of that religion posed an existential threat to the people paid to serve as Anglican ministers and vestry in Virginia.
Quakers in Virginia were persecuted more than Puritans. One scholar summarized the challenge that independent-thinking Quakers presented to the stratified society in Virginia:
The Friends' challenge to the Anglican establishment, their defiance of authority, their unwillingness to take oaths, their refusal to serve in the militia, and their secret meetings soon made them suspect in a society that possessed few means of calling its citizenry to account.
In 1660, the Royalist governor William Berkeley was restored to that office, as Charles II gained he throne in London. That year General Assembly passed the first law specifically intended to discriminate against the Quakers, described as:
An unreasonable and turbulent sort of people... attempting thereby to destroy religion, lawes, communities, and all bonds of civil societie.
Additional laws passed in 1662 and 1663 required baptizing children according to Anglican church practices, making everyone over 16 to attend Anglican church services, and imposing a fine of 200 pounds of tobacco on anyone attending a Quaker service. One of the Quaker leaders, George Wilson, was imprisoned in Jamestown and died there as a result of rough treatment, including being chained to a post while in jail. He is the only documented Quaker martyr in Virginia in the 1660's. William Robinson had moved to Massachusetts, and in 1659 had been executed there with three other Quakers for returning from banishment and continuing to preach doctrines unacceptable to the Puritan leaders in Boston.
There was some sympathy for the Quakers in the House of Burgesses, and John Porter was expelled from the colonial legislature for being "loving to the Quakers."
Maryland, a colony led by Catholic that experienced their own discrimination in England, was more tolerant of different religious groups. Ships carrying Quakers to Virginia pretended to be sailing to Maryland, before surreptitiously landing them on the Northern Neck or Eastern Shore.
Maryland governor Charles Calvert sought to increase the number of colonists on the Eastern Shore who would be loyal to his government. The Catholic leader was contending with the Nanticokes for control of the area, and recognized that Virginia claimed the territory. The Anglican officials might not send militia into Maryland, if needed for military defense.
Gov. Calvert offered new settlers 50 acres plus the right to practice their religion freely. That attracted Quakers, who moved north across the colonial border from Virginia's Eastern Shore to the area around the Annemessex and Manoakin rivers.
Most Quakers on the Eastern Shore moved across the Pocomoke River into Maryland by 1662, escaping harassment by Col. Edmund Scarborough. On October 12, 1663, however, Scarborough led 40 horsemen across the disputed colonial border and raided Quaker settlements.
In response, Maryland governor Charles Calvert traveled to Jamestown to complain to Virginia Governor William Berkeley. Berkeley soothed Calvert by promising to resolve the boundary dispute on the Eastern Shore, and Virginia officials stopped arresting Quakers on the Eastern Shore and trying to suppress the "schismaticks" by 1664. In 1668, the Calvert-Scarborough line was surveyed to define to Virginia-Maryland border from the Pocomoke River to Chincoteague Bay.
In 1673, George Fox visited the Quakers at Annemessex, while his companions crossed border to talk to those Quakers still remaining in Virginia.
Quaker missionary John Boweter visited the Eastern Shore in 1678. A year later, Quakers purchased land to build the Muddy Creek (Guilford) meetinghouse neat Bloxom. Another was built 25 miles away at Nassawadox. The two were treated organizationally as the "Lower Monthly Meeting" while the three meeting houses just north of the Virginia-Maryland boundary were called the Somerset Monthly Meeting. In the 1600's all the Eastern Shore meeting houses associated with Maryland Quakers, separate from other Virginia groups."