Plan of a camp meeting, 1809

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

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Plan of the Camp, August 8, 1809. Journal of Benjamin Latrobe, August 23, 1806- August 8, 1809. Sketch by Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Latrobe Papers, Manuscript Department, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore (185)