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Thomas Balch Library
Thomas Balch Library© 2006 By Thomas Balch Library. All rights reserved.
Processed by: D. Nichole Recker
Collection is open to research.
Photocopying not permitted due to physical conditions.
Waterford News (SC0014), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA., Accession #SC 0014, Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, Virginia.
Loudoun Historical Society
None
2004.0001
Processed by D. Nichole Recker
The Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, grew from Protestant roots in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. Due to religious persecution and other pressures, large numbers immigrated. The first of multiple migrations to Loudoun County of Quakers from Pennsylvania settled near Waterford in 1730.
Quakers tended to remain isolated as they carefully protected their customs and beliefs and refused to blend into the wider community of which they quickly became a minority. In 1860 there were 98 Quakers in Waterford, 24 percent of the total 412 free inhabitants. Long before the conflicts of 1860, lines had already been drawn over the practice of slavery, which the Quakers officially denounced in 1776. The peaceful separation that existed between Quakers and their slaveholding neighbors rapidly dissolved as Virginia moved toward secession and war.
Waterford voted 221 to 30 against secession, while the whole of Loudoun County voted 1626 in favor and 726 opposed. The exposed strip of land where Waterford is situated became a no-man's land which neither side could effectively control and was subject to raids and small battles throughout the war. Waterford was considered traitorous by the Confederates and was not able to receive adequate protection or supplies from the Union because of its difficult geographic position. Thus, Waterford was subject to harsh privations and pillaging from above and below.
In August 1862, the first blood flowed among them as a Confederate cavalry attacked the Loudoun Rangers resting in the town. The Loudoun Rangers, composed of men from Waterford and Lovettsville, were the only pro-Union company in Virginia. Waterford mill owner Samuel Means (1827-1884) raised this unit after his personal property was seized in his escape from Confederate arrest. The Loudoun Rangers' participation is often reported in the Waterford News .
Some Quakers strove to maintain strict neutrality, caring for wounded union and rebel soldiers alike in accordance with their faith, but more of the younger Quakers in the community were not as constrained in their sympathies and wanted to participate in the struggle.
Threats of conscription from the Rebel army were doubly abhorrent to Quakers who held pacifist beliefs and personal loyalties to the Union and many men fled to Maryland in order to escape harassment and arrest. Two such men were John B. Dutton (1816-1892) and Samuel Steer (1811-1883), who used their business and family ties in Maryland to set up trade stores on the border, enabling them to assist Waterford and occasionally visit their families. These connections proved useful to publishers of the Waterford News .
Having received no response from a letter she sent to President Lincoln (1809-1865) concerning Waterford's troubles, Emma Eliza Dutton (1844-?), with her sister Elizabeth (1839-?) and Sarah Steer (1837-1914), decided to create a defiantly pro-Union paper in order to "cheer the weary soldier, and render material aid to the sick and wounded." Undoubtedly these three young Quakers also hoped that their paper would draw Northern attention to Waterford's predicament in order to persuade the Federal authorities to ease the rigid blockade. Sarah, Lizzie and Lida gave the proceeds of their ten cent per-copy paper to the U.S. Sanitation Commission, a private organization formed in 1861 that cared for wounded soldiers and their families. The girls donated almost $1,000.00 to the Commission after the first issue was published in May 1864, suggesting large sales. It was printed by the Baltimore American on account of Dutton's Maryland connections.
Filled with charm, wit and good humor, the Waterford News spread beyond the limits of Loudoun County and it is reported President Lincoln himself was given a copy. The four-page paper took courage as the main lines of battle moved south, and Waterford remained the target of Mosby's scourges until the end of the war,
The newspaper was issued eight times during the final year of the war. It was soon forgotten as the town tried to recover and many Quakers who fled during the war never returned. Quakers continued to move west and confederate sympathizers who reasserted their political predominance after the war had no interest in preserving the small, yet clear voice that had supported the Union.
Lizzie and Lida married Union soldiers after the war and moved to Indiana and New York to begin their own families. Sarah remained in Waterford where she later married and became the first teacher at the new school for black children. It was not until 1922 that the Waterford News was uncovered by Lida's daughter Emma Conrow in New York. In 1955 the first two issues of the paper were rediscovered among the Lincoln papers at Library of Congress, five more by Steer descendant Anne Osler Herring, and the eighth in 1998, torn and scattered in two locations.
This collection consists of the first and third publication of the Waterford News and one article from the Blue Ridge Herald . Waterford News contains articles reporting skirmishes and battles in and around Waterford, stories and classified ads revealing economic strains, poems to Abraham Lincoln, and parodies of Southern news items. The 1955 Blue Ridge Herald printed in Purcellville, VA reports Kay Kitagawa's rediscovery of the first two Waterford newspapers (28 May 1864 and 11 Jun 1864) among the Lincoln papers at Library of Congress.
In order to avoid using pagan titles for months and days of the week, Quakers employed their own dating system, referring to months and days as 1st or 2nd etc. Thus, 28 May would be the 28th day of the 5th month.
"The Waterford News," intro. by Taylor M. Chamberlin, Bronwen C. Souders, and John M. Souders. Waterford, VA: Waterford Foundation, Inc, 1999.