2021 Home Tour

Flavius Beans Property

Throughout most of its history, Waterford was a relatively isolated community. One result of this isolation was that architectural styles arrived later in Waterford than in many other parts of the country. The Flavius Beans House illustrates this delay. It is a fine example of mid-Victorian architecture, although Flavius Beans did not have it built until about 1890.

The architectural details are more elaborate and “prettier” than would have been the case earlier; for instance, around the edges of the upper sash of each window are small square panes. The gabled pediment along the front roof line has a turned peak ornament at the top and decorative shingles within. The windows in the side pediments have small square panes, also surrounded by decorative shingles. Notice also the jigsaw trim above the bay window and the dentils and brackets. At one point there was probably more of this “carpenter Victorian” trim, which was removed as succeeding owners tried to keep up with the newer styles.

The high style of the Flavius Beans House is evidence of the economic strength of Waterford in the late nineteenth century. It also reflects the availability of commercially cut and sawn timber as a result of the extension of the railroad through nearby Paeonian Springs.

The Flavius Beans House property is open through the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Ratcliffe.

Bank House Property

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This finely crafted house was probably built about 1806 by young Israel H. Thompson. Unfortunately, he died the same year, at age 22. The building he left is notable for its precisely mortared brickwork and an elegant architrave under the eaves.

Thompson’s executors sold the house to Richard Chilton in 1809, and in 1815 Isaac Steer and his son Jonah purchased the building. Early on, Isaac rented a “storeroom” in the house to the newly formed Loudoun Company, a bank founded by local farmers and businessmen. The enterprise was short-lived but, according to tradition, the steel door of its vault was repurposed to cap a horse-mounting block across the street.

The Chamberlin family that began the restoration of Waterford bought the property in the late 1930s and held it for more than 70 years. Wellman Chamberlin, National Geographic’s chief cartographer, made extensive repairs and improvements to the old building at mid-century, including replacing a dilapidated porch that spanned the front façade with a hand-carved door surround he fashioned himself.

The Bank House is open through the courtesy of the current owners Julia and Samuel Thompson.

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Mahlon Myers Property

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Shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century Quaker Mahlon Janney (1731-1812), son of village founder Amos, began selling lots in his “New Addition,” extending Main Street up over the hill and along Butchers Row.

Mahlon Myers purchased this lot on January 26, 1807: 7100 square feet for ten pounds Virginia currency. Myers was a grandson of Jonathan Myers, active Quaker and large landowner who had moved to the Waterford area in 1762 from Kingwood Monthly Meeting, New Jersey.
Mahlon married the former Ann Wright in 1808 when he completed the house; eight children would be born over the next 20 years. From 1808 until 1965 it was owned by only three families and their descendants: Myers, the builder, and related members of his family 1808-1868; Joel Haines, 1868 to 1894; and Charles W. Virts, 1894 to 1965. Mr. Virts was the last surviving veteran of the Civil War in the community, having served in the Union Army with the Loudoun Rangers.

This house has the same general external construction as many other brick village dwellings with Flemish bond front and common bond sides and rear. In style and size, the house closely resembles the Lloyd Curtis house around the corner at 40216 Main Street—built on a lot Myers had also bought in 1807. Both structures have corner fireplaces on the interior, a feature not common to Waterford houses. Auxiliary beams radiating from a center girder support these fireplaces. The neat mortices and tenons indicate the care and skill of these early craftsmen.
In 1969, the property was purchased by Parker Westbrook, then an assistant to Senator J. William Fulbright. Westbrook restored the house—maintaining the original footprint, with the same attention to detail as that shown by the original builders. He placed a protective easement on the house in 1972.

Later owners significantly enlarged the original house in the 1980s and again about 2000.

This house is open through the courtesy of owner Carol Smoots.

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Walker-Phillips Property

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 House is open courtesy of Sarah Holway and Matt Rasnake.

Samuel Steer Property

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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Pink House Property

In 1825, Lewis Klein opened this building as a tavern. He had purchased the lot from Quaker William Hough a decade earlier for $80. Like many of its neighbors on Main Street, it was designed for mixed use—a store or other business on the ground floor and a residence above. It therefore had no interior staircase between the first and second floors until a 1950s modernization.

The present large downstairs room was built as two rooms with a central corridor; it has seen many uses over the years. After serving as a tavern, the space became variously an apothecary and hardware store. In the 1880s the building was the home and office of Dr. G. E. Connell, an enterprising physician. He introduced the first telephone to the village in 1884 and charged customers ten cents to call the railroad depot at Clarke’s Gap, three miles distant. In the early 20th century, a side addition was used as a barbershop. In the early 1950s, a new owner painted the house the color “of the setting sun on Waterford brick.” The paint was meant to slow weathering of the soft, locally-made brick; it has been repainted in other shades since. In more recent years, the Pink House has been a popular bed and breakfast destination.

