Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse

The Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse was built from 1851 to 1853 by members of the Religious Society of Friends who in 1846 purchased the 2,000-acre Woodlawn tract to establish a free-labor colony in a slave state. They left homes in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, where nearby Underground Railroad routes made clear the human cost of slavery and its violation of Friends’ principles of equality and non-violence. Seeking to uphold the Quaker belief that there is “that of God” in everyone, the settlement’s spiritual leaders envisioned a community of small farms operating without slave labor as an alternative to Virginia’s plantation culture. Their agricultural practices and employment of free labor succeeded, and their farms, mills, schools, and meetinghouse established a thriving community shared with free black landowners and like-minded abolitionists such as the Woodlawn Baptists. Throughout the Civil War, Friends continued to worship there even when Union troops occupied the building. The community remained into the 20th century, guided by Friends’ principles of peace and community service, but with World War I the United States Army began to absorb Woodlawn’s farmland, eventually creating Fort Belvoir. The Quaker Plain Style meetinghouse continues as an active place of worship and is home to the Alexandria Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Fort Belvoir, Virginia · United States