When Hannah Maria Ritter Troth moved to Alexandria,
Virginia, around 1846, she likely knew few people. Hannah had recently married
into the Troth family, Pennsylvania Quakers who co-purchased Alexandria’s
Woodlawn Plantation. Their goal was to show that an agricultural enterprise in
the American South could succeed without enslaving its laborers, and the family
moved to Virginia to manage the property.
In typical Victorian fashion, Hannah used an autograph album as a way of maintaining a connection to far-flung friends and family—much like today’s scrapbooks, yearbooks, or social media accounts. When visitors from places such as Indiana or Pennsylvania (or even nearby farms) came to Woodlawn, they would sign the album, often adding notes or poems. Some drew pictures.
“It’s a way, especially for women, of having some autonomy and some way of [saying], ‘These are my friends; this is who I was,’” says Elizabeth Reese, senior manager of public programs and interpretation at Woodlawn, now a National Trust Historic Site. “It can be passed down in families so that people know who their ancestors were and the world that was around them, too.”
A descendant of Hannah’s donated the album to Woodlawn in 1983, and it is now displayed in the main house’s Quaker Room. In the spring of 2026, Woodlawn will open an exhibition devoted to the site’s Quaker history.