The present garden area has seen a succession of buildings over the past 200 years, including blacksmith and wheelwright shops and a succession of stores well into the 20th century. A town hall and informal auditorium occupied the loft area of a large stable on the site. One of these shops stood where the new stone kitchen now stands. That building served briefly as a residence. During an exceptionally rainy period with water pouring down the hill behind, a tenant joked, “I have the most modern house in Waterford— running water in every room!”

The previous owners, Dr. and Mrs. Charles Anderson protected the Pink House with the gift of an easement to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

The Pink House is open through the courtesy of Isaac Johnson and Jeff Darrah.

Griffith-Gover Property

This property backing up to the Phillips Farm comprises three of the fifteen lots in Waterford’s 1792 subdivision. Quaker merchant Richard Griffith was leasing the property by 1796, and by 1799 it included a two-story log house and a store. In 1819 his son Israel sold a portion of the property to fellow Quaker Jesse Gover, who operated a store and “hat manufactory” among other enterprises. Gover bought the rest of the property in 1836.

His son Samuel, in turn, served the village for many years as storekeeper and postmaster. Sam’s Union sympathies made his store a target of Confederate raids during the Civil War. By then the current property included the house and two substantial weatherboard buildings along the street to the left, that were later owned by William French.

Early in the 20th century the James family acquired the land and buildings. Edgar Clayton James operated a store here. When he died in 1918, his widow, the former Annie Elizabeth “Lizzie” Hough, ran a boardinghouse to make ends meet—the Oldtown Inn. Clarence Hopkins, who married one of the James’s daughters, Carrie, was an engineer for Edison Labs. He erected a dance pavilion and large masonry megaphone for the benefit of Inn guests. At about the same time, the decrepit store buildings along the street were removed and the adjacent millrace was enlarged for canoeing.

In October 1922, the Washington Herald enthusiastically wrote:

“Waterford, Va., is now one of the busiest radio towns in the country, according to reports received here. Radio users there have constructed a loud speaking horn of concrete and granite with a diameter of six feet. The horn weighs eight tons. Folks in that vicinity now hear a variety of entertainment from Pittsburgh and other cities. When the horn was first demonstrated, one resident there, it is claimed, heard music one mile and a half away from Waterford and came down to discover what was ‘goin’ on down thar.’”

Norman Weatherholtz, a stonemason and carpenter, bought the place in 1944 and added his own touches over the years until his death in 1998. He is responsible for much of the stonework in the village, including work on this home.

Cornelia Keller of nearby Hamilton purchased the house the following year. It had fallen into considerable disrepair and presented significant challenges to Ms. Keller and her rescue team. Now, thanks to a conservation easement through the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the house, gardens, stone wall and eclectic structures are protected in perpetuity.

Jonathan Daniel and Lee Spangler bought the house in 2014 and couldn’t be more thrilled with being its current stewards.

The Griffith-Gover House is open through the courtesy of Jonathan Daniel and Lee Spangler.

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Trouble Enough Indeed

Trouble Enough Indeed was brought to Waterford and reconstructed from 1970 to 1980 by William and Carol Hunley.

Visitors to the Waterford Fair in the early 1970s enjoyed watching Trouble Enough Indeed take shape from the components of two log homes ca. 1850 and 1886 from Lewisdale in Montgomery County, Maryland, and an 1876 frame house from Mathews County, Virginia. Located about three miles apart at Lewisdale, the log houses were tobacco farm houses. The name comes from the registration of the front wing of the house in the Montgomery County deed book.

The house has been featured in Parade Magazine, in the Washington Post and on NPTV. It has been a frequent subject for painters and passing photographers.

The log houses were dismantled and every log, stick, stone and brick moved to Waterford, cleaned and returned to its original place in the house. Even the nails were reused. The log construction is German “V” notch and logs were stacked one on the other with no fastenings except in the top ring of logs on which the roof rests. In addition to the log houses and the frame house, artifacts from many well-known buildings are built into the fabric.

The dining room fireplace contains the brick from the log house, and on one side there is a brick from the old church at Jamestown. One the other side, there is a brick from Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. The handmade bricks each show the print of the brick maker’s thumb from being turned when drying, and several contain cat and deer tracks made while the bricks were still soft. The long-leaf pine heart flooring and the dining room ceiling beams were salvaged from the Carlyle Apartments that were built in 1819. Many of the doors, windows and replacement timbers were salvaged from the house built in 1876 by William S. Hunley, shipwright, farmer and oysterman, at Retz in the Kingston Parish Glebe in Mathews County, Virginia. Several of the doors were made in the family shipyard and are fastened with boat nails.

Trouble Enough Indeed is open through the courtesy of the current owner Margo Noel.