THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504070139
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN, TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 295 lines
HAVE YOU EVER been to Brigadoon? Oh, you may think it's just an imaginary place, a creation of stage and screen, a magical 18th century Scottish village that awakens once every hundred years.
Ah, but it's real, it's actual, it's a place where everything seems satisfactual. You see, I've been to Brigadoon. It's disguised as a tranquil village called Waterford in Northern Virginia's Loudoun County.
It's a place where large trees form a comforting canopy over the several streets. On one side of the main street the houses, dating for the most part from the late 1700s to the early 1900s - brick and frame and stone and even log, weathered gray and chinked with yellow plastering - are built into the side of a hill.
On the other side, their back yards wander out toward pastures that line Catoctin Creek. There, fat black Angus cattle chomp and rip the lush green grass. Sheep baaah and ducks quack as they strut around a small pond.
The houses and the little shop buildings seemed to have settled snugly into the ground on which they stand as if to say resolutely, ``We're here for the long haul.'' None of their angles seem quite plumb any more. Age does that to you. A large brick mill, no longer in use, sits beside the creek at the edge of the village.
It is so quiet you notice things that often escape us in everyday city life.
There is hardly anyone on the street; those who are stop and chat. Cars pass through only occasionally, almost always stopping at the little brick post office with its American flag fluttering in the breeze.
Birds chirp. The wind whispers through dark green cedars. A squirrel rustles nervously through dead leaves, then, tail flicking furiously, scampers up the thick, rough trunk of a tree. Bashful pansies bloom in window boxes. A little girl with a big dog skips down a narrow lane beside a stone wall.
Loudoun County, for the most part, is Hunt Country - hunt as in fox hunt, properly attired gentlemen and their ladies riding horses behind a a pack of hounds in hot pursuit of the wily Reynard (or in these days of animal protection, more often than not a faux fox). It is the sport-cum-social event of the Country Snobocracy, and Loudoun County is a very wealthy place.
Hunt Country is an abstract concept - a state of mind, some would say. To my mind it extends from Warrenton in the center of Fauquier (pronounced Faw-KEER) County northward in a broad swath past the Great Meadow Equestrian Center where Virginia's premier steeplechase races are held, through a village called The Plains and into Loudoun (pronounced LOUD'n) and on to Middleburg, the heart and soul of Hunt Country.
It remains, for now, just beyond the untethered reaches of metropolitan Washington's suburbia to the east.
The thing about Hunt Country is, you'll know it when you see it.
There are miles of dark wooden fences, broken occasionally by low fieldstone walls of tan and green and gray, quilting acre after acre of rolling green pastureland. Trees line the streams that meander through the landscape. It is much like the rural English countryside where towns and villages have a distinct beginning and end, where unsightly sprawl is virtually unknown.
The mountains, blue and rumpled, loom in the distance.
The open countryside is punctuated by the vast estates of local squires, some with manor houses embraced by hilltop groves but more often than not hidden from view. The recent sale of Sen. John Warner's 551.3-acre Atoka Farm for $3,783,131 was big news in the Middleburg Life newspaper.
Oddly enough, I saw more log homes in this region - not more than 30 miles from Eero Saarinen's space-age Dulles International Airport - than I would have imagined existed in all of Virginia. Most have been painstakingly renovated and, I suspect, carry high six-figure price tags.
And there are horses, of course, long a symbol of affluence. No less an authority than the Duke of Bedford (who does NOT hunt) wrote in his ``Book of Snobs'' (a sort of how-to-be-one work of great wit) that ``Horses have always stood high on the social ladder. Almost everything connected with horses is good.''
There is something vaguely romantic about horses that I cannot explain. Even at dawn in a stable when cleaning is going on - where wheelbarrows are filled with steaming manure and the pungent smells of hay and urine and sweat are in the air - nobody will say, or even think, ``How filthy!'' Odd, isn't it?
Everywhere in the villages of Hunt Country the trappings of Country Snobocracy are evident.
Saddleries outnumber 7-Elevens. There are more antique shops and boutiques and interior decorators than general merchandise stores where country folk can buy such staples as live bait, hunting licenses and spittin' tobacco. The few pickup trucks you see will, likely as not, have the name of some ``farm'' discretely lettered on the door panel with a picture of a fox or a horse. Luxury cars are commonplace. I saw a chauffeur waiting patiently beside his long black limo in the Safeway parking lot in Middleburg.
People walk around in jodhpurs and riding boots or green wellies and quilted Barbour jackets such as Prince Charles might wear for a day in the country.
In this setting, Waterford is something of a paradox. It's hardly horsey, although there are horse farms nearby. Waterford is a time capsule, a living heirloom, a holdover from the way things used to be.
Officially, too. Since 1970, the entire place - houses, barns, shops, school, churches, fields plus 1,420 acres of surrounding fertile, rolling farmland - has been designated as a National Historic Landmark District.
Amos and Mary Janney came here in 1733 from Bucks County, Pa., and settled near the banks of ``Kittocktin'' Creek. Soon other Quakers and Scottish-Irish settlers followed. Some say it was a homesick Irishman who gave the place its name.
