Plan of a camp meeting, 1809
About this illustration
Journal of Benjamin Latrobe, August 23, 1806 – August 8, 1809. Latrobe Papers, Manuscript Department, Maryland Historical Society.
- Date created
- 1809
- Location
- Fairfax, Virginia
- License
- This work is believed to be in the public domain. Users are advised to make their own copyright assessment and to understand their rights to fair use.
- Source
- Original image housed by Library of Congress
See this illustration in context
- North Carolina in the New Nation: Primary sources and readings explore North Carolina in the early national period (1790–1836). Topics include the development of state government and political parties, agriculture, the Great Revival, education, the gold rush, the growth of slavery, Cherokee Removal, and battles over internal improvements and reform. (Page 3.3)
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- Search LEARN NC for antebellum, camp meetings, Great Revival, and religion.
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- See our collection of articles on visual literacy for ideas on using photographs meaningfully in the classroom.
This sketch, by Benjamin Latrobe, shows the layout of an 1809 Methodist camp meeting in Fairfax County, Virginia. Note that the men’s seats were separated from the women’s and the “negro tents” from the whites.’ This is an example of the racial segregation that prompted black Methodists to withdraw from the denomination a few years later and form their own independent Methodist church. To accommodate the powerful, at times uncontrollable, emotions generated at a camp meeting, Latrobe indicated that, at the right of the main camp, the organizers had erected “a boarded enclosure filled with straw, into which the converted were thrown that they might kick about without injuring themselves.” — Library of Congress
