Springfield Friends – Our Meeting’s Property

The first group of Friends who met at Springfield purchased 12 acres of land from Henry Thornburgh for 5 shillings – about the cost of a new axe head at the time. Other lots have been added over the years, and the meeting currently owns about 22 acres.

The first meetinghouse was a log cabin-type structure. A log school house was added about 1792. It was followed by a larger log cabin meetinghouse about 1805. A new brick meetinghouse (now the Museum of Old Domestic Life) was built just before the Civil War in 1858. It was used for worship for the next 69 years, until our present meetinghouse was built in 1927.

The Springfield School stood on the lawn in front of the Museum from 1907 to 1922, when it was consolidated to create the Allen Jay School. A brick marker and stone steps are all that remain today.

The Allen Jay house was built sometime in the 1840s and served as the home of Allen and Martha Jay for eight years, as well as the office and headquarters of the Baltimore Association. The house was restored in the 1940s by preservationist Ruth Coltrane Cannon. It was donated to the meeting in 1949 by the King family. It is currently used by the Friends Emergency Material Assistance Program (FEMAP)

East Springfield Road was built in the early 1930’s by a crew of volunteers from the meeting assisted by convicts from the local jail. Before then, access to the meeting grounds was via a track roughly following the route of what is now Bellemeade Street. Springfield Road was later developed and houses were built along it, many of which were occupied by members of the meeting.

Model Farm Road, which borders the meeting property, was the southern border of the City of High Point until at least the 1940’s

Land for a parsonage was acquired in the early 1940s, and the parsonage was completed in 1944. The parsonage lot extends along Elva Place all the way back to Martha Place. The parsonage became a rental property for a number of years and was renovated in 2016.

The Byron Haworth house was built in 1914 and was later acquired by the meeting. It has served as staff housing, as a rental property and is now the office of North Carolina Yearly Meeting, Inc.

In 2019, the state forester surveyed our woods, and said that the trees include poplar, white and black oak, ash and other species. The oldest trees are about 130 years old. To protect the forest, in 2020 the Springfield Memorial Association purchased the timber rights from the meeting in exchange for a contribution of $20,000.

Maps of the cemetery have been made and updated several times over the years. The most recent cemetery guide was prepared by Brenda Haworth in 2017. An aerial drone survey has been made of the cemetery. When it is fully digitized and the data entered, it will provide a highly accurate map of the cemetery.

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