Samuel Pleasants Parsons House

Completed in 1819, 601 Spring Street was the home of Samuel Pleasants Parsons (1783-1842). Parsons, a Quaker, was an early reform-minded superintendent (1816-1822, 1824-1832) of the Virginia State Penitentiary, formerly located across Belvidere Street. The Parsons family was part of a network of important Richmond Quaker families that were collectively involved in a series of abolition and prison reform activities. Parsons later served as a superintendent for the James River and Kanawha Company and was a founder of the Mechanicsville Turnpike. The house is a part of the Oregon Hill Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.