Ship of Dreams

Leslie Wright

April 24, 2005 Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun

Reading #1 Frederick Douglass : "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Reading #2 Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

I want to tell you a story this morning, it’s a story about freedom – it’s part imagination, but based on the truth. This story begins on a hot, dry September day in 1863 when nineteen-year-old Martin Van Buren Buchanan left the slave quarters, on the Oatlands Plantation just south of here and headed for Washington, D.C and the Union Army. The 5’3” boy couldn’t read and he couldn’t write; he owned nothing but the clothes he was wearing and, if he was really lucky, he was wearing shoes. He walked up the hill past his master’s big brick house full of Union soldiers. Said good-bye to his sisters Bettie and Ginnie, his father Robert, walked down the cobblestone driveway his ancestors had help build ……and turned north onto the Carolina Road – the same road you followed coming here. He followed this dusty road the five miles to Leesburg - past the widow Daniel’s farm – the farm with the yellow barn over there at the corner of Gap road, past John Elgin’s farm up the hill behind us, and on down to road to Leesburg.

It’s doubtful he had ever been this far in his life. He may have walked the entire 50 miles down the Leesburg Turnpike, or perhaps he got a ride in a farm wagon carrying some of Loudoun’s crops to feed the army in Washington. Either way, it must have taken extraordinary courage to leave his home and his family to venture out into a world completely unknown and unfriendly to him. Why did Martin and a couple of months later, his friend Henry Washington do it? Was it the lure of the $50 bounty they would get to substitute for white men who were drafted and didn’t want to serve? Or was it the call of adventure young men have always heard in times of war? Or maybe, just maybe, it was the desire to be free that motivated them?

Henry Bibb, who ran away and was recaptured 3 times before successfully escaping bondage, wrote in his autobiography that all his life -- from a young child --- he had had “a longing, a desire …a fire for liberty within his breast which was never quenched.” Martin and Henry surely knew that a few months before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation declared them free, but freedom wasn’t real, it wasn’t permanent while others kept fighting to keep them enslaved. I think they were determined to fight for their own freedom. So they left, enlisted as privates in the 2^nd Infantry U.S. Colored Troops, were sent to Florida, fought in skirmishes and didn’t return to Virginia for three years.

The story of Martin Buchanan was just one of the many things I learned in the process of completing the application for this church to become listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. One Sunday almost 2 years ago Chuck Harris asked me if I would complete the application forms – he was too busy at the time --- something about the comprehensive plan. He handed me a two-page document with about 10 short questions on it – like “What is the name of the structure?”, “What are the boundaries of the property.” Well, that seemed easy enough and I, being the kind of person who always says yes, said yes. If being on the historical registry would help preserve this building, it sounded like a great idea. So I filled out the form – slightly harder than it looked -- and I submitted it thinking that was the end of that. Guess what I soon found out? That form was the form that certified you to get the real form!!

It took me over 4 months to fill out the real form. I had to describe details of the construction of the building including what’s original and what is not, find official geographical maps, take many photos – take many photos again using the correct development chemicals and finally compose a treatise with footnotes about the historical significance of this building including its “historical context.” Well, I realized right away when I read the directions that accompanied the application form that I would have to find out something about the people who built this church. I would have to answer the question “What is its historical significance?” Big words for a very little church in the country.

As I read history books, Loudoun County newspapers, looked up land deeds, marriage records, birth records, and census records, the town of Gleedsville and its inhabitants began to come to life. And I was overwhelmed with the monumental effort it must have been to go from being an enslaved non-person one day - without any control over what you did, where you lived, what happened to those you loved -- to being a free person the next day completely responsible for providing food, shelter and direction for yourself and your family. An ex-slave in South Carolina wrote in 1871, “We have lived a century in the last few years.”

When Martin and Henry arrived home that day in 1865, 70 of the newly freed people remained at Oatlands to welcome them. The Buchanans and Washingtons, of course, and the large Day family … The Gleeds, Johnsons, Allens, Russ’, Bryants, Barnes, and Moores. For generations these families had tilled the fields, cared for the gardens, raised the animals and constructed roads and buildings on this plantation. And they had raised their families there. Their roots were deep here. This was their HOME. Where else would they want to go?

So they stayed…. and they did overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles they faced on that day they were finally free. How? I have come to believe that there were three reasons for their success and the success of all the newly freed people. Now that freedom was theirs they were determined to live the life they had dreamed of for so long no matter how difficult or how long the struggle. They had Henry Bibb’s raging fire in their souls and that fire would not be quenched until their goals were reached. At Oatlands George and Kate Carter were broke. They needed the freed workers just as much as the freed people needed the Carters. It appears that they all lived right there on Oatlands and farmed, sharing the crops with the Carters. But it took only five years --- five years -- before this striving, persevering group of people were renting land and building their own houses around the edges of Oatlands.

And in that short time they had even managed to accumulate some wealth. At a time when a horse cost $75, a cow $35 and an acre of land $50, Jack Gleede was worth $250 – what’s that? A mule and a cow and a plow? ; Philip Stewart, his uncle-in-law, was worth $400. However, it took another 5 years not until 1881 for anyone to actually purchase their own piece of land. By the late 1880’s official county documents referred to the settlement at the corner of Mountain Gap and Old Carolina Road as the town of Gleedsville and the road leading to that town as Gleedsville Road.

