Virginia Singleton Darnell has done it all in the First Baptist Church of Richmond. She has broken the gender barrier time and again. She was in the “second batch” of women to be elected as deacons about 1979; and in 1996, she was the first woman to be elected as chairman of the board of deacons. When one of her predecessors, Meredith House, introduced her, he said: “We now have the first chairman of the board who is [pausing for effect] from Hanover County!”
In 1984 she became the first woman to serve on the board of directors of the First Baptist Church Endowment Fund Inc., and she was elected secretary of the board. Already she had chaired the church's personnel committee and budget committee.
Virginia Darnell has been engaged in almost every significant undertaking of her church in the last 25 years. When the Focus on the Future campaign engaged in an ambitious construction project, she was on the team. When the time came for someone on the committee to check the architectural drawings for accuracy, she was the one who volunteered. She astounded the menfolks with her knowledge of reading blueprints.
Last year, she headed her church's 225th anniversary celebration. Today she is plodding through about 30 boxes of historical papers, sorting and saving the archives of one of the leading churches among Virginia Baptists.
Virginia grew up in Halifax County, the daughter of a tobacco farmer. For 11 years she served as a tomboy, her father's “son.” “I think that's how I learned to do all the things around a homestead,” muses Virginia. “I followed my daddy around and he showed me.” In time, a baby brother came into the family, but Virginia already had learned practical skills which have helped her throughout her life.
Virginia was baptized into the fellowship of Clover Bottom Baptist Church at Nathalie. She was baptized in a pond. “It had rained the night before,” she remembered. “The pond was muddy and all I could think of was that there would be snakes in the pond. The preacher didn't think anything of it, but I did!”
After high school, Virginia took a secretarial course at a business school in Lynchburg. She got a job in Orange with the railroad; and when the Second World War ended and the boys came home, she met one of the Orange servicemen, Raymond Winston Darnell. They married in '46 and moved to Richmond in August—60 years ago—for Raymond to enter the Richmond Professional Institute (now VCU).
The young married couple lived in an apartment on Grace Street, practically across from the First Baptist Church on Monument Avenue. Raymond was a staunch Methodist; and the newlyweds agreed to take turns finding a church to visit, alternating between Methodist and Baptist. Virginia agreed that if the final choice was a Methodist church, she would join.
Hugh Busey, associate pastor at First Baptist, visited the couple immediately after they arrived. They visited First and both liked the pastor, Theodore F. Adams. They attended a class of other young couples. “In April 1947, Dr. Adams touched my heart,” says Virginia, “and we were way up in the balcony. I got up and started down and Raymond was just behind me.” Sixty years later, they both agree that First Baptist Church has been their home since that April Sunday.
From 1950-87, Virginia taught a Sunday school class for single adults. She became attached to the many young adults who passed through the class. She taught and counseled and prayed for many a man and woman. Across the years, the Darnells witnessed the marriages of several of these couples in their yard.
In 1963 the couple was looking for a place on the James River. One advertised place seemed attractive; but Raymond refused to do business on a Sunday and by Monday, it was sold. Raymond looked at another place in rural Hanover County. It was an abandoned mill beside a stream. The old mill dated to 1756 and daylight showed through the holes in the roof and the floor. Raymond put down the money before he told Virginia; but she also was excited with the possibilities.
First, they had to evict bees from whom they gathered 18 pounds of honey. After two years of backbreaking work and sweat equity, they converted the mill into an attractive two-story home with basement. The old millstones and mill wheels and other evidences of Brandy Branch Mill's former life are all over the property. Today the glade and deep woods in which the home sits is comfortably cool even in the oppressive heat of August 2006. Just beyond the woods is a highly-developed commercial area of Mechanicsville; but shoppers and merchants come and go totally unaware of the hidden mill.
It is from Brandy Branch Mill that Virginia Darnell has conducted her church committees and civic and club involvement. She was president of the Virginia Federation of Women's Clubs and led them in re-furbishing Camp Easter Seal East in Caroline County. She continues to plan the annual historical calendars project sponsored by her local club, the Pamunkey Woman's Club. She helped raise $500,000 in the Relay for Life campaign of the American Cancer Society. She was president of the Friends of Hanover which purchased a home in Ashland for the handicapped. She is secretary of the board of trustees of the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond.
Down by the old millstream Virginia and Raymond Darnell find solace. They come out of the woods to practice Christian discipleship.
Fred Anderson may be contacted at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.