I was in Leesburg recently for a wedding and had some time to kill. I’ve been in/through Leesburg dozens of times in my life, usually on my way to/from Harpers Ferry or other locations NW of the city, and I’ve been in/through Loudon County more times than I could count being that I grew up in the neighboring county. But I think this was my first time making Leesburg itself my actual destination. We grabbed a late breakfast at South Street Under, then went for a stroll through historic downtown and decided to pop into the local museum before going for a scenic drive to Waterford (which was VERY cool.)
I didn’t have particularly high expectations for the Loudon Museum, but I’m way behind on my quest to visit museum, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to stop in. I’m a history nerd, and I grew up in Northern Virginia, so I was pretty excited to learn about the local history. The museum did not disappoint. It’s not the fanciest or most expansive museum I’ve ever visited, but it did a decent job covering the basics.
I think the museum was technically free (at least nobody charged us admission), but you can drop a donation into a box at the entrance or use the QR code to donate online. We were greeter by a staff member at the entrance who gave us what he claimed would be a brief overview of what we would see in the museum. My husband was with me on this one, and he’s a big chit-chatter, especially where things like Virginia history are concerned, so he and the staffer got to talking. After about 20-30 minutes of standing in the door with my aching back I excused myself and started exploring the exhibits. I got through everything in probably 30 minutes (and I read every single thing), then returned to my chatting husband and dragged him out the door so we could make it to Waterford and back in time for the wedding. From this we’ve learned that:
- The staff are very friendly!
- The entire museum can be knocked out pretty quickly
- My husband is of no use in providing extra commentary on this museum since he never got past the entrance. Doh!
The museum is divided over roughly 4 rooms. The first room is about Leesburg during the Civil War. Next up was a hallway containing a general timeline of full Loudon history. Room 3 had… umm… random cool stuff? Upstairs is a big open room that I’m guessing might be used for events. There were only a handful of artifacts and displays along the edges of the room here, including several displays about local black history.
If I have just one takeaway from the museum, it is this: Loudon has a looong history of basically being a purple county. Right now, when you hear about Loudon County in the news, it’s about the fact that it is such divided county. Politically, it was leaning right, then has been swaying more left as DC urban sprawl brings in more diversity, but then also has enough hard-right folks to spark national-headline-grabbing protests over crazy school board stuff. It’s the nation’s richest county, absolutely littered with the mansions and horse farms and wineries of the coastal elite, while also rapidly cramming in tacky cramped McMansion developments. It stretched from the wild and wonderful rocky mountains of West Virginia at one border, to the modern ‘burbs of Dulles Airport at the other border. I, erroneously, assumed that the entire county had always been pretty rural, and the diversity of opinions and people was a very recent development. But it turns out that nothing could be further from the truth.
The clearest illustration of this was the split when voting for/against succession at the start of the Civil War. The southern end of the county consisted of wealthy “landed gentry” who relied heavily on massive amounts of enslaved labor. These jackasses of course voted to secede. But other areas of Loudon were heavily settled by Quakers (which is pretty dang cool), who of course were all abolitionist and voted against succession. The regional split within the county is clearly visible in this color-dot map:
Loudon was a crazy place to be during the Civil War given its location right on the border with the North. John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry moved through Loudon county first as he tried to rally enslaved people to join him. Leesburg was batted back and forth. Home Guards were patrolling all over the place. And, as just mentioned, the inhabitants were all over the board in terms of allegiances and opinions. There were a handful of Civil War artifacts, the most interesting to me being a whole plaque dedicated to Robert E. Lee’s horse:
My favorite artifact in the entire museum was a tombstone with a wacky backstory. Two cousins/neighbors from Leesburg got got into a huge political fight and started calling each other nasty names in public. Things escalated to the point that they decided to have a duel, which is illegal in Virginia. So they hopped over the river to Maryland and shot each other. One died (the other was hit but survived) and was buried locally, but eventually was moved to Richmond with a different headstone. His original headstone wound up (somehow???) at a local pharmacy where they used it as a work table and drilled a drainage hole into it. It eventually (somehow???) wound up in a local newspaper’s office, where it was “discovered” in 2012 and donated to the museum. Wild ride. I’d say the museum is worth a visit just to look at this thing:
Bottom line, if you’re in the Leesburg area anyway and taking in the town’s historic charm, it is definitely worth popping into the museum for a little backstory about the area. It’s not extravagant and it won’t knock you socks off, but the exhibits they do have are totally solid. Plus, if you’re greeted by the same employee that we met, then you can get plenty of bonus history, including a big list of recommendations for sites to visit.
Helga without the H 