2025 Homes on Tour

William Irish Shop

40153 Main Street

Open on Friday: 10am to 5pm

The construction date of this house is unknown but, like many in Waterford, it once served as a store. William Irish (1844-1882), a Quaker from New York, conducted a watchmaking and jewelry business here after the Civil War until a typhoid epidemic cut short his life. The Chamberlins renovated and added onto this home around 1970. Photos antedating the renovation depict a two-story facade with a shed roof instead of a gable. A porch ran along the southeast wall.

The William Irish Shop property is open through the courtesy of its current owners, Carl Scheider and Jane Williams.

Ephraim Schooley House

15547 Second Street

Open on Sunday: 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.

Janney-Means House

40128 Bond Street

Open on Saturday: 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 House

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.

Samuel Hough House

15527 Second Street

Open on Sunday: 10am to 5pm

This Federal-style house was built in 1819 by Samuel Hough Jr., on land which he purchased for $240 in 1817. This is one of the most elegantly embellished houses in Waterford, with keystone lintels, an unusual and striking cornice, and beautifully carved interior woodwork.

Samuel Hough was a Quaker, but his bride was not. Waterford’s Quakers were not very tolerant of any deviation among their members, and Samuel was read out of the Meeting. He and his wife lived in the house only a year before moving out of Waterford. They sold the house to Samuel’s mother, Lydia Hollingsworth Hough, for $3,500, an enormous sum in those days. Lydia seems to have been very fond
of Samuel, and it was her way of passing his inheritance on to him in advance!

Jacob Scott lived in the house during the Civil War, and was “CEO” of Waterford’s largest enterprise, Loudoun Mutual Fire Insurance Co. Although the Board of Directors was split between Unionists and Secessionists, Scott and President William Williams provided the leadership to enable the company to emerge from the War in fine shape. It is still operating on High Street today.

This building is open through the courtesy of Corrine Jacques and Matt Donnelly.