Survey of Thomas Winn's Land in Hanover County, Virginia

Date1800/1816

Maker P. Sheetz (fl. 1800 - 1816)

MediumInk, graphite, and watercolor on wove paper

DimensionsOH: 12" x OW: 14 1/2"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number2017-161

DescriptionBottom margin reads: "At the request of Mr. John Winn, I did on the 27th 28th & 29th of January 1800 survey the lands belonging to/ the estate of his deceased brother Hezekiah Winn And at his further request, I divided the said lands in equal quantity/ among the three sons of the said Hezekiah, which John B. Winn, Minor Winn, and Thomas Winn; allotting to each three/ hundred and seven and one third arcres. And from the rough plot of that survey, I have at the instance of Capt. William/ Moseley, made out the above plot which was allotted to Thomas Winn./ P. Sheetz/ 16.th January 1816"
Label TextThis land survey was originally drawn-up in 1800 upon the settlement of Hezekiah Winn’s estate in order to divide his land equally between his three sons in Hanover County, Virginia along the Chickahominy River and Grassy Swamp. The land depicted in this survey that was granted to Hezekiah’s son Thomas, though it is unclear why this portion of a larger survey was redrawn in 1816. It contained 307 1/3 acres and a house, shown on the survey that was described in an 1807 in an advertisement as “a good framed dwelling house, containing four rooms below and two above, with two brick chimneys.” (1) The small structure at the top center just outside the boundaries of Thomas’ property, represents a Baptist meetinghouse, which is still an active congregation in the twenty-first century known as Winn’s Baptist Church, in Glen Allen, Virginia. (2) The church was founded in 1776 on land set aside for that purpose by John Winn, Hezekiah’s brother. English law required that all subjects belong and tithe to The Church of England, therefore groups practicing other religions required permission and were only allowed to congregate under strict rules and supervision. This building is referred to as a ‘meetinghouse’ because most dissenting groups, including the Baptists, considered the ‘church’ to refer to the congregation, not the physical structure where worship took place.(3) They eschewed the traditional trappings of elite architecture connected to the Anglican Church. A photograph captured in the late-nineteenth century shows the eighteenth-century meetinghouse, a simple frame building with wooden siding, before the original structure was dismantled in the early twentieth century to make way for a new building. (4)

Enslaved people, free blacks, and the poor were often denied access to or participation in the Anglican Church of various reasons including social hierarchy, mobility, time, or permission. The Virginia Assembly reinforced and supported the authority of the Established Church legally, for example, to hold office, one had to be Anglican in addition to white, male, and propertied. The dissenting religions groups like the Baptists and Methodists espoused a more inclusive ideology where all congregants were equal under the eyes of God and congregations ruled by consensus. In the early days of the Baptist revival in the 1770s and 1780s, the vast majority of new churches included both blacks and whites. (5) The congregation at Winn’s Baptist Church had a majority black population from the 1830s until after the Civil War, which was common for most Baptist churches throughout the South. (6)

(1) 'For Sale,' "The Enquirer, Richmond," VA, August 25, 1807, p. 3.
(2) For a history of the church see Rev. Thomas C. Lacy, Member, "The Mysteries in the History of Winn's Baptist Church, 1776-2005," (Glen Allen, VA: Royal Printing, 2005).
(3) Carl Lounsbury and Vanessa Elizabeth Patrick, "An Illustrated Glossary of Early Southern Architecture and Landscape" (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 229.
(4) See Lacy, "Winn's Baptist Church," pp. 80-81.
(5) Dell Upton, "Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 189.
(6) Lacy, "Winn's Baptist Church," pp. 94-95.

This map was published in William C. Wooldridge, "Mapping Virginia: From the Age of Exploration to the Civil War" (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012), #185, pp. 199-201.