Homes

Flavius Beans Property

July 7, 2021 by [email protected]

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

July 7, 2021 by [email protected]

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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

July 29, 2019 by [email protected]

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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

August 21, 2018 by [email protected]

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.

Catoctin Presbyterian Church

August 21, 2018 by [email protected]

15565 High Street

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.

Samuel Steer Property

August 21, 2018 by [email protected]

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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Livery Stable

August 21, 2018 by [email protected]

15483 Second Street

The Livery Stable served the transportation needs of Waterford from at least 1851 to the mid-twentieth century, when it was converted first to an antique shop and, in the 1990s, a residence. The 1851 deed mentions the property in conjunction with a hotel/store in the center of the village [The Pink House] suggesting it may have served customers of that enterprise.

In the early 1890s it was the site of T. C. Baker’s “new and nobby livery stable,” featuring “fine carriages, neat buggies, spacious wagons [and] graceful carts,” not to mention “excellent horses.” But those horses could be a problem: the town ordinances prohibited the keeper of livery stables from accumulating more than one cart load of manure at one time from June through November.

At the turn of the century a multi-structure fire near the Livery Stable made a hero of Albert Shawen, who “stayed on top of one of the barns until the hair on his head was burned completely off and his face and arms scorched.”

The livery stable’s most harrowing event occurred on July 23, 1900, when a number of people gathered in the shop to wait out an evening thunderstorm. A visiting Spanish-American War veteran, Warren O’Hara, exchanged words with local farm boy Ernest Mullen, about young Nettie Rinker. The argument escalated, resulting in Mullen’s killing O’Hara with a club. A local posse tracked down the shaken killer almost immediately. He was convicted of murder but served a short sentence.

In the early 20^th century, Ed Beans owned the livery operation; he rented buggies, carriages and horses to everyone from traveling salesmen to villagers needing transportation to a church picnic. One of his horses, “Old John,” was a fine navigator. He was known to deliver his passengers to a favorite bar in Maryland, then when the imbibers were no longer able to “drive,” deliver them safely home, often sound asleep.

The Livery Stable is open through the courtesy of Peter Thomas.

The Iron Store House

August 21, 2018 by [email protected]

40180 Main Street

The ground floor of this home was built “as a ware-house” by Quaker John W. Williams (1771-1840) proprietor of a general store across the street, now the Waterford Post Office.
Williams, one of the first four commissioners of a fledgling Waterford in 1801, was much involved in the early life of the village that was finally incorporated in 1836. Active also in the affairs of Fairfax Monthly Meeting, he and his son William (1816-1892) along with other members of his family, would play a large role in the development of Waterford through the 19th century.
The upper floors, built later, were added possibly after December 1832, when tailor Phineas J. Steer, then in a smaller shop nearby, advertised in the Genius of Liberty, a Leesburg newspaper:

“Journeymen Tailors Wanted.
The subscriber wants, immediately, two first-rate Journeymen Tailors,
to whom he will give constant work, and good prices.
An apprentice also, of good morals, and between the ages of 12 and 15 years, will be taken.
PHINEAS J. STEER.
Waterford, 12th mo. [December] 1st, 1832.”

Two years later he advertised his growing business in the same paper:

Phineas J. Steer,
Informs his friends and the public, that,
having taken the stand formerly occupied as a ware-room, between Dunham’s Store and Klein’s Tavern,
he is prepared to wait upon them, both at the stores and at his shop;
where he will thankfully receive their
TAILORING:
Fine or coarse, imported or home-made—
pledging himself that none shall surpass him,
either in cheapness or excellence of workmanship.
Persons about to get clothes, would do well first to give him a call.
Waterford 1st 3d mo. [March] 1834

A succession of owners followed, some residing there, others renting out the space. An 1853 village map names William Nettle, a fine Pennsylvania carpenter residing on Second Street, as an owner, and another map of 1875 showed Nettle’s widow Sarah still owning it. Mr. John Rollison, owner of the Hardware Store on Second Street, later purchased it. Long-time residents remember Mr. Rollison walking to the town pump for his water as long as he lived there. Richard and Elaine Head bought it after Mr. Rollison died in 1986, hoping to update it but changed their plans and sold it a few years later. Richard Storch modernized the house, adding plumbing, among other amenities.

The Iron Store House is open through the courtesy of Susanne Page.