American & Greek
LOCATED NEAR THE OLD JAIL
Sara Festivals, Inc.
Lisa’s Lemonade & More
Sweet and Treats Featuring: Funnel cakes, Deep Fried Oreos, Candy Bars, Fresh Squeezed Lemonade and Bottled Water.
LOCATED NEAR THE OLD MILL
Colonial Kettle Corn
Freshly made Kettle Corn, Gelato, and Bottle Water.
LOCATED NEAR THE OLD JAIL
Hamilton/Waterford Boy Scout Troop 969
American
LOCATED NEAR JOHN WESLEY CHURCH
Walker-Phillips House (#5 on map)
15511 Second Street
Open on Friday: 10am to 5pm
This house has had few owners during its nearly 200-year history. It was apparently built shortly before 1820 when David and Elizabeth Janney, members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), sold it to fellow Quaker farmer and merchant Isaac Walker (1781-1851) for $350. After his death, Walker’s widow, the former Susan Talbott, lived here until her own passing in 1872. Two years later her executors sold it to Elizabeth Janney Sidwell Phillips (1827-1913). Elizabeth, the widow of Thomas Phillips (1813-1865), helped run the family farm, today’s “Phillips Farm,” with her four sons. The Phillips farm adjoins the property at the rear and has been protected in perpetuity by the Waterford Foundation.
Elizabeth Phillips left the house to her son Arthur when she died in 1913. He sold it to Peter H. Carr (1843-1922), a veteran of the Confederate Cavalry and the first non-Quaker owner. In 1941 Carr’s commissioners sold the house to local dairy farmer Ernest M. Edwards. Sarah Holway bought it from Ernest’s descendants in 2014.
The Walker-Phillips property is open courtesy of Sarah Holway and Matt Rasnake.
Catoctin Presbyterian Church (#12 on map)
15565 High Street
Open on Friday, Saturday & Sunday: 10am to 5pm
Waterford’s Presbyterians have a long history in the Waterford area. In 1760, Amos Thompson, a graduate of The College of New Jersey [now Princeton University], was sent by the New Brunswick Presbytery as a missionary to Virginia. Thompson organized two churches: Gum Spring, near Arcola, and Waterford’s Catoctin Presbyterian Church, which was organized in 1764-1765. The Rev. Thompson later left his ministry to serve as a chaplain in the Continental Army.
The first Presbyterian church in Waterford was built on land sold for four shillings by member John Cavins on April 7, 1769, to the trustees of the church for a school, house of worship, or a burying ground. It stood south of Waterford at what is known locally as the Fox graveyard at the intersection of routes 703, Hurley Lane, and 665, Clarke’s Gap Road. That log church stood into the 1820s although the Presbyterians stopped using it in 1814 when the congregation moved into Waterford on the present site. All traces of that early structure have disappeared, but 11gravestones remain. The last burials were in 1881.
Lots 2 and 3, upon which the present church stands, were conveyed to the Catoctin Presbyterian Organization in 1814, by Mahlon Janney’s executors, as part of his “New Addition” auction, for $104.50. A church of brick with a gallery on three sides was erected and served intermittently as a place of worship until destroyed by fire in 1878. Under the leadership of Dr. L. B. Turnbull the present church was built on the same site in 1882. Close observation will reveal that the façade and front bay of the church is constructed with modern, machine-made brick of a uniform red color, while the remainder of the sides of the church is constructed of hand-made brick of varying colors. It is likely that these were the bricks salvaged from the previous church.
The church’s interior has a wooden ceiling with false beams reflecting the Gothic style of the building. Wooden pendants which hang from these beams resemble the “acorn” motif that top the ladder backs of Waterford chairs. On the wall behind the pulpit is a round stained glass window. The sides of the church have lancet arched stained glass windows with clear glass transom windows below. These windows were most likely installed in the twentieth century.
In 1950 the congregation added a church school building to fill the education and recreational needs of the community; the congregation continues to share the use of this building. Reverend David Douthett has been the pastor since 2004. History, tradition, a farming legacy and close-knit fellowship are vital parts of the church today.
The Catoctin Presbyterian Church is open courtesy of the grace of God and 250 years’ worth of faithful members.
Janney-Means House
40128 Bond Street
Open on Sunday: 10am to 5pm
The stone portion of the Janney-Means House is one of the oldest structures in Waterford. Tradition holds that it was built by Mahlon Janney, son of the village founder, around 1762.
An early owner, Philadelphia Quaker Asa Moore, was one of the village’s wealthier men. He added the brick wing in about 1800 and owned the tannery that filled most of the meadow in front of his house. On his death in 1823, his son-in-law Samuel Harris inherited the residence. A physician, he had his office in a stone wing on the north end that was later removed.
In 1850, Samuel C. Means, an enterprising young miller newly arrived in the village, bought the house from Dr. Harris; he served as mayor of Waterford in 1853. Though not a Quaker himself, Means married Quaker neighbor Rachel Bond in December 1855; by publicly acknowledging her “marrying out of unity” a month later, Rachel was allowed to remain a member of the Society of Friends, even after her husband’s later military leadership.
Early in the Civil War, Means rejected Confederate overtures to join the Cause (in which one of his brothers served and died). He was later personally commissioned a captain in the Union Army by Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, and raised a cavalry company, the Independent Loudoun Virginia Rangers, one of the only organized units of Virginians to fight for the Union; he was a persistent thorn in the side of the Confederacy. The war bankrupted Means, who lies buried with other family members in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington, D.C.
A late 19th- and early 20th- century resident of the house, J. Elbert Divine, was the son of one of Means’s Rangers and one of Waterford’s most active builders in that period. “Eb’s” handiwork included wraparound porches seen on two village houses on Second Street but not this one—“Eb’s porch” was removed by a subsequent owner. More recently the house has been painstakingly restored to its early 19th century appearance.
The Janney-Means House is open through the courtesy of Ann Belland.
Samuel Steer Property
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In 1856 Waterford miller Samuel C. Means (1827-1884) purchased vacant lots 39 and 40 of Mahlon Janney’s 1814 subdivision. By January 1861, with war looming and busy with his mill on Main Street, Means sold the lots on which this house stands to Robert W. Thomas (1825-1905), a blacksmith and hotel keeper. Thomas promptly built this house, but by September 1861, when Confederate troops occupied Waterford, they took over the new house for a hospital.
Later in the war, when the Rebels had withdrawn, Quaker businessman Samuel Steer (1811-1883) rented the house and moved his family into town from his farm south of the village for safety; he finally purchased it in 1867 for $700. Northern sympathizer Steer spent much of the war “exiled” at nearby Point of Rocks, Maryland, serving as the U.S. Customs Agent. During the war, his daughter Sarah and her young neighbors Lida and Lizzie Dutton co-established the fervently pro-union Waterford News. The young women would note, in their paper, after their father’s rare visits home that John Dutton and Samuel Steer had “returned safely to the United States….” In 1864 Steer was arrested by Confederates as he tried to visit his family and imprisoned for his Union sympathies.
At the close of the war, Sarah Ann Steer (1837-1914), held classes for village African-American children, first in her home, then in 1867 at the new one-room school just down Second Street. She taught until 1870 when that school became part of the County’s school system. Her sister Ella taught at the first public school for white children, the Waterford Academy, the predecessor of the Old School on Fairfax Street.
In the 1980s, the owners enclosed a porch. The present owners added an outbuilding, remodeled and enlarged the kitchen, installed a patio and designed and put in a garden with stone walls and a pond.
The Samuel Steer House is open through the courtesy of Edith Crockett and Ed Lehmann.
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