Ruthville—historic free town
Ruthville—historic free town
An influential family
Driving east on The Glebe Lane from Route 5 it is possible to pass through the community of Ruthville almost without knowing you have been there. A church, a post office, and a discontinued school are the only buildings that remain to mark this once vibrant community. Photo courtesy Judy Ledbetter.
Ruthville—historic free town
An influential family
In the 1740s three young boys—Abraham Brown and his brothers William and John, sons of a mulatto woman named Elizabeth Brown—were bound out. Despite these humble beginnings, one of the boys, Abraham, died a comparatively wealthy man. By the time of his death in 1791 Brown had acquired 273 acres of land as well as four slaves, five horses and 21 cattle which he passed under his will to his wife and children. Charles City County Will Book 1789-1808, pgs. 16-17.
Ruthville—historic free town
An influential family
A town grew up in the vicinity of Brown’s land which was populated by free persons of color. Later the town came to be known as Ruthville. Community residents—including a legion of Brown’s descendants—have played vital roles in the religious, educational, economic and political life of the county and the state. Crawford Brown, a great-grandson of the first Abraham, is pictured here with his wife Ellen Bailey Brown. Photo courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of religious life
Abraham Brown, son of the first Abraham, helped to organize Elam Baptist Church in 1810. The church survives today as one of the oldest, regularly organized African American Baptist Churches in Virginia and as the mother church of numerous other churches formed out of its membership. Photo courtesy Nancy Phaup.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of religious life
The first church was built on Brown’s land on the east side of Old Elam Cemetery Road where the monument (first picture), stands today. His son Samuel Brown served as a minister for this church. Because Virginia law forbade free Negroes and mulattoes to hold church services outside the presence of the white minister, the church’s official ministers came from Charles City and Mount Pleasant Baptist Churches. Reportedly, the ministers pocketed a dollar each Sunday for their attendance at church. Photo of old Elam Church once located on Old Elam Cemetery Road courtesy Papers of Jackson Davis, MSS 3072, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library; photo of Old Elam monument courtesy Nancy Phaup
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of religious life
Old Elam cemetery—located just down the road from the monument—is probably the oldest known cemetery of free blacks and mulattoes in the county. Abraham Brown is buried here. First photo courtesy John Bragg, second courtesy Nancy Phaup.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of religious life
In 2008 the Virginia Society of the Sons of the American Revolution erected a monument to 26 men of color from the county who were patriots in the Revolutionary War. Old Elam Cemetery was deemed the most suitable site for this monument because the actual burial sites are unknown. Photo courtesy John Bragg.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of commerce
“None o’ dem live by stealin. Dey wuked an’ made a hones livin.'” These words were used by Archie Booker to describe this historic free town. Booker had been a slave at the Glebe, a small plantation at the edge of the settlement. He said the “free town” was comprised of residents who all had little places of their own to work on. They operated stores and shops. Some were blacksmiths and wheelwrights. Lewis Miller, Sketchbook of Landscapes in the State of Virginia, 1853-1867, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, Virginia; image DOS2005-PC-700 in Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, www.slaveryimages.org. Archie Booker quotation from Perdue, Barden & Phillips, eds., Weevils in the Wheat.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of commerce
Some residents earned money carrying goods such as garden produce to Richmond for sale. Others were skilled tradesmen—carpenters, shoemakers and coopers. Photo, A Coloured Fruit Vendor, Richmond, Va., from Das Romantische Amerika, Veriage Ernst Wasmuth A.G. (1927) courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of commerce
The community acquired the name Ruthville when a post office was established in 1880. William S. Brown, the first person of color elected to the Charles City Board of Supervisors, was responsible for the establishment of the post office and for its naming. At the time Brown had a girl friend by the name of Ruth. The name he submitted for the new post office was Ruthwill—a contraction of his name and hers. The postal service either misread the submission or intentionally changed it to Ruthville, which is how the settlement has been known ever since. Photo courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of commerce
The Ruthville Post Office of the 1930s pictured here was typical of others around the county, invariably located in community stores. When all the outlying post offices in Charles City were closed by the postal service in the 1950s, Ruthville escaped closure, perhaps based on some sort of separate but equal principal. Photo courtesy Dr. Daryl Cumber Dance.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of commerce
At the turn of the century Ruthville residents established the Mercantile Cooperative Company for the purpose of promoting the community’s economic independence. Shares were sold at $5 each, and the proceeds were used to purchase an old store and move it to the center of town. The cooperative purchased goods in Richmond and resold them to local residents. Photo John N. Corson, An Economic and Social Survey of Charles City County (1929); advertisement from 1927 Charles City County Fair brochure courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of education
At the conclusion of the Civil War—when it was no longer illegal to teach persons of color to read and write—Rev. Samuel Brown started teaching rudimentary reading and writing at Elam. With the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau the community raised funds to build a school and to pay the salary of a qualified teacher. The one-room school came to be known as Bullfield Academy and served the community until a three-room training school was built in 1911. Photo of Bullfield Academy, Papers of Jackson Davis, MSS 3072, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of education
At the turn of the century a Ruthville community leader began recruiting churches and benevolent societies countywide to raise funds for the purchase of land and the construction of a manual training school. By 1912 a new three-room training school had been constructed with the purpose of training girls in home economics and boys in agriculture. Photo of homemakers’ club, Papers of Jackson Davis, MSS 3072, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.
Ruthville—historic free town
A center of education
A six-room brick high school was constructed in 1930 with the aid of the Rosenwald Fund. (For information about the Rosenwald Fund see exhibit 9.) The total cost of construction was $20,600. Of that amount $12,000 was paid by tax dollars, $2,600 was contributed by the Rosenwald Fund, $400 was contributed by white residents and $5,600 was contributed by black residents. Prior to that time Charles City students who desired a high school education were forced to leave the county. One and two-room schools continued to operate around the county, but students who wished to pursue a high school education came to Ruthville. The 1935 graduating class in front of the newly-built high school photographed ca 1933, courtesy Charles City County Richard M. Bowman Center for Local History.