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Cultural Influences
From the Department of the Interior Report, "Linking
the Past to the Future, A Landscape Conservation Strategy for Waterford,
Virginia", 1992 Bibliography
When migrants with a common cultural background were the only inhabitants
at a previously unoccupied locality, development of that locality
was based primarily upon attitudes, knowledge, and skills acquired
in their homeland. Similarly when peoples with diverse cultural
backgrounds migrated to a previously uninhabited place they used
their attitudes,
knowledge, and skills to develop that place. In this case, however,
no individual's actions were reinforced by the entire group because
there were others in the group who did things differently.
From Glass,
The Pennsylvania Culture Region
The first settlers in the Waterford area were members of the Society
of Friends (Quakers), and while Quakers may have set the early
tone of the Waterford area, it by no means developed as an exclusively
Quaker community. As Glass puts it, there were others soon introduced
to the
group who did things differently. If any one influence can be said
to have put its stamp on the community, it would be the culture
of
Pennsylvania, itself a hybrid of various European cultures and
religions, of which the Quakers were one part. Rejecting the use of
slave labor
dominant in other parts of Virginia, they carved out smaller farms
which needed towns to supply goods and labor. This diversity is
what created in Waterford a community of slave-holders and free blacks,
merchants and farmers, Union and Confederate, Quakers, Presbyterians,
Baptists and Methodists.
Quaker History 
More
on the Quakers in Waterford »
The Quaker emphasis on education, their careful record keeping, and
the resultant wide dissemination of their ideas exerted a strong
influence on Waterford. As Charles Poland states in From Frontier
to Suburbia, Loudoun Friends served as "the conscience of the
county in education, abolition, prohibition and progressive farming".
At first the Friends were practically a commune of farmers, only
gradually engaging in the businesses needed to keep a community going.
Livestock,
corn, wheat, and patches of oats, buckwheat, and flax were their staples
The rest of the county later followed the Friends' farming practices,
for from 1764 on unlike the citizens of most other Virginia counties,
Loudouners could pay their taxes in money instead of tobacco (A.M.
Janney, p. 28).
The administrative organization of the Society of Friends fostered
the sharing of ideas between Yearly Meeting centers and their satellites.
The Society of Friends did not have a professional clergy, but instead
relied on "weighty Friends" who were "pressed by the
light within to appear in the ministry" (A.M. Janney, p. 23).
Volunteer traveling ministers, including women, undertook journeys
lasting months or even years. Such journeys might cover the area from
Rhode Island to South Carolina, and served to disseminate practical
as well as spiritual information.
This interchange of ideas manifested itself in Waterford in several
ways. Many of the Quakers settling in Loudoun county had roots in the
same Pennsylvania communities. "These
Friends saw to it that favored ones back home were informed of land-buying
opportunities and were aided in taking advantage of them." (A.M.
Janney, p. 6)
The Quakers were pragmatic, having no use for superstition or prejudice
and were willing to try scientific methods. They used no slave labor,
and avoided the over-planting of tobacco, which drained the fertility
of the large estates. The Friends and fellow German settlers in Pennsylvania
adopted the practice of liming, deep plowing, and five-year crop rotation.
Publicized in 1803 by Loudouner John Binns, these methods became known
as the "Loudoun System" which drew praise and national support
from then President Thomas Jefferson.
By 1744 there were enough members of Fairfax Meeting for it to be "set
off" from the Hopewell Monthly Meeting near Winchester meaning
that this congregation could conduct its own business. Meetings were
first held at the houses of Amos Janney and other Friends. Although
the membership roles were large, it should be remembered that the area
from which Fairfax Monthly Meeting drew covered most of Virginia as
far west as the top of the Blue Ridge. In some cases families belonged
to meetings hundreds of miles away, and data such as births, marriages,
and deaths was collected for the meeting records by committees. Even
travel over relatively short distances was difficult.
In 1755, trustees of the Fairfax Meeting purchased ten acres of land
from Francis Hague for the establishment of a Meeting House. The structure
built c.1770 still stands. In his journal from the years 1775-77, Nicholas
Cresswell describes a visit to a Meeting House which is quite certainly
that in Waterford:
Sunday, Feb. 11, 1776. Went with Mr. Cavan and Mr.
Thos. Matthews to a Quaker meeting about 7 miles from town. This is
one of the most
comfortable
places of Worship I was ever in, they had two large fires and a Dutch
stove. After a long silence and many groans a Man got up and gave us
a short Lecture with great deliberation. Dined at Mr. Joseph Janney's,
one of the Friends. Got to Leesburg at night.
Slavery
More
on Slavery in Waterford »
In 1688, almost all Friends in the Southern Provinces and many in
Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, were slave holders since it
was difficult
to carry on the cultivation of land without slave labor. However, before
the end of the 17th century, the Quaker establishment was already beginning
to take a stand against slavery.
The records of the Virginia Meeting for the years previous are lost,
but in 1757 Quakers in Virginia could still hold slaves if they had
inherited them. However, they were directed to "train them up
in the principles of the Christian religion". Minutes of the Yearly
meeting admonish the members: "Friends ought not by any means
to be concerned in hiring any of these, who are held as slaves where
the wages are to be received by those who claim a right to hold them
as such......” (Thomas, p. 69). By 1850 members of the Meeting
could be, and were, disciplined for owning or even employing a slave
(Hinshaw, p. 511). Although there are instances on record of Friends
in Maryland and Virginia releasing their slaves, the change required
in lifestyle meant that many chose to leave the Society.
