Waterford Fair

80th American Crafts & Historic Homes Tour

2024 Homes

 Loudoun Mutual Insurance

by

15609 High Street

Join the celebration – 175 years!

The concept of spreading the risk of fire damage emerged after the Great Fire of London in 1666, which devastated much of old town London. Inspired by this, Benjamin Franklin established the first fire insurance enterprise in America in 1752. By that time, the community of Waterford had already been established for nearly 20 years.

Loudoun Mutual Insurance Company traces its roots back to 1849, when it was originally founded as The Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Loudoun County. The company’s first insurance policy was issued to Talbott Farm, a property that has remained insured by Loudoun Mutual for 175 years. The company’s name was changed to Loudoun Mutual Insurance Company in 1979.

Currently housed in a building constructed in 1949, this is the third office structure built for Loudoun Mutual. The previous two buildings, which predate this one, are still standing in Waterford. This building, designed to be fire-resistant, is constructed from steel, concrete, and brick, and was modeled after George Mason’s home, Gunston Hall.

Originally established to insure against fire damage, Loudoun Mutual has expanded its
offerings over the years to include various types of insurance. The company’s official logo, a hand water pumper, symbolizes its origins and enduring commitment to protection and community. To mark its 175th anniversary, a replica of an actual hand water pumper, named Endurance, was commissioned and now stands proudly in their lobby.

Loudoun Mutual’s history is a testament to the Quaker principles of integrity and
community-mindedness upon which it was founded. These principles, combined with sound business practices, have guided the company through 175 years of success and will continue to do so in the future.

This building is open through the courtesy of Loudoun Mutual Insurance.

Ephraim Schooley House

by

15547 Second Street

Open on Friday: 10am to 5pm

The Ephraim Schooley House is also known as the Parker Bennett House is a Federal period home.  The land was acquired in 1820 by weaver John Morrow who began building the left side, shorter portion of the house ca. 1820 using Flemish Bond brick construction. You can see that the center window of the left side of the home would have been the front door. The house was initially a weaving establishment for not only Morrow, but also later Thomas Donaldson who weaved carpet and dyed both carpet and cloth here. During the economic depression of 1819 – 1822, Morrow lost the property. It was bought at auction by Richard Henderson in 1824, who then sold it to Jesse Gover in 1830. William Mayne took over the weaving establishment in 1828 where he accepted jobs for all kinds of weaving. Ephraim Schooley, the Quaker for whom the home is named, bought the property from Gover in 1834. The taller structure on the right side of the home was likely constructed in 1851 using Common Bond brick construction and was a separate residence.  

Saddler Asa Brown (1794 – 1872) lived in the home in the 1850’s and 1860’s.  The Civil War split his large family down the middle. Asa, a veteran of the War of 1812, was a loyal Unionist, as was his son and two daughters. Sons Charlie and “Ab” were supporters of the confederacy, as was wife Aurena and a third daughter. All managed to survive the war, though Charlie took a Yankee bullet at the First Battle of Bull Run. 

The house was used as two separate dwellings that were both sold to H.C. Bennett in 1876. From 1919 to 1959, the property was owned by the H.B. Parker family.  Harvey, a blacksmith, came home from WWI and feuded with his brother Fred who had run the smithy in his absence.  The two never spoke again.  When Mr. and Mrs. John Lewis bought the property in 1959, they restored the home and named it “The Parker-Bennett House”.  The two-level addition was added in the 1970’s and an easement was granted to the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission. Further additions were done in the 1980’s.  Although you would never know it by looking at it from the street, this is one of the largest lots in Waterford. There are four acres in the back. The house was built with “Waterford bricks,” which were fired right here on the property.   

The Ephraim Schooley property is open through the courtesy of its current owners, the Manch family.

Asbury-Johnson House

by

15567 Second Street

Open on Sunday: 10am to 5pm

This house is the first of three Victorians built on contiguous vacant lots along the southwest side of Second Street in the late 19th century. During the Civil War, in October 1862, a Union division commander described the location as a beautiful site “in front of a most excellent family of Quakers on the opposite side of the street . . . They offered a nice room, but I prefer my tent,” (where he could keep an eye on his men bivouacked on the adjoining Phillips Farm).

Armida Athey Love (1841-1926), widow of a Union army surgeon, bought the land in 1886 and by the following year had added a new frame dwelling. The house was built by carpenter Asbury R. Johnson (1842-1905), whom she married in March 1887. The local press reported the following month that “Mrs. Kate Rickard, nee Compher, has purchased the handsome new residence lately built by Mrs. Love . . . as her [Kate’s] future home.” Kate, herself a widow, remarried John S. Paxson in 1889, and the property remained in the Paxson and Rickard families until 1956.

A protective easement on the house is held by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR). Many homes in Waterford have this protection. It prevents inappropriate changes to the original structure. And in fact there have been few alterations made—plumbing and wiring aside. It is less exuberantly embellished than its labor neighbors to the south. In 2010 an earlier deck was rehabilitated and a porch added that is sympathetic to the original architecture.

