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History and comprehensive description of Loudoun County, Virginia
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 9-14
Descriptive Department.
Situation 15-16
Boundaries 16-18
Topography 18-20
Comparative Altitudes 21-22
Drainage 22-25
Climate 25-26
Geology 26-44
Mineral and kindred Deposits 44-49
Soils 49-66
Flora and Fauna 67-69
Transportation Facilities 69-71
Towns and Villages 71-79
Leesburg 71-74
Round Hill 74-75
Waterford 75
Hamilton 75
Purcellville 75-76
Middleburg 76
Ashburn 76
Bluemont 76-77
Smaller Towns 77-79
Statistical Department.
Area and Farming Tabulations 81-83
Population 83-87
Industries 87-91
Farm Values 91-93
Live Stock 94-97
Soil Products 98-100
Farm Labor and Fertilizers 101-102
Education and Religion 102-105
Historical Department.
Formation 1O7-1O9
Derivation of Name 109-110
Settlement and Personnel 110-113
Early Habits, Customs, and Dress 113-123
French and Indian War 123-124
Representation 124-127
The Revolution 127-138
War of 1812 138-139
The Mason-McCarty Duel 140
Home of President Monroe 141-142
General Lafayette's Visit 142-144
Mexican War 144
Secession and Civil War 145-180
Reconstruction 180-186
Conclusion 186
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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.
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