History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia

Part 1

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HISTORY

AND

COMPREHENSIVE DESCRIPTION

LOUDOUN COUNTY

VIRGINIA

JAMES W. HEAD

PARK VIEW PRESS

Copyright 1908 by JAMES W. HEAD

Dedication.

* * * * *

TO MY MOTHER,

WHOSE LOVE FOR LOUDOUN IS NOT LESS ARDENT AND UNDYING THAN MY OWN, THIS VOLUME, THE SINGLE AMBITION AND FONDEST ACHIEVEMENT OF MY LIFE, IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

"Loudoun County exemplifies country life in about the purest and pleasantest form that I have yet found in the United States. Not that it is a rural Utopia by any means, but the chief ideals of the life there are practically identical with those that have made country life in the English counties world-famous. As a type, this is, in fact, the real thing. No sham, no artificiality, no suspicion of mushroom growth, no evidence of exotic forcing are to be found in Loudoun, but the culmination of a century's development."

* * * * *

"So much, then, to show briefly that Loudoun County life is a little out of the ordinary, here in America, and hence worth talking about. There are other communities in Virginia and elsewhere that are worthy of eulogy, but I know of none that surpasses Loudoun in the dignity, sincerity, naturalness, completeness and genuine success of its country life."--WALTER A. DYER, in Country Life in America.

Table of Contents.

INTRODUCTION

Descriptive Department.

SITUATION

BOUNDARIES

TOPOGRAPHY

COMPARATIVE ALTITUDES

DRAINAGE

CLIMATE

GEOLOGY

Summary

Granite

Part 2

Loudoun Formation

Weverton Sandstone

Newark System

Newark Diabase

Catoctin Schist

Rocks of the Piedmont Plain

Lafayette Formation

Metamorphism

MINERAL AND KINDRED DEPOSITS

SOILS

Summary

Loudoun Sandy Loam Penn Clay

Penn Stony Loam

Iredell Clay Loam

Penn Loam

Cecil Loam

Cecil Clay

Cecil Silt Loam

Cecil Mica Loam

De Kalb Stony Loam

Porters Clay

Meadow

FLORA AND FAUNA

Flora

Fauna

TRANSPORTATION FACILITIES

TOWNS AND VILLAGES

Leesburg

Part 3

Round Hill

Waterford

Hamilton

Purcellville

Middleburg

Ashburn

Bluemont

Smaller Towns

Statistical Department.

AREA AND FARMING TABULATIONS

POPULATION

INDUSTRIES

FARM VALUES

LIVE STOCK

Values

Animals Sold and Slaughtered

Neat cattle

Dairy Products

Steers

Horses, Mules, etc.

Sheep, Goats, and Swine

Domestic Wool

Poultry and Bees

SOIL PRODUCTS

Values

Corn and Wheat

Oats, Rye, and Buckwheat

Hay and Forage Crops

Part 4

Miscellaneous Crops, etc.

Orchard Fruits, etc.

Small Fruits, etc.

Flowers, Ornamental Plants, etc.

FARM LABOR AND FERTILIZERS

Labor

Fertilizers

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

Education

Religion

Historical Department.

FORMATION

DERIVATION OF NAME

SETTLEMENT AND PERSONNEL

EARLY HABITS, CUSTOMS, AND DRESS

Habits

Customs

Dress

FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR

REPRESENTATION

Colonial Assemblies

State Conventions

THE REVOLUTION

Loudoun's Loyalty

Resolutions of Loudoun County

Revolutionary Committees

Soldiery

Quaker Non-Participation

Part 5

Loudoun's Revolutionary Hero

Army Recommendations

Court Orders and Reimbursements

Close of the Struggle

WAR OF 1812

The Compelling Cause

State Archives at Leesburg

THE MASON-MCCARTY DUEL

HOME OF PRESIDENT MONROE

GENERAL LAFAYETTE'S VISIT

MEXICAN WAR

SECESSION AND CIVIL WAR

Loudoun County in the Secession Movement

Loudoun's Participation in the War

The Loudoun Rangers (Federal)

Mosby's Command in its Relationship to Loudoun County

Mosby at Hamilton (Poem)

Battle of Leesburg ("Ball's Bluff")

Munford's Fight at Leesburg

Battle at Aldie

Duffie at Middleburg

The Sacking of Loudoun

Home Life During the War

Pierpont's Pretentious Administration

Emancipation

Close of the War

RECONSTRUCTION

After the Surrender

Part 6

Conduct of the Freedmen

CONCLUSION

Introduction.