They built a mill, a forge and shops. They constructed houses of unpretentious, solid simplicity, and the village gradually became a bustling commercial center for northern Loudoun County, populated by tailors, tanners, blacksmiths and other artisans whose skills served the countryside's residents.
Until the Civil War, prosperity prevailed. But Waterford was torn asunder, the villagers harassed by both sides owing to their Southern location and Northern allegiance. An underground newspaper was published here, and miller Samuel Means read himself out of the Quaker Meeting to form Virginia's only Federal force, the Loudoun Independent Rangers.
The final blow to Waterford's prosperity came in 1871 when a railroad was constructed six miles south, further isolating the village. Waterford nodded off into a sleepy state not unlike Brigadoon.
During and just after World War II the awakening came when new residents, mostly from a burgeoning Washington, discovered Waterford as a quiet retreat. In 1943 the non-profit Waterford Foundation was established to preserve and restore the village.
They began with a crafts exhibit to raise money (almost $100 that first year from about 500 visitors). Later a homes tour was added, and the annual event (first full weekend in October) has grown to Virginia's oldest and largest affair of its kind with a national reputation. And does Waterford ever awaken then!
The Civil War that disrupted life in Waterford also played havoc throughout Loudoun County. This was the home turf of Col. John Singleton Mosby and his Rangers, a loosely organized and even more loosely disciplined band of partisans who rode Pegagus-like against hapless Union cavalry units until well into the war when the Federals learned how to play the game.
Mosby remains quite a legend in these parts. U.S. 50, which bisects the county east to west, is called the John S. Mosby Highway. It is said he and his men used to meet in the big stone Red Fox Inn in Middleburg. Probably did. Local folks have been meeting there since 1728. It claims to be the ``oldest original inn in America.''
Mosby's activities in Loudoun were neutralized in 1864 when U.S. Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan sent several brigades into the county to bust the Gray Ghost and his horsemen. Mosby escaped but the countryside felt the Federal wrath. The troops burned barns and homes and confiscated livestock. The paradox of the Federal raid was that damage to the area fell largely upon non-combatant Quakers and Germans, most of whom supported the Union.
The most poignant reminder of the Civil War in this region is the little national cemetery at Ball's Bluff, just a couple of miles east of Leesburg above the Potomac River. Here lie James Allen of Co. H 15th Massachusetts Infantry and 24 unknown comrades. Their white marble stones, set in a semicircle surrounded by a red rock wall, are the eternal reminder of another one of those tragic engagements that are so commonplace in a war where things went terribly wrong.
The battle took place on Oct. 21, 1861, some three months after Federal troops had suffered the shocking defeat at Bull Run (Manassas). Federal units under the command of Col. Edward D. Baker, a politician turned soldier and President Lincoln's closest personal friend, tried to scale the steep bluff after crossing the Potomac.
From the Union point of view it was a fiasco. Baker was killed. Total Federal casualties were 921. Among the wounded was young Capt. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who would survive this and other wounds to become one of the nation's most brilliant jurists. The Confederate defenders suffered only 149 casualties. And the war on the Union side became highly politicized.
In the aftermath, a firebrand U.S. Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War reached the hyperbolic conclusion that Ball's Bluff, a battle of little strategic importance, ``was the most atrocious blunder in history.'' A general was sacked. And Congress continued to meddle.
Today the area is a Northern Virginia Regional Park. There is an informative pamphlet which explains what happened here, and there are the makings of an interpretive trail through the thickly wooded hills and gullies. The trail was not quite ready for prime time when I visited. The cemetery, however, is worth a meditative pause.
Another cemetery I find absorbing is the one on the grassy slope beyond the old Goose Creek Friends Meeting House in the hamlet that has been called Lincoln since that president appointed the first postmaster.
Like Waterford, it was first settled by Quakers.
The Old Stone Meeting House, built in 1765, was eventually outgrown and became a home for the caretaker of the new brick meeting house across the street. Next to it is an honest-to-goodness country store operated by A.M. Janney & Son, and a one-room schoolhouse from 1815 just around the corner.
The hamlet also was the home of Catherine Marshall, author of ``A Man Called Peter'' (about her minister husband) and ``Christy'' (made into a TV series).
Seven homes and gardens in the Goose Creek Historic District will be open to the public during Virginia Garden Week (see Traveler's Advisory).
The cemetery, an extension of the hamlet itself, is a shady, quiet and peaceful place. Many of the early headstones are simple chunks of local rock sunk into the sod, some with illegible scribbling, some with none at all. Others, of more substantial marble and with clear inscriptions, have begun to tilt with time.
Mostly there are just names and dates. People who have come and gone. Stark reminders of out earthly mortality. I often wonder, is that all there is?
I think not.
Here's a message over the grave of a man much younger than I caught my attention:
Do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that flow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the gentle autumn's rain. I am the swift uplifting rush of quiet birds in circled flight.
Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die.
That is why I often pause at cemeteries.