At the same time they worked to prosper economically , the newly freed citizens in this county fought for their rights as citizens …even though Loudoun County tried to deny them those rights. They didn’t give up when Loudoun County tried to keep them from being on juries; they formed The Colored Men’s Society of Loudoun County…. openly protested and sued for their rights. They didn’t give up when Loudoun County built a school for white children only in the Gleedsville area. Jack Gleede, the town’s namesake, and others pressured the County until they got their school ¼ mile down Gap Road. And they exercised their right to vote ----- large numbers of African-American men registered as soon as they could and voted in large numbers to the end of the century.

Another reason I think the residents of this new town of Gleedsville achieved their dreams was because they realized the importance of family and community. They knew they would have to help each other to make it through this difficult time; they would need to work together to feed their families; someone would need to care for the elderly and young children without families. Unlike most other places in the south, at Oatlands there were many two-parent families ---- with grandparents and aunts and uncles. These original families worked together to provide for all in those early days. Mutual aid societies were formed to lend a helping hand to others in times of trouble….you paid dues every week and the dues helped the sick or jobless. Lodge # 2047 of the Grand United Order of the Odd Fellows was formed right here in Gleedsville – they owned the lot to the north of us that we just purchased. Mutual Aid societies led the effort to educate everyone -- the Odd Fellows in Leesburg built an industrial school teaching trades. As the rest of America proudly marched toward an ideal of rugged individualism, African-Americans went down a different path - developing a strong ethic of mutual cooperation.

And the third reason I think they succeeded was the support and strength they found in the church. Christianity in one form or another had spread throughout the enslaved population many years before. The Christian faith told them all were equal in God’s eyes and someday the meek would overcome the mighty. It gave them hope all those years. After emancipation African-Americans wanted to have their own churches where they would not have to sit in the balconies and worship the “white way.” Services were held anywhere people could gather in those days – in homes, in schools, even in fields. Picture them in the fields around here on Sunday morning before there was a church.

By 1890 the residents of the town of Gleedsville were well on their way. They were landowners and many had trades - blacksmiths, carpenters, laundresses, white washer, a basketmaker, seamstresses and even a midwife. Over half the children were going to school. At that point they built a church – a community building -- the only one ever built here other than the one room schoolhouse built by the county. It was a Methodist-Episcopal church , very popular at the time because it emphasized social action as well as religious ritual. The mission statement of the M.E denomination instructed: “Preach the gospel, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, provide jobs for the jobless”.

This site was purchased for $18 by the first trustees: Robert and Emmanuel Day, George Bryant, Thomas Washington, Bushrod Murray, and Thomas Waters. I have been told that the first members, the Days, Murrays, Johnsons , Gleedes and Buchanans among others, erected this building themselves taking stones from the fields across the street for the foundation and cutting large, old pine trees on the lot for the siding, floor and pews.

Little did the members of the congregation know on October 12, 1890 when they dedicated this church that they still had a very long struggle ahead of them before they achieved their dream of equality. And that it would not be they, but their grandchildren who would finally achieve it. First they lost their rights as citizens when Virginia passed a new set of black laws and legislated legal segregation. All the gains won with such effort after the War were lost piece by piece. The final blow came in the 1920’s when they lost the ability to make a living here. With the mechanization of farming, the local farmers no longer needed their help. Entire families left in search of a better life. Martin Buchanan, the young man who walked off to war full of hope for the future left Gleedsville for good when he was in his 70’s finding work as a servant in Leesburg.

Why did we seek the designation of this building as an historic place? Why are we celebrating today? Well we want to honor what happened here, to honor the struggle for freedom and equality that occurred right here and by doing that to honor all struggles for freedom and equality in this country and the world.

And to express our gratitude for the gift we have been given – this sacred space. Wayne Williams, our resident architect, said he thinks “It has soul” as all great buildings should have. I believe that the first congregation here chose to build something not just for utilitarian purposes – four walls and a roof, a place to get in out of the rain --- but they wanted to express their joy and their pride in what they had accomplished.

Look around you - look at the walls – see the wooden wainscoting up here – it is like shiplap – that’s the way they used to build wooden ships. Now look up - see the way the walls and the ceiling meet at the front and the back – unusual style -- a number of people have told me they think it looks like an ark. Their ark, an ark come to rest on this mountaintop. A ship of dreams. A ship sailing on a turbulent sea, yes, but staying afloat in that untamed sea, a ship that would carry them safely to a better day.

Finally, I am telling this story because I hope it will be an inspiration to us living today. The struggle for freedom and human rights is not over – not even in this country that says it stands for equal rights. Still today the color of your skin keeps you from being president, your gender keeps you from equal pay, and your sexual orientation keeps you from a legal union with your partner.

As members of a faith community we need to work for the day when our nation accepts the principle that all our citizens have the right to realize their dreams regardless of the color of their skin, their gender or their sexual orientation. By living our beliefs, by persevering, by supporting each other in difficult times - someday we may accomplish a change just as significant as the one the first residents of Gleedsville accomplished. And our ship of dreams – this community- will carry us through the stormy seas of those struggles.

Closing Words. May we carry from this place the dreams of those who went before, and the dreams of those here today and may we have the strength to accomplish lasting deeds as we work to realize all those dreams. Go in peace and may the service now truly begin.