Heritage Column for March 30. 2006
By Fred Anderson
In eastern Henrico County, along Nine Mile Road, there is an antebellum house which is still known as “the Dabbs House.” Never mind that Mr. and Mrs. Dabbs have been gone from the place since 1862! In Virginia, old names often remain.
Actually, when Josiah and Kate Dabbs purchased the estate in 1859, it was known as High Meadows. But the couple must have made such an impression that forever after it has been known as Dabbs House. In 1883 the county acquired it as an almshouse; and most Henrico residents know it as the former headquarters of the county's police. Plans call for it to become a museum.
For a brief time it was occupied by Josiah Dabbs, a wealthy planter who had been a deacon at Ash Camp Baptist Church in Charlotte County before his move to Henrico. He had married a young widow, Mary Catherine “Kate” Williams Jennett; and for about three years, she was the mistress of “the Dabbs House.” At about age 37, she was a widow once again. Since “the War” was raging, she decided to sell the country home and move into Richmond. It was just as well. General Lee made it his headquarters.
In Richmond, “the widow Dabbs” made tremendous accomplishments and soon became a notable figure in Baptist life. She had been reared a Baptist in Petersburg by a single parent. Her mother, Armintia Dunn Thurston of Middlesex, married Hiram White, who used the alias of Henry Williams. After the couple had three little girls, he disappeared. There were few opportunities for single mothers in the 1820s. She seized the best opportunity and became a seamstress, designing and sewing the latest fashions for Petersburg's ladies. She took her girls to the First Baptist Church.
The industrious mother liked to introduce her daughters as “Mary Catherine, my intellectual daughter; Marie Louise, my dutiful daughter; Indianna, my beautiful daughter.” She certainly knew the capacities of her eldest daughter. Mary Catherine exercised her intellectual gifts in many ways over her lifetime. In 1850 Kate married Christopher Jennett, the pastor of her church. Together, they moved to Augusta, Ga., where he was pastor until his untimely death in 1852.
Kate returned to Petersburg; but her mother also died in 1852, leaving her intellectual daughter as the executor of an estate which included three houses, one for each daughter. It was a remarkable estate for a mother who had struggled to support a family. In 1857, she married Josiah Dabbs and they made their home at High Meadows until his death in 1862.
“The widow Dabbs” moved into the mansion of a wealthy Richmond family to serve as a house sitter. Into that home there came a visitor, a widower, Jeremiah Bell Jeter. At 60, he was a well-known and revered figure among the Baptists of America.
In 1863 Jeter was pastor of Grace Street Baptist Church in Richmond. He confided to a friend that he had been bewitched by Kate: “I was charmed, won, captured, spell-bound and, at length, not reluctantly, yielded myself to the mystic influence.” On May 5, 1863, they were married. It was her third marriage and his fourth. Death was a frequent visitor in the 19th century.
It was a marriage made in heaven; and for the minister, the widow Dabbs' money enabled them after the War to purchase a newspaper, the Religious Herald. Jeter was the editor and Kate-the intellectual daughter-wrote the women's page and the children's page. She selected books for reviews. She wrote poetry. Together, they turned the paper into one of the leading religious journals in America.
Kate was a woman ahead of her times. She helped establish a home in Richmond for unwed mothers. She was the first president of Woman's Missionary Union of Virginia and was among those instrumental in raising funds for the house in China where those pioneer missionaries, the Moon sisters, would reside. She led the way for the first residential home to care for the aged among Virginia Baptists.
Kate shared an exciting social life with her husband. He was president of the board of trustees of Richmond College (now the University of Richmond) and the campus became a favorite place for the intellectual Kate. (A building was named for her husband on the old and on the present campus.) In 1872 the Foreign Mission Board, SBC, sent Jeter to Italy to check on the work of its Italian mission. Kate accompanied her husband for the grand adventure.
At Grace Street Church, Kate found a niche as the teacher of “the infant class,” which was a misnomer since it included some 300 children from the very young to age 12. One of those children was Janie Prichard Duggan, who once described her teacher's importance: “She knew the Bible, and believed it; she possessed the gift of teaching and of originality in her simple ways of arresting the childish attention.”
The mother had been right. Mary Catherine was the intellectual daughter and she recognized that true wisdom came in fearing the Lord and ministering unto others.
Fred Anderson may be contacted at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173. He also is director of the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.