The Mosby Heritage Area Association is offering for the second year its popular 4-trip series of field explorations of Loudoun County’s past, Exploring Olde Loudoun.

Part history lesson and part field trip, the series is aimed at those who don’t know much about Loudoun, including newcomers, but also is open to longer residents who’ve never had the time or chance to explore the county’s past.  MHAA hopes that participants will include families, teachers new to the area, groups of neighbors with an urge to explore, senior citizens who moved here to be with their children, and those from the new residential communities.

Richard Gillespie, the Director of Education for MHAA, leads the series.  “Loudoun means so much more as you drive its roads and walk its streets when you know the history of the area,” Gillespie says.  “It’s hard to feel like a Loudouner if you don’t know its history.”

Schedule:
            April 6 – This trip examines Colonial Loudoun, in particular the German and Quaker settlements, focusing on their architecture, roads, meetinghouses, and graveyards.
            April 13 – Antebellum Loudoun will be explored during this trip.  It will look at the agricultural revolution in Loudoun, transportation improvements that connected us to the cities, at slavery and the quiet resistance to it, and at the handsome, functional buildings from this period.  Highlights include the 1807 Aldie Mill, the grave of a slave at Ketoctin Church near Purcellville, and an Underground Railroad site in Lincoln.
            April 20 – Participants will visit Confederate Camp Carolina, the Civil War-era village of Unison, and sites dealing with Mosby’s Rangers
            April 27 - Loudoun after the Civil War is the subject of the final trip.  Reconstruction sites, turn-of-the-century small town Loudoun, the W&OD railroad, the birth of public schools and segregation, and the advent of hunt country will be considered.

Cavaliers, Courage, & Coffee...When Mosby Owned the Night!

The Gray Ghost Interpretive Group will present Cavaliers, Courage & Coffee…When Mosby Owned the Night! The evening, which begins at 7:30 p.m., is a living history program by lantern-light, with vignettes on life here in the Mosby Heritage Area during the Civil War’s most famous guerilla campaign. Guests will walk through the historic village of Atoka where they will be treated to at least a half dozen players in period clothing, who share gripping stories and vignettes about the formation of Mosby’s Rangers and guerilla war the Rangers fought in the Piedmont of Virginia.  Wear comfortable shoes for walking outside!

Locations for programs:           
April 19 – Warren Heritage Society, Front Royal, Warren County
May 17 – Rector House at Atoka, Fauquier County
June 21 – Burwell-Morgan Mill, Millwood, Clarke County
July 19 – Rector House at Atoka, Fauquier County
August 16- Aldie Mill, Aldie, Loudoun County
November 1 – Rector House at Atoka, Fauquier County

Admission will be $5 for adults and $2 for students. 

The 11th Annual Conference of the Art of Command in the Civil War will have as its topic “Antietam”.    More details about speakers and topics will be available in the spring.

Click HERE to download the brochure.