Decline of Quaker Influence
Progressive with respect to scientific farming and civil rights for
women and blacks, the Friends were terribly conservative and uncompromising
on moral matters. This stance, as well as the stress created by the
slavery question, contributed to their decline in membership and resultant
decline in the influence in the community.
The minutes of the Fairfax Monthly Meeting are full of reports of
members who were either disciplined or disowned for incidents as innocuous
as "singing, dancing, and frolicking" or "keeping light
company." Thomas explains further that "...a large proportion
were Friends rather by tradition than conviction and many were careless
and some unbelieving.” Since many Friends lacked true conviction
according to society history, the burdens that such stringent behavior
forced on them was enough to cause them to leave the organization.
Census and Quaker records, show that many residents of the Waterford
area had ties to Quakers who had “married out of unity” (married
those who were not members of the Society of Friends), and were subsequently
disowned by the congregation. For example, of the 14 children born
to Samuel and Sarah Gover in the first quarter of the 19th century,
four died before reaching adolescence and six married out of unity
(Hinshaw, p. 495).
Since the Quakers would not accept military service, the Revolutionary
War caused a further decline of those unwilling to accept the penalties.
According to Thomas' The Story of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting, by
the middle of the eighteenth century, many young Friends particularly
in the southern states were converted by the preaching of "Whitfield
and the Wesleys".
Other factors during this same time further diluted the Quaker core
of the community. Hard times and expanding families in the first quarter
of the nineteenth century led to the emigration of many Friends and
the resulting disintegration of meetings in Virginia. By 1855-56 "a
number of families of Friends" from Hopewell, Fairfax, and Goose
Creek Meetings had formed the Prairie Grove settlement in Wayne Township,
Henry County, Iowa, and when a new Yearly Meeting was formed in Illinois
in 1873, most of these settlers had roots in Virginia (Hinshaw, p.
465). In 1845 the Virginia Yearly Meeting was "laid down" or
discontinued and the remaining Meetings attached to the Baltimore Yearly
Meeting. Ultimately, the Fairfax Meeting itself was “laid down” in
1929 for lack of membership.
Pennsylvania Culture
When the first town lots were subdivided and sold by Joseph Janney
in 1792, only half of the buyers were members of the Fairfax Meeting.
The Census of 1810 (the first available for Loudoun County) lists 43
families in the village, twelve of whom were Quakers. Like the Quakers,
however, many of the remaining residents had direct ties southeastern
Pennsylvania.
Rural southeastern Pennsylvania represented a fusion of diverse cultural
elements: English, Scotch, French, Dutch and Swedes joined Germans,
Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Swiss who had migrated to Pennsylvania in
search of religious and political freedom. Within several generations
these settlers pragmatically adopted the best techniques of their neighbors,
and when in turn they were transplanted to other areas, carried with
them a hybridized Pennsylvania culture distinct from that of the English
Tidewater. Since the agrarian system of the Southern Colonies was based
on slave labor, it is easy to see what non-conformists the Quakers,
and for that matter, most of the Pennsylvania settlers, must have been.
As Glass puts it in his definitive work on the Pennsylvania Cultural
Region, "The influence of these early Pennsylvanians was not limited
to their own acceptance of dispersed family farms and multi-purpose
barns as universal practices among themselves. They also modified and
improved agricultural methods as they raised livestock, manured fields,
rotated crops and improved livestock breeds" (Glass, p. 4).
The physical evidence of Pennsylvania culture remains in a unique
built environment. The most distinctive of these structures is the
gable-roofed
Pennsylvania, or forebay, barn which evolved to meet the requirements
of the mixed farming most suitable to Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia.
Blacks
Waterford's
African-American Experience »
According to the Census of 1860, of the 900 residents of the area
served by the Waterford Post Office, 155 were free blacks. Janney refers
often
to Negroes, especially when discussing social life, but rarely does
he differentiate between slave and freedman. He hints at relationships
between slave and free blacks as he relates that the neighbor on the
next farm owned a slave who was the "wife" of the old black
man who made brooms in the vicinity G.J. Janney, p. 56). As the man
had a craft he was probably a free man of color. When Janney describes
a cornhusking it includes "all the neighbors within two or three
miles" where "White and black, slaves included, worked side
by side" (J.J. Janney, p. 87). The Loudoun County tax roles of
the antebellum years indicate there were a number of free blacks living
or working in Quaker households. Yet, though the Quakers were notoriously
liberal about such things, no blacks were actually members of the Meeting
according to a comparison of the Census data with Hinshaw's Quaker
Encyclopedia. One black, Daniel Boyd, is buried in the Quaker cemetery,
but Hinshaw lists him as a non-member (p. 473).
Quakers who had "colored boys" living with them did send
them to school. "They were taught and treated just as the other
children were by both teacher and pupils" (J.J. Janney, p. 56).
Although white girls also attended the school, Janney never mentions "colored
girls" among his classmates. The Quaker tradition of educating
blacks as well as whites continued at least through the end of the
century, and may also be a factor in the relatively large proportion
of free blacks who chose to live in Waterford. By 1869 when a colored
school was established in Waterford, 12 of the 38 pupils had been free
before the war (Scheel, p. 4). The literacy rate among blacks in Waterford
at that time was given at 53%, a remarkable figure for the time demonstrating
an emphasis on the responsibility of educating all children despite
the decline in the Quaker population. By the Census of 1910, blacks
owned half a dozen farms in Waterford.
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