I know not when I first planned this work, so inextricably is the idea interwoven with a fading recollection of my earliest aims and ambitions. However, had I not been resolutely determined to conclude it at any cost--mental, physical, or pecuniary--the difficulties that I have experienced at every stage might have led to its early abandonment.

The greatest difficulty lay in procuring material which could not be supplied by individual research and investigation. For this and other valid reasons that will follow it may safely be said that more than one-half the contents of this volume are in the strictest sense original, the remarks and detail, for the most part, being the products of my own personal observation and reflection. Correspondence with individuals and the State and National authorities, though varied and extensive, elicited not a half dozen important facts. I would charge no one with discourtesy in this particular, and mention the circumstance only because it will serve to emphasize what I shall presently say anent the scarcity of available material.

Likewise, a painstaking perusal of more than two hundred volumes yielded only meagre results, and in most of these illusory references I found not a single fact worth recording. This comparatively prodigious number included gazeteers, encyclopedias, geographies, military histories, general histories, State and National reports, journals of legislative proceedings, biographies, genealogies, reminiscences, travels, romances--in short, any and all books that I had thought calculated to shed even the faintest glimmer of light on the County's history, topographical features, etc.

But, contrary to my expectations, in many there appeared no manner of allusion to Loudoun County. By this it will be seen that much time that might have been more advantageously employed was necessarily given to this form of fruitless research.

That works of history and geography can be prepared in no other way, no person at all acquainted with the nature of such writings need be told. "As well might a traveler presume to claim the fee-simple of all the country which he has surveyed, as a historian and geographer expect to preclude those who come after him from making a proper use of his labors. If the former writers have seen accurately and related faithfully, the latter ought to have the resemblance of declaring the same facts, with that variety only which nature has enstamped upon the distinct elaborations of every individual mind.... As works of this sort become multiplied, voluminous, and detailed, it becomes a duty to literature to abstract, abridge, and give, in synoptical views, the information that is spread through numerous volumes."

Touching the matter gleaned from other books, I claim the sole merit of being a laborious and faithful compiler. In some instances, where the thoughts could not be better or more briefly expressed, the words of the original authors may have been used.

Where this has been done I have, whenever possible, made, in my footnotes or text, frank and ample avowal of the sources from which I have obtained the particular information presented. This has not always been possible for the reason that I could not name, if disposed, all the sources from which I have sought and obtained information. Many of the references thus secured have undergone a process of sifting and, if I may coin the couplet, confirmatory handling which, at the last, rendered some unrecognizable and their origin untraceable.

The only publication of a strictly local color unearthed during my research was Taylor's Memoir of Loudoun, a small book, or more properly a pamphlet, of only 29 pages, dealing principally with the County's geology, geography, and climate. It was written to accompany the map of Loudoun County, drawn by Yardley Taylor, surveyor; and was published by Thomas Reynolds, of Leesburg, in 1853.

I wish to refer specially to the grateful acknowledgment that is due Arthur Keith's Geology of the Catoctin Belt and Carter's and Lyman's Soil Survey of the Leesburg Area, two Government publications, published respectively by the United States Geological Survey and Department of Agriculture, and containing a fund of useful information relating to the geology, soils, and geography of about two-thirds of the area of Loudoun. Of course these works have been the sources to which I have chiefly repaired for information relating to the two first-named subjects. Without them the cost of this publication would have been considerably augmented. As it is I have been spared the expense and labor that would have attended an enforced personal investigation of the County's soils and geology.

And now a tardy and, perhaps, needless word or two in revealment of the purpose of this volume.

To rescue a valuable miscellany of facts and occurrences from an impending oblivion; to gather and fix certain ephemeral incidents before they had passed out of remembrance; to render some account of the County's vast resources and capabilities; to trace its geography and analyze its soils and geology; to follow the tortuous windings of its numerous streams; to chronicle the multitudinous deeds of sacrifice and daring performed by her citizens and soldiery--such has been the purpose of this work, such its object and design.

But the idea as originally evolved contemplated only a chronology of events from the establishment of the County to the present day. Not until the work was well under way was the matter appearing under the several descriptive heads supplemented.

From start to finish this self-appointed task has been prosecuted with conscientious zeal and persistency of purpose, although with frequent interruptions, and more often than not amid circumstances least favorable to literary composition. At the same time my hands have been filled with laborious avocations of another kind.

What the philosopher Johnson said of his great Dictionary and himself could as well be said of this humble volume and its author:

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