Quakers

It seems unlikely that in the early 1900s Quakers from various states would settle in a tiny village on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay in coastal Alabama. But Quakers by nature are an unlikely group.

Drawn by the mild climate, cheap land and interesting tax base, Quakers migrated to Fairhope from Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Indiana, North Carolina and Kansas.

Fairhope, Alabama, was established in 1894 as a single tax colony by a group from Des Moines, Iowa, (the only other remaining single tax colony is in Arden, Delaware) and was loosely based on the single tax theories of economist, journalist and social reformer Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty (1879). Land was purchased in the name of the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation then leased under a 99 year renewable lease; ownership of improvements on the land belongs to the lessee.

The monies paid to the Single Tax Corporation by lessees include state, county and local taxes (thus the name Single Tax), an administration fee and a “demonstration fee,” intended to demonstrate the single tax theory.

Today about 4,500 acres of land which includes the downtown area and a little less than half of the remainder of the city is owned by the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation and leased out to individuals and businesses. Funds from the demonstration fee continues to be used to enhance the community by supporting such things as 63 acres of parks overlooking Mobile Bay, a 43 acre city nature park, funding for improving the local emergency room, the historical museum and improvements to roads and sidewalks.

In 1908 there were about 500 total residents in Fairhope. By 1915 there were 20 Quaker families living there. As early Quakers were wont to do, in 1916 they began by building a one room schoolhouse that was also used for meetings for worship.

Initially the Quakers in Fairhope met under the care of the Stillwater Meeting in Barnesville, Ohio; in 1919 the group became Fairhope (Ala.) Meeting of Ohio Yearly Meeting with 52 members recorded. At that point, the meetinghouse, next to the school, had been completed at a cost of $1,346.65 plus $100 cost for the benches and a cemetery was established on single tax land set aside from the Herman Battey family’s 80 acre dairy farm.

The meeting continued to grow and their members set deep roots in the community, building farms, working in various professions and raising their families.

But then Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1948. On October 26 1948, Marvin Rockwell sent written notice to the Local Draft Board in Foley, Alabama, advising of his noncompliance by refusal to register on religious grounds and in December 1948, four young Fairhope Friends were arrested. Each entered a plea of nolo contendere for refusal to register for the draft and presented written stament to U.S. District Court Judge McDuffie in Mobile. The Court records reflect that the clerk read the statement of Marvin Rockwell because it was “a short one:’

I cannot imagine Christ in a military uniform taking training in the art of murder. I do not believe He would give His support to a program which forced the cream of young manhood to learn to take part in war.

Judge McDuffie’s comments at sentencing included these:

This is a government of laws and not of men and so long as you live here, you should abide by the laws of the land……those who oppose the laws of this country and this form of government, even when it goes to war, should get out of this country and stay out.

Now I was wondering what some of you would do, if you were sitting in my place, having sworn to administer the law. There is nothing in the world I can do but sentence you.

Judge McDuffie then sentenced Wilford Guindon, Howard Rockwell, Leonard Rockwell and Marvin Rockwell to prison for one year and one day, eligible for parole at the end of four months. He concluded “I have done my duty by my dim lights….”

The four young Friends were taken to the Mobile County jail and later transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, where they served four months and one day. When they were released on parole on February 27 1950, they again refused to sign their draft registration cards: the Warden of the prison signed the cards for each of the four Friends so they would not be subject to immediate rearrest. Back in Fairhope, the four rejoined the active young people’s Discussion Group affiliated with the Fairhope Meeting. The four were obligated to stay in Alabama until they completed their parole on October 26 1950 and during the next eight months, deep personal and spiritual issues were addressed in the small Quaker meetinghouse and many Quaker homes. Individual lives as well as the life of their Quaker community had experienced the imprisonment of their young men for refusal to take any part in the military draft and they had viscerally felt the use of their taxes to support a war economy. These issues were raised against the backdrop of the reality that Fairhope was home. Fairhope was where their families and friends lived; here they had built their homes, their children were born, their loved ones were buried. In this little corner of southeast Alabama, they had worked long and hard to create a stable life by creating farms and developing businesses.

Fairhope Friends were facing the same dilemma presented to Friends in England in the mid-1600s: leave your country to build a new world of religious freedom or remain to work for religious freedom in your home country. A number of the families from the meeting came to believe they should, as the judge suggested, “get out of this country and stay out.” Not all of the members of the meeting came to the same conclusion; some would stay, in the belief that here they could better work for and influence a change of the system. Unfortunately, those gleaning sessions were not reported; it is easy to imagine the difficulty individuals experienced in reaching a decision best for their specific circumstances.