Here are more of my favorite places in the Hunt Country of Loudoun and Fauquier counties:
Middleburg: The very touristy epicenter of Hunt Country, renowned center of both fox hunting and steeplechase racing, particularly bustling on weekends since it's only an hour from D.C. It's a town of brick Federal period dwellings interspersed with those of stone and stucco. And lots of pricey shops. Though the town was originally called Chinn's Crossroads, a local Revolutionary War hero decided it ought to be named Middleburg since it was halfway between Alexandria and Winchester. There's a self-guided walking tour from the Pink Box visitors' center just around the corner from the Red Fox Tavern.
Leesburg: Originally called George Town in honor of the reigning monarch, George II, it was situated at the junction of two important Colonial roads: the Ridge Road (now Va. 7) running from Alexandria to the uncharted west, and the Carolina Road (now U.S. 15) then ran from upstate New York to Charleston, S.C. The town's name was changed to honor Virginia's Lee family in 1758 when things were beginning to get dicey with the English royals.
It has a wonderful 19th century downtown that is a National Historic District (cited as ``one of the best preserved, most picturesque communities in Virginia'') and a stately red-brick, white-columned courthouse with the obligatory Confederate soldier monument. There's also a life-size statue of George C. Marshall, general of the armies, secretary of state and defense . . weekend crowds from D.C.
During the War of 1812, when the British were advancing on Washington, valuable papers from the National Archives, including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were hauled through Leesburg in 22 wagons on their way to safekeeping at nearby Rokeby estate. Just northwest of the town is Morven Park, a beautiful 1,200-acre estate with an architecturally significant mansion that was the home of two governors: Thomas Swann of Maryland and Virginia's Westmoreland Davis. On the grounds are the Museum of Hounds and Hunting and the Carriage Museum.
Check out White's Ferry for an interesting ride across the Potomac and back on a barge attached to a cable. Aren't many ferries like this left anywhere. It's a few miles north of Leesburg on U.S. 15, then east on Va. 655.
Lovettsville: Originally called Lovetts or simply ``the German settlement,'' having developed around the German Reformed Church in the early 1700. Neither the Germans nor their Quaker neighbors owned slaves, and both remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War. Many men joined Samuel Means' Loudoun Independent Rangers. The town fell victim to the 1864 burning raids.
Lucketts: Now just a shadow of its former self, this was an important place straddling the Old Carolina Road where it veered east to cross the Potomac. A big moment was when Mad Anthony Wayne passed through on his way to the Revolutionary War. Archaeologists say Piscataway Indians lived here from about 10,000 B.C. until they were wiped out by smallpox in 1709. Today there's a store, a school, a fire department and a unique board-and-batten church. The community center stages a bluegrass show every Saturday night year-round that locals like to brag about.
Hillsboro: Five mills made this quite a thriving place in the 19th century. Beautiful old stone homes and wonderful views of the mountains around here. That hasn't changed, although the mills are long gone and the population hovers around 180. Susan Koerner, who is largely responsible for man's first flight, was from here. She was the mother of Wilbur and Orville Wright.
Bluemont: Originally called Pumpkintown and later Snickersville, this hamlet of maybe 275 people slumbers on the morning side of the Blue Ridge mountains below Snickers Gap (Va. 7). It was once an important resort at the end of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad. That was a long time ago. Now it's just a pretty little place. There's really nothing much to do here, but it's a great place to just do nothing.
Paris: A little hamlet about halfway up the Blue Ridge grade on the old Winchester Pike (U.S. 50) near the intersection of U.S. 17. Named by an admiring American revolutionary Francophile in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette. A church, a store, the charming Ashby Inn and several restored homes are about all there is here. But the views are magnificent, and Willard Scott calls it home. Nearby is Sky Meadow State Park with an exhibit on early farm life in Virginia.
Warrenton: A quaint old hilltop county seat and market town that has so far escaped much of the tourist swarms from the D.C. area. It was named for Gen. Joseph Warren, who died at Bunker Hill. John Mosby practiced law here and is buried in the town cemetery. John Marshall was another legal practitioner here. Both warrant statues.
The town is also right proud of a couple of other citizens - Duvall Goldsmith, who invented the coffee percolator, and two-time governor William Smith, who had the very best nickname of the entire lot: ``Extra Billy.''
Main Street in the heart of Old Town is delightfully old-fashioned and laid back. A comfortable place. Other sights are the Old Courthouse, the Old Jail (now a museum), the Old Warren Green Hotel and the not-so-old but very popular Farmers Market (Wednesday and Saturday mornings, May through October).
That's not all there is; that's just all I'm telling about. I've left some places for you to discover for yourself.
Maybe, for instance, you'll come across the hometown of Presley O'Bannon. Doesn't ring a bell? He was the marine lieutenant who raised the first American flag on foreign soil on the ``shores of Tripoli.'' Worth a snappy salute. MEMO: Related story about fox hunting on page E1.
ILLUSTRATION: "Hunt Country" map by Robert D. Voros, Staff
Color photo by Stephen Harriman
Waterford, a touch of Brigadoon in Loudoun County.
Photo by Stephen Harriman
The village of Waterford is a National Historic Landmark District.
Photo
A shady, peaceful place: the Goose Creek Friends Meeting House and
cememtery at Lincoln.
by CNB