LOUDOUN COUNTY’S COMMUNITY-OWNED NEWS SOURCE
LoudounNow
[ Vol. 4, No. 48 ]
[ loudounnow.com ]
[ October 17, 2019 ]
■ PUBLIC AND LEGAL NOTICES - PAGE 35 ■ NOW HIRING LOUDOUN PAGE 48 ■ RESOURCE DIRECTORY PAGE 49
Digging for the Story at Sleeter Lake BY PATRICK SZABO
Renss Greene/Loudoun Now
The history of Round Hill’s Sleeter Lake can be visibly traced back to its origins as an irrigation source for the surrounding orchard operations, but one colonial-style home that sits on the banks has a more obscure story which the town wants to reveal. In February, the town asked the Banshee Reeks Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Virginia to conduct an archaeological survey on the long-abandoned 18th or 19th-century house located near the parking lot of Sleeter Lake Park. Town Administrator Melissa Hynes said the town wanted to learn more about the history of the house that sits on its park property. The society has been conducting the survey for the past month. According to Marion Constante, the chapter’s president, the survey will
Marion Constante, president of the Banshee Reeks Chapter of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, displays a nail found at the centuries-old house near the parking lot of Sleeter Lake Park in Round Hill.
SLEETER LAKE >> 54
Supervisors Consider Nat’l Landmark Status, ‘Path to Freedom’ at Courthouse Complex BY RENSS GREENE Members of the Board of Supervisors’ finance committee have begun discussions around how to act on the Heritage Commission’s recommendations to tell the story of the old Leesburg courthouse’s place in history—beyond the Confederate statue towering before the courthouse steps. In the fall of 2017, as nationwide protests over Confederate monuments spread to the Leesburg courthouse lawn,
the Board of Supervisors declined to take any immediate action. Instead, they directed the county’s Heritage Commission to look into the history of the courthouse and the possibly of adding another monument to join the monuments for Loudouners killed in war, the American Revolution and to Confederate soldiers in the Civil War. After producing a body of research on the courthouse grounds’ place in American history—a place where the Declaration of Independence was read, where
enslaved people were sold, where trials for people who helped enslaved people escape along the Underground Railroad were held, and where a landmark civil rights case was won—the Heritage Commission made recommendations for how to tell that story. Those included pursuing National Historic Landmark status for the old courthouse, creating a new “Path to Freedom” walk with monuments and signs telling that story, and naming either the old or planned new courthouse after pioneer-
ing civil rights attorney Charles Hamilton Houston, one of the foremost black attorneys in the country in his time. The commission recommended the “Path to Freedom” walk include a memorial to Loudoun’s Union soldiers near the existing war memorials on Market Street, recognizing the Loudoun Rangers, the Union Potomac Home Brigade and the local men of the U.S. Colored Troops. Another monument, a smaller plaque or LANDMARK >> 10
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