Last updated: November 21, 2023
Article
An American Agricultural Village after the American Revolution: Waterford, Virginia
NPS Photo/Center for Historic Architecture and Design Staff, December 2019
HABS VA,54-WATFO,1—2
Few early agricultural villages in the United States survive as intact as Waterford, Virginia. It is a remarkable historic district that contains not only a village core with its early grid of streets dotted with a concentration of buildings dating from the late eighteenth century through the mid-nineteenth century, but also a vast expanse of agricultural land and open space surrounding the village core, preserving the pivotal relationship between the larger agrarian community and the service-oriented node of the village. The result is a place that aptly illustrates a common way of life in rural nineteenth-century America by providing the general feeling of a nineteenth-century rural village with few modern intrusions. This preservation of a sense of place and time is remarkable, especially in a district that is an active town and not a historic museum village.
During the half century after the American Revolution, the young United States witnessed a market revolution that transformed American life in many ways. Historians debate the causes, the timing, and the extent of this transformation from region to region, and even from locality to locality, but there is no disputing that the decades between 1790 and 1840 witnessed major investments in transportation networks, the growth of manufacturing, and an increase in exchange activity that changed American life. For farming families, this often meant producing crops and goods for sale on the market, rather than mainly subsistence farming and making goods for self-consumption. These fundamental changes in the American economy contributed to changing settlement patterns, including a proliferation of market villages that supplied goods and services in agricultural areas. Often growing around a mill and a house of worship, these villages grew to include stores, tradespeople, and small manufactories, as well as growing numbers of non-farm residences.
Established on lands occupied by indigenous peoples for centuries, the development of Waterford progressed gradually over the eighteenth century, after initial settlement by European Americans in 1733. Waterford’s growth reflected a general settlement pattern common in the Upland South and other agricultural regions—settlements that did not result in a dense residential cluster like a hamlet, village, or town. Instead, the Pennsylvania Quaker settlers who moved to the Waterford area in the early eighteenth century established what was essentially a dispersed community of farms, featuring large tracts of land resembling irregular tiles or a patchwork quilt of farms. The only visible focal points of community were the saw and flour mill constructed by Amos Janney during the 1730s on Catoctin Creek, and the Quaker meetinghouse built in 1741 (rebuilt in 1761).
By around 1780, the small hamlet surrounding Waterford’s mill was showing signs of expansion. A series of subdivisions in 1780, 1801, and around 1812 converted the small hamlet into a village, as agricultural lands along existing roads were divided into smaller building lots, and new streets were platted. The village grew rapidly during the next three decades, and by 1835, Waterford boasted six mercantile stores, four taverns, two churches, two “free schools,” two water-powered mills, three physicians, two house-joiners, two cabinetmakers, two hatters, one each of a boot and shoe manufacturer, a painter, a chair-maker, and a tailor. Waterford was the third largest settlement in Loudoun County by this time, with a population of about 400 people residing in 70 dwellings—of which 80 residents were free Blacks, and 42 were enslaved persons. Waterford’s growth between 1780 and 1830, like that of other settlements in the region, was especially tied to the commercial production of grain and flour for broad markets.
In the decades that followed, Waterford continued to function as an evolving agricultural service village. The village experienced an equilibrium in growth, maintaining its general footprint while population levels fluctuated only slightly from decade to decade. The century between 1836 and 1936 witnessed the construction of at least 54 new buildings, demonstrating a high level of continued investment in the village—including three new churches, two new schools, a jail, a post office, six new stores or shops, and many new houses. Of these new buildings, 35 were built between 1870 and 1910, including much of the village’s preserved commercial core, as well as two buildings built specifically for Black residents of Waterford, the Second Street School and the John Wesley Church. During the Reconstruction Era, African Americans saw education as an important step towards achieving equality, independence, and prosperity and the Second Street School is a perfect example of the efforts made by Waterford residents to acheive those goals. This sustained growth in the village is notable, as the town was bypassed by the 19th century railroad networks that traversed Loudoun County, Virginia. The construction of these new buildings signaled Waterford’s continued vitality as a local agricultural service village, as its farmers produced impressive quantities of commercial corn and wheat.
By the middle of the 1920s, farmers in Loudoun County were shifting to agricultural production that relied less heavily on wheat and other grains, resulting in the increased obsolescence of small-scale milling operations like that in Waterford. Coupled with the rise of automobile ownership and the new ease of traveling to other towns to shop, these shifts directly impacted the livelihoods of many residents in small agricultural villages like Waterford. The Great Depression reinforced Waterford’s decline, affecting the farmers outside of town as well as the owners of the village’s houses and stores. After almost 200 years, Waterford seemed to have in many ways run its course as an agricultural service village. In 1929, in a symbolic turn of events, the few remaining Quakers in Waterford “laid down” the Fairfax Meeting. In 1936, the Town of Waterford was legally disincorporated. A few years later, the Waterford Mill closed in 1939, ceasing operations after over two centuries of milling on Catoctin Creek.
The 1930s, however, also marked a more hopeful turning point for Waterford’s future—the coalescence of a remarkable preservation movement that would lead to Waterford’s restoration and conservation over many decades. During the Great Depression, brothers Edward and Leroy Chamberlin began a ambitious restoration effort that restored eight historic buildings on Main Street and stimulated interest in preserving Waterford’s historic landscape. The Waterford Foundation with its focus on preservation of the village and early American crafts was formed in 1943 and hosted annual fairs to raise funds and promote the history and preservation of the village. Over the next half century, private citizens and the Waterford Foundation incorporated a wide range of preservation strategies—including purchasing and restoring properties, designating Waterford as a historic district, and encouraging widespread preservation easements—resulting in a nearly unrivaled level of protection for a district of privately-owned properties. The campaign to restore, designate, and protect the historic village of Waterford is itself nationally significant as an important example of a sustained and innovative private preservation effort to conserve a comprehensive village landscape.
Sources:
“About Waterford Virginia.” The Village of Waterford Virginia.
“Waterford’s Beginnings.” The History of Waterford Virginia.
“Waterford's Second Street School.” The History of Waterford Virginia.
National Historic Landmark Nomination of the Waterford Historic District.
National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) are historic places that possess exceptional value in commemorating or illustrating the history of the United States. The National Park Service’s National Historic Landmarks Program oversees the designation of such sites. There are just over 2,500 National Historic Landmarks. All NHLs are also listed in the National Register of Historic Places.