John Jacqueline

This is an excerpt and references from that thesis re JJ Ambler

The fire did push the Episcopal leadership at Bear Mountain to yet again face the question of what to officially call the Mission, and the opinions and feedback received from different parties highlighted the concerted effort in Amherst County to strip the Monacan people of any association with their Native identity. On January 25, 1930, Mr. Scott, the executive secretary for the Diocese, made the decision to use the phrase “Indian Mission” in an article announcing the fire in the Southern Churchman. Scott was clearly comfortable with this phrase, as it had been used to describe the Mission from the very beginning.217 This would have likely passed as a non-event, had white neighbors not gotten ahold of the publication. John Jacquelin Ambler, the same J. J. Ambler, whose family donated land for the Mission and who acted as a teacher and lay reader during the first few years of the Mission’s establishment, became extremely vocal in his disapproval of the use of the word “Indian” to describe the Mission. Though he was present when Bishop Tucker consecrated the Mission explicitly for the “Indians,” he either never agreed with the term’s usage, or had since come under the influence of Virginia’s
eugenics movement or other white people in the area who denied the Native identity of theMonacan people on Bear Mountain.
Like the Monacans had in the case of the fire, Ambler appealed to community consensus and complained of the threat of discord among his white neighbors. Ambler sent a letter steeped in warning to Scott in April, stating that, “I have defended the position that they are not ‘Indians,’ nor ever have been.”218 He warned that if Mission leadership continued to insinuate that the congregation was Native, they would lose the support of the “neighborhood,” causing, “.
. .even members of other denominations to be indifferent to missions.” He claimed that even members of his own family in the Bear Mountain area were refusing to attend services at any
church because of the matter.

217 John Jacqueline Ambler to the Executive Secretary, April 4, 1930, Box 30, Folder 6, Episcopal Diocese of
Southwestern Virginia Records, 1906-1990, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
218 John Jacqueline Ambler to Mr. Scott, Executive Secretary, April 4, 1930, Box 30, Folder 6, Episcopal Diocese of
Southwestern Virginia Records, 1906-1990, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
219 John Jacqueline Ambler to Mr. Scott, Executive Secretary, April 4, 1930, Box 30, Folder 6, Episcopal Diocese of
Southwestern Virginia Records, 1906-1990, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.