Trent Strickland, left, and his wife, Clara dressed in a traditional colonial Quaker outfit, gather with Dr. John Stevenson Monday night for a meeting of the Richmond County Historical Society at Rockingham City Hall.
And then they were forgotten.
So said Trent Strickland at Monday night’s meeting of the Richmond County Historical Society.
Through his research, he brought their brief stay in the county back to life.
Quakers were among the earliest settlers of what is now Richmond County.
Strickland holds a doctorate in adult education from N.C. State University and retired from Richmond County public schools and Richmond Community College. He was introduced by Dr. John Stevenson, president of the society.
He is author of “The Forgotten Quaker Meeting of Richmond County, N.C.” and is responsible — through his research on which his writing is based — for the N.C. Highway Marker at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Rosalyn Road south of Rockingham.
The marker designated the location of the Quaker Pee Dee Meeting as being west of that location.
Through his connections working with Quakers at Guilford College, the Quakers erected a monument at the Quaker Cemetery south of Cordova near the Pee Dee River acknowledging their settlement there from 1755 to 1840. The graves in the cemetery are marked with simple stones. Only two of the stones are inscribed.
In the 1700s, Strickland said Quakers migrated from Virginia into northeast North Carolina, into the N.C. Piedmont area and then in the 1750s to the Pee Dee River area of Anson and Richmond counties, continuing down into Marlboro County, S.C.
Because of the shifting boundary line between North and South Carolina in those days, Strickland said there was uncertainty about whether the Pee Dee Meeting (church) of the Quakers was located in Marlboro County or Richmond County.
His first contact with Quakers was when he met and married his wife, Clara, in Mount Airy where they were both teaching school. She is a Quaker.
But it wasn’t until he retired in 1990 that he became curious about the Quakers in Richmond County. That curiosity led to extensive research not only into Quaker beliefs but the time they spent in the county. He had known about the cemetery prior to that.
In the early 1800s, he said the largest mass migration in history from North and South Carolina took place when Quakers moved to Indiana and Ohio.
The figures tell why, he said. In 1790 there were two planters in Richmond County with 582 slaves. By 1860, there were 80 planters and 5,453 slaves. Around 1793 cotton planting increased and so did the need for African slaves to produce it.
Prior to their departure, Strickland said several meeting places were active in the area.
Strickland said services at a meeting were mostly silent as Quakers emphasized the holy spirit within each person and meetings were held to commune with God. Members were allowed to speak at meetings, if so moved. The religion was founded by George Fox who in the mid-1600s rebelled against the practices of the Reformed Church of England with its priests, rituals and taxes.
He said Quakers instead emphasized equal treatment and love for all and simplicity in their lives manifest in their speech, dress and worship.
“There was an absence of pride in all areas,” he said. That absence of pride also meant not much attention was paid to funerals or graves. “Only the soul,” Strickland said.
Their belief that Indians, women and slaves should be treated equally with the men got them in trouble in many places, he said. Such feelings were not shared in most of the colonies, he said. They did not bear arms either.
Strickland said his efforts to revive Quaker history was to claim it as part of Richmond County history.
He was able to prove that the Pee Dee Meeting was actually located in Richmond County in the area of the cemetery through researching family histories, land deeds and records of the Quakers at Guilford College.
An important link were journals kept by two women Quakers traveling by horseback through the area in 1753. They came from England and traveled from Charleston, S.C., northward through Richmond County and told of their visit with Friends (Quakers) at Pee Dee.
The site is near where William Hailey, a Quaker, operated his ferry across the Pee Dee River, a major east-west crossing for many years.
Strickland used a quote near the end of his talk which stated that there was one thing wrong with Quakers, which was “there were not enough of them.”
n Contact reporter Tom MacCallum at 997-3111, ext. 15; e-mail tmaccallum@yourdailyjournal.com.
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