The first thing Bill Gwathmey sees every morning is the fields at Rose Mount, the farm where he has lived since 1954. At 90 he does not work in the fields but chooses to lease them. He likewise no longer operates a dairy. “I learned that I liked children better than cows,” he says, explaining that after two drought years he turned to teaching vocational agriculture. He taught for 22 years, including a short time as a principal.
Except for college years at VPI and military service in occupied Europe, his entire life has been spent in his native King & Queen County. He and his twin brother, Richard, were born May 5, 1921; and they shared much of life’s experiences. They were brought as children to Bruington Baptist Church and there they professed their faith at the same time and were baptized together at age 9. When they were 12, they were together at the old mill the day Bill fell through a floor and broke both arms. No one was at home and finally a neighbor was able to summon a doctor. “The doctor set my arms but did nothing with my nose,” laughs Bill. “And it was my nose that hurt!”
Fred Anderson
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The twins learned about tithing from their father and churchmanship from both parents. The twins also were together at VPI and then through the long years at Bruington, where both men served in various leadership capacities. They were separated by death when Richard died in 1997.
The brothers’ sister, Caroline Gwathmey Jones, remains active at Bruington. Bill and Caroline also are volunteers for the King & Queen County Historical Society and enjoy sharing their county’s history with museum visitors. Their own memories go back to the days when steamboats plied the Mattaponi.
Formed in 1691, King & Queen is a microcosm of American history, including the early Baptist story of the struggle for religious liberty. The museum, which occupies an old tavern on the courthouse green, contains professionally-mounted exhibits that tell the county’s story. Local families generously have provided period artifacts. In one case is a spyglass from Canterbury, the Gwathmey homeplace, which was used in the Revolution and the Civil War. Bill says that his aunts made the best use of the spyglass by looking over at a neighboring farm, Ingleside, a Ryland homeplace, to see what those girls were wearing so that they did not dress alike!
On a wintry day, Bill showed this columnist through the museum. We spent a brief time in the ice-cold log schoolhouse which was donated by Marion Minor, a Richmond Baptist layperson, and moved from her family’s Eastern View Farm. The small building is a reminder of the vast improvements in education. Another building protects an old buggy and the front desk of a local post office.
Bill Gwathmey in the King & Queen County Historical Society’s museum.
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After touring the museum, we drove across country roads alongside vast acreages of farmland and stopped at Rose Mount. The house was built by Gwathmey’s three-greats grandfather, John Semple, and has particular interest to Virginia Baptists because one of their greatest sons, Robert Baylor Semple, a leader among Baptists in young America, was born there in 1769. He wrote the first history of Virginia Baptists. The house has been altered and enlarged since Semple’s time.
When Bill and Jean Gwathmey acquired the property, the house had been unoccupied for some time. There was no electricity upstairs. The plaster was cracked and there was none of the impressive paneling and cabinetry which now graces the dining room and parlor. “I had the most patient wife in the world,” says Bill, noting that they improved the house one room at a time. The kitchen cabinets were made from flooring out of the county’s poor house. “In fixing up the house,” laughs Bill, “I had the easy job. Jean planned what she wanted and all I had to do was put it up!”
A framed stitchery which reads “Jean’s Kitchen” still hangs although Jean died in a tragic accident in March 1999. She remains evident in many ways. A corner of the dining room is what Bill calls her memorial and it contains framed pictures and scrapbooks which tell her story and their story. In the front hall there is the New Testament with its metal cover which she gave her college boyfriend in May of ’43 before he went overseas and the Bible which she carried when they were married in ’48.
Jean Lovelace Gwathmey was a city girl who adapted to country living, to homemaking and to missions work through Bruington. She also led a professional life as a teacher at nearby West Point. The couple had four children: Ellen, Susan, Ann and W. Brooke Gwathmey Jr.
Ellen was ordained at Bruington in 1990. She once reflected upon her calling to the gospel ministry: “I see how my family, especially my parents, gave me the freedom to hear and to follow my Lord. Their example of discipleship continues to model for me a lifestyle balanced between spiritual devotion and growth and service to others. They are among those who truly are Christ’s hands, feet, eyes, ears and voice in this world.” Today she serves as chaplain to one of the largest communities in Virginia, the huge retirement community in Richmond known as Imperial Plaza.
Bill and Jean Gwathmey truly were a team of disciples. Together they served in Tanzania, which was the first Virginia Baptist missions partnership. Before they arrived in Africa, they spent three weeks in Europe where Bill showed Jean the places where he had been in the war. They joined fellow Virginia Baptists in Tanzania where a construction project was underway. Jean’s role was to work with the kitchen where she instructed the Tanzania people in nutrition. The average age expectancy was only about 40; and when Bill would try to work in the fields, the Africans would take the tools, saying that he, then in his early 60s, was too old for such work. He returned another year to work on church roofs. They also both worked in the Costa Rica partnership and individually the Gwathmeys served in the Hungary and Mexico partnerships. Bill also has served on the Virginia Baptist Mission Board and faithfully attends the meetings of the Baptist General Association of Virginia and the Mid-Tidewater Baptist Association.
When he reflects upon his long life, William Brooke Gwathmey of Rose Mount summarizes it all with a very few words: “I was very blessed.”
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at fred.anderson@vbmb.org or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.