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History of Loudoun County
Loudoun County is located between Washington, DC, and the Shenandoah
Valley of Virginia. To the east, Dulles International Airport and commerce
thrive; while the western section still maintains its small farms, towns,
and villages.
The Town of Leesburg, the county seat, was once named "George Town"
honoring King George II. Leesburg was established in 1758 from land
originally held by Lord Fairfax, then renamed for the influential Lee
family of Virginia. The town was formed at the crossroads of two Colonial
roads, now Routes 7 and 15, and is the seat of government for beautiful
Loudoun County. Leesburg is located just 35 miles northwest of Washington
DC, at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Brief History 
Loudoun County constitutes a part of the five million acre
Northern Neck of Virginia Proprietary granted by King Charles II of
England to seven noblemen in 1649. This grant, later known as the Fairfax
Proprietary, lay between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. Between
1653 and 1730, Westmoreland, Stafford and Prince William Counties were
formed within the Proprietary, and in 1742 the remaining land was designated
Fairfax County.
In 1757, by act of the Virginia House of Burgesses, Fairfax County was
divided. The western portion was named Loudoun for John
Campbell, Fourth Earl of Loudoun, a Scottish nobleman who served
as Commander-in-Chief for all British armed forces in North America
and titular Governor of Virginia from 1756 to 1768.
Leesburg has served continuously as the County Seat since 1757.
Loudoun Settlements
Settling of the Loudoun area
began between 1725 and 1730, while it was still owned by Lord Fairfax.
Permanent settlers came from Pennsylvania,
New Jersey and Maryland. During the same period, settlers from eastern
Virginia of English Cavalier stock came to lower Loudoun and established
large tobacco plantations.
During the 1720s, a number of Quakers, Germans, Irish and Scots-Irish
settled west of the Catoctin mountains. Quakers formed the settlements
of Waterford, Goose Creek (now Lincoln), Harmony (now Hamilton) and
Union (now Unison).
From 1745 to 1760, Germans from Pennsylvania and Maryland formed
the settlement at Lovettsville. After General
Braddock's defeat by the French
at Fort Duquesne in 1755, refugees from the Shenandoah Valley of
Virginia settled in the western part of Loudoun County, south of
Short Hill.
Catoctin Church became the center of that settlement.
A Storied History
In 1774, a meeting a freeholders and other residents
was held in the County Courthouse to discuss the protection of rights and liberties
in North America. The group adopted the Loudoun Resolves as well as
a formal protest of the Stamp Act. Later, a number of Loudoun County
men fought in the Revolutionary War.
During the War of 1812, Loudoun County served briefly as a temporary
refuge for the President and important state papers. The Constitution
and other state papers were brought to Rokeby, near Leesburg, for safekeeping
when the British burned Washington. President Madison established headquarters
at Belmont, where he was the guest of Ludwell Lee.
In 1861, residents of Loudoun County were split over the issue of
secession. The Quakers and most of the Germans in northern and
central Loudoun
opposed slavery and secession, while the landed gentry in the southern
part of the county favored secession.
During the Civil War, Colonel John Mosby and his Rangers were active
in Loudoun County, which was also the home of the Laurel Brigade,
a
famous Confederate Cavalry unit commanded by Elijah V. White
of Leesburg. A national cemetery near Leesburg marks the site of the
Battle of
Balls
Bluff, where Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then a young Union soldier,
fought in 1861.
Modern Changes
For more than two centuries, agriculture was
the dominant way of life in Loudoun County, which had a relatively constant
population of about 20,000. That began to change in the early 1960s, when Dulles
International Airport was built in the southeastern part of the county. The
airport attracted new businesses, workers and their families to the area.
At the same time, the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area began a
period of rapid growth. Major road improvements made commuting from
Loudoun
County much easier, attracting more and more people to the eastern
part of the county. In the last three decades, the population of Loudoun
County nearly quadrupled.
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