Quaker History Travel Sites

 

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The United States has many Quaker historic sites. As you plan your next vacation travel, here are some that you might wish to visit.

 

First, the Christiansburg Institute near Blacksburg, Virginia is the site of a school financed by the Philadelphia Quakers after the Civil War. Opened in 1866, it was finally closed one century later.  Set atop Zions Hill overlooking the town of Christiansburg, the school had only two teachers in 1868 but served 232 students, including 85 “night scholars,” or adults who worked during the day.  Booker T. Washington, a Virginia native, agreed to serve as school supervisor in 1895, marking the beginning of the school’s transformation into Christiansburg Industrial Institute.  A new farm campus was purchased. A former plantation house served as the classroom building, while the male boarding students slept in renovated slave cabins. By the early 1920s, the campus stood at some 167 acres. It boasted three brick halls, housing dormitories, classrooms, a library, a hospital, a barn and a shop building all surrounded by fields, gardens and an orchard. The Friends Freedman Association continued to play an active role in helping with funds and serving on the board of directors. While the Institute closed in 1966, the local community is engaged in renovation of several remaining buildings and in highlighting the Institute history. For more information and directions, please see the Christiansburg Institute on the web at www.christiansburginstitute.org.

                                               

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If you are headed down to South Carolina or Georgia, you might wish to stop in Beaufort, SC off I-95 and visit the Penn Center. Begun in 1862, it was an experimental program designed to educate Sea Island slaves freed at the beginning of the Civil War, when Union soldiers seized control of the islands. The Freedman’s Association of Philadelphia helped to raise funds and recruit teachers. The school was named after William Penn. Laura M. Towne was sent to St. Helena Island to educate the freed slaves. A short time later Ellen Murray joined her and a school was built. In 1865, the PA Freedman’s Aid Society sent the first school building, a three-room prefab in three sections, down the Atlantic Ocean by boat to the island to be erected by locals.

 

The campus underwent major building over the next century but most of those buildings are still in use today. Penn Center became a major retreat for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. The historic 1963 March on Washington, DC, was partially planned on the Penn Center campus.

 

A visitor center with history exhibit, film and gift shop are there for visitors as well as picnic tables if you bring your lunch. For more information, see www.penncenter.com website. For local travel directions, stop at the South Carolina Visitors Center near Beaufort along I-95. (Penn Center is about 12 miles off the interstate.)

 

The town of Beaufort is also an interesting historic site to visit. Harriet Tubman spent two years in Beaufort during the Civil War as a spy for the Union and a nurse to wounded soldiers. She is credited also for shepherding some 300 slaves north to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

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If you are headed to New England, you might wish to visit the island of Nantucket, 24 miles south of Cape Cod, reached by ferry from Hyannis, MA. This should be a place of Quaker pilgrimage.  Nantucket Friends date to the 1690s. This island was the site of the great whaling industry, much of which was owned and operated by Quaker families. Since men went off to sea, Quaker women early on became independent and used to decision-making. Petticoat Row, now Main Street, was, in the earliest days, the site of many Quaker women’s businesses. In 1716 Nantucket Meeting became the first meeting in the colonies to support the abolition of slavery. Some historians feel that the employment of free blacks by Quakers in the whaling industry helped Friends to reach the early antislavery position.

 

By 1770, over 2200 Quakers, over half the island’s population, lived on Nantucket. To accommodate the growing membership, nine different meetings were built during the 18th and 19th century. Several were lost to fire. Several still exist. The Meetinghouse on Centre Street (completed in 1859), today hosts a coffee shop, a restaurant and small specialty shops. A second, the Fair Street Schoolhouse/Meetinghouse (built 1838) is today owned by the Nantucket Historical Association and used as their library for historical records. It is also the place of worship for the Nantucket Meeting.

 

Prominent Quakers included world-renown astronomer Maria Mitchell, whose observatory is still open to the public. William Rotch, a key figure in Nantucket Quakers from 1760-1770s, was one of America’s first international businessmen. He was the owner of the ships and tea cargo caught between an angry public and the British administration in the Boston Tea Party. Quaker abolitionist and feminist Lucretia Mott was born on Nantucket before her family moved to Boston, when she was age 15.

 

As whaling declined, many Quakers left Nantucket. Some moved inland to New Bedford and Boston. Some left for what is now Guilford County, NC where they learned that farming was not only safer than whaling but also nearly as lucrative.   Others moved to Nova Scotia.

 

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And finally, if you like outdoor Quaker drama, consider a trip down to Alamance County, in central North Carolina, home to Snow Camp Drama. Here you can see plays like The Sword of Peace, a tribute to the Cane Creek Society of Friends, who during the Revolutionary War, were forced to defend their basic tenet of nonviolence. Also playing is Pathway to Freedom, a drama about the Underground Railroad. There is a package deal, which offers overnight accommodations at a local motel and tickets to the two plays. For more information, call 1-800-726-5115 or see www.snowcampdrama.com.