For those who would leave, the next question was where to go. Canada was a consideration, but the climate there was too cold. Remember they moved to Fairhope to get out of the snow. They decided against Australia and New Zealand because the distance and expense to return to visit family and friends. The group began to focus on Central America and finally decided on Costa Rica where the government was stable, the economy sound, the poor were not as poor and the rich were not as rich, there was a large middle class and the people were friendly. It was a pivotal point that Costa Rica had abolished it’s army by Constitutional Amendment in 1947.

The records showed 62 members of the meeting on July 12 1950 and children attended the single-teacher Quaker school adjacent to the meetinghouse. When the parole of the four expired on October 26 1950, many Quakers in Baldwin County began to make the move to Costa Rica. Those who left in the first wave numbered 31. Early in 1951, there were 44 who had moved. Ages of those moving ranged from two years to eighty.

The Group bought 3,500 acres on the side of a mountain for $50,000 U.S. The location was both beautiful and remote. Their new home was 16 miles from an all-weather road. There was a dry weather jeep road within seven to eight miles from their land; the rest was an ox cart road.

There on the side of a mountain in Central America, Quakers from Fairhope, Alabama, cleared new ground and began again-building a school for their children, creating farm and pasture lands, a dairy business and constructing a new community in a country in which it was unconstitutional for the army to even exist. It was Quakers from Fairhope who founded Monteverde and set aside for conservation land that would become an initial tract in the internationally recognized Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. The Monteverde Quaker community became more active and widely known than it’s birthplace, Fairhope Friends.

The decision to leave for Costa Rica was not sponsored by Fairhope Meeting but was individual action by each of those making that choice. The minutes of the meeting are intriguingly silent about the discernments, discussions and clearness sought over the issue of so many leaving their homes and country. There are only a few oblique references in the minutes to this huge upheaval in the meeting community. For example, on November 15, 1950:

Since our present Treasurer is likely to leave us before the regular time for appointing another, the meeting is united in appointing Roy Rockwell to fill the unexpired time….Since our present recorder is soon to leave us, this meeting unites in appointing Isabella Battey to fill the vacancy.

After the mass exodus to Costa Rica, the small group that remained in Fairhope continued on though times were rough. The school closed and the building sold, moved to the adjoining property to be used as a residence. Bertha Battey, a longtime clerk said, “From time to time, Fairhope Meeting consisted of three elderly women.” On May 8, 1966, Fairhope Friends sent a letter to Ohio’s Stillwater Quarterly Meeting that said in part, “Due to more reduced active membership…our monthly meeting has been discontinued indefinitely…We appreciate your concern in the past and will appreciate your prayers for a better future.” That better future began soon.

Because of the tenacity of the few who continued informally in the small meetinghouse, Fairhope Friends formally began again on November 24, 1967 as Fairhope Meeting Independent. Although it has not rebuilt its earlier membership numbers, it is a strong presence in the community. Each week we gather in the meetinghouse built in 1917, to sit on handmade benches that cost $100 for materials 100 years ago. Though updated, the meetinghouse is much the same. Fairhope Friends remains independent and we continue to use the Friends Cemetery as a final resting place for loved ones.

While those who moved to Costa Rica recreated a farming life on a blank, rough-hewed slate, the Quakers who remained in Fairhope have experienced very different challenges in an evolving secular community. Monteverde and Fairhope are each the reflection of difficult and well-grounded decisions. Both meetings provide salt to their respective communities; each strives to remain in the Light, to listen for God. Fairhope Friends contribute financially to Monteverde; some of our members lived in Monteverde at one time, and though they have returned to Fairhope, they have relatives in Monteverde. You will find many of the same family names on the headstones in our respective cemeteries.

In the years following the great migration in the 1950s to Costa Rica, the makeup of Fairhope Friends has changed to reflect a typical slice of modern Baldwin County.Most of the current members are convinced Quakers; a minority are birthright Quakers. In the winter, the number attending swells as snowbirds from states such as Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York migrate to the warm climate. The old meetinghouse remains much the same, with the original wooden benches but with central hear and air conditioning added for comfort.

This history originally appeared as 100 years of Quiet Tenacity by Laura Melvin until recently the Treasurer of Fairhope Friends Meeting Independent