History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia

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History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia

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Title: History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia
Author: James W. Head
Release Date: January 9, 2006 [EBook #17485]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: James W. Head]
HISTORY
AND
COMPREHENSIVE DESCRIPTION
OF
LOUDOUN COUNTY
VIRGINIA

BY
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
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
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
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
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
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