Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

Collection open for research.

Use Restrictions

No physical characteristics affect use of this material.

Preferred Citation

Lefferts Family Collection (SC 0119), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

HISTORICAL SKETCH