We like to think that we live in a fast-changing world and long for the slower pace of an earlier age. Yet within the lifetime of Elkanah Fawcett (1820-1900) the Quaker world was completely redefined.
Elkanah was born into Virginia Yearly Meeting, a meeting that was even then disappearing. To avoid involvement with slavery, Friends from the South were moving en masse to the Midwest. Ohio Yearly Meeting had just been established in 1813; Indiana was to come in 1821. But even bigger changes were to take place in 1827 and 1828 when five of the eight existing yearly meetings were split into Hicksite and Orthodox branches. Further splits in Fawcett’s lifetime created most of the varieties of Friends we know today.
It is likely that most of his neighbors at the time of his birth were Quakers. They all wore plain dress, used plain speech, and married each other. Those who couldn’t accept Quaker peculiarities were soon disowned. Their children received a "guarded education" in a meeting school. But by the time Elkanah married, the discipline had been relaxed and plain clothes and plain speech were rapidly disappearing. Quaker children began attending public schools. By the time he was 60, some meetings had hired pastors and given up silent meeting for worship. By the time he died, the old Quaker "hedge against the world" had been cut down.
This was also an era of great changes in the wider society that tested the faithfulness of Friends. The greatest of these was the Civil War, during which Elkanah was drafted into the Confederate army and suffered invasion and the occupation of his home. While many northern Quakers felt called to forsake the Peace Testimony, Elkanah offered an example of public resistance. Only late in life did he receive paltry compensation for his losses.
In view of the way so many aspects of this Friend’s world were transformed in ways unimaginable at his birth, perhaps we should be less alarmed by the absence of tranquility of a 21st-century life.
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The following obituary originally appeared in Friends Intelligencer, February 10, 1900.
Elkanah Fawcett
Died at his home in Frederick County, Virginia, nine miles south of Winchester, on the 18th of Sixth month, 1900, Elkanah Fawcett, a member and elder of Centre (Winchester) Preparative and Hopewell Monthly Meeting, in the 80th year of his age.
He was one who was faithful to known duty and was seldom absent from his meeting while his health was so that he could attend, although his home was nine miles from his meeting; and until within a few years he was rarely absent from the quarterly meetings (Fairfax) although held at four different places, one of which was near 100 miles from his home. He was one of the most regular attenders of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, having missed very few in the last 40 years, during which time he had been a consistent and much esteemed elder of his monthly meeting.
He married more than 50 years ago; and although in the selection of a companion for life he did not choose one of the same religious communion with himself she was a congenial and loving helpmeet to him. She, with six of their nine children, survives him, and while none of them joined his meeting, they all had great love for him and respect for his religious principles.
He was one of those who suffered great loss during the war of the rebellion, being forced into the militia service of Virginia very soon after the beginning of hostilities, but steadily refusing to muster or bear arms. Yet being compelled to go with his company, he concluded that he might act as cook for them rather than spend his time in idleness, which duty he faithfully performed for six months, at the end of which time he was permitted to go home, and did not afterward return to the company, and was not again molested by the Southern troops. Although he was thoroughly loyal to the United States government, when the Union troops took possession of the Shenandoah Valley, some of the commands camped on or near his farm, and having heard he had been in the Confederate army they almost stripped him of everything they could carry off—horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, wheat, corn, flour, and meat were all appropriated for the use of the army, so that at one time he and his wife did not know where the next meal for themselves and their little children was to come from; but kind neighbors more out of the reach of the army supplied them with food for a short time. It is only within the last few years that the Government has directed him to be paid a few hundred dollars, to cover losses of several thousand.