The Asbury-Johnson House is open through the courtesy of Debbie Zongoli & George Rambo.

The Bank House

by

40149 Main Street

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 property is open through the courtesy of Tracy and Paul Shorn.

The Isaac Hough House

by

40205 Main Street

In 1801 Isaac Hough, a Quaker, bought lots 14 and 15 of Mahlon Janney’s early subdivision of the Big Hill. Hough sold them to local joiner Thomas Lacey in 1813. Between 1818 and 1820 tax records indicate a structure had been built—as two joined-but-separate houses—probably being used as rentals. Lacey’s heirs sold the property to John Hough in 1837. The property thus returned to the Hough family—albeit a Methodist branch—and would remain in the family until 1908. 

In 1855 half of the house sold for $500, but eleven years later it brought only $125—eloquent testimony to at least one effect of the Civil War.

An extraordinary view from the back of the house across the village to the fields beyond, all of which is within the National Historic Landmark, clearly shows the relationship of village house to rural landscape, one of the primary reasons for Waterford’s being named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

The Hough House is open through the courtesy of present owners Fiona and Mark Sullivan.

Charles and George Schooley House

by

40210 Main Street

This house, of Federal design, occupies two of the 17 lots on the Big Hill that were sold in 1803 by Mahlon Janney, son of Waterford’s founder, to Thomas Hirst. Hirst sold the lots a year later to Quaker James Russell. By 1810 Russell advertised: “I will sell or rent, separately or together, two brick houses and lots situated on Federal Hill in Waterford .  . . .”

Russell sold the downhill portion to Mary Fox (b. c. 1793) and the uphill portion to Aaron Schooley (1795-1836), in 1815. A “birthright” Quaker, Aaron married “out of unity” that same year, was removed from the Meeting, and later joined the Methodist Church. In 1818, Fox bought Schooley’s portion. After her death, the house passed through various owners until 1869. 

One of Aaron’s sons, Charles William (1818-1891), and Charles’s son George (1842-1905) would eventually own one or both portions of the home from 1869 until 1905 until their respective deaths.  Elizabeth Kepler, known affectionately to the family as “Little
Grandma” married George on April 22, 1869, a month after he had purchased his portion of the home. After George’s death, the widow sold the house in 1906 and returned to Ohio, which she had left at age 18, and lived until 1951, dying, with all her considerable wits about her, at age 104.  

The members of the large Schooley family—both Quaker and Methodist branches—were active in the 19th century village.  Charles served on the town council in 1842; he and his son George voted against secession in 1861. George was mayor when the town re-incorporated after Reconstruction in 1875. Both men were blacksmiths and wheelwrights. 

Widow Frances A. Whitmore Mullen (1834-1910) became the next owner in 1906, living with her daughter Nannie and husband Jacob Elbert Divine. Her grandson, John Elbert Divine (1911-1996), was born here. He generously shared his knowledge of five generations of Waterford history and became nationally recognized as a Civil War expert of Loudoun County and beyond. In his later years, Mr. Divine collaborated on several books for the Waterford Foundation.

In 1945 in a state of some deterioration, Schooley House was purchased for $1900. The home was then restored by its owners, Mr. and Mrs. George Bentley, who, in 1972, gave an open space easement to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

This house is open through the generosity of current owners Paul and Jo Rastas.

Janney-Means House

by

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.

Hollingsworth-Lee House

by

40135 Main Street

This two-story brick house was built sometime between 1816 and 1827.  Notice the Dog-tooth cornice and the jack arches over the openings, features this house shares with Wisteria Cottage next door.  

At the time of the Civil War, the owner of the house, Robert Hollingsworth, a Quaker schoolteacher from Winchester, was an outspoken defender of the Union, which he supported “now and forever.” 

In September 1863 Confederate General Jeb Stuart ordered the seizure of two prominent Waterford Quakers as hostages to secure the release of two secessionists from Federal prison.  The men to be captured were insurance company president William Williams and Asa Bond, the owner of the tanyard across the street.  Williams, who lived on Second Street, was taken as he and his wife Mary were entertaining guests in their parlor.  

By the time the Rebels reached this end of town, Bond had been warned.  As Bond slipped out the back, his daughter Mrs. Rachel Means and a niece Miss Laura Bond challenged the soldiers at the door and, from all reports, put up a good fight.  Miss Bond fired a revolver at the Rebels.  This diversion allowed Bond to escape, but Robert Hollingsworth, the owner of this house, was seized instead.  

The two hostages were sent to Richmond’s Castle Thunder Prison.  Efforts to secure their release continued into December, when Mrs. Mary Williams set off for Washington with a letter to President Lincoln and a petition signed by 85 Union supporters from Loudoun County.  President Lincoln heard their pleas at the White House and jotted a note to the commissioner for prisoner exchange.  

Even after Mary Williams’ trip, the process of securing the prisoners’ release did not go smoothly, but finally the prisoners were released and arrived in Waterford on Christmas Eve 1863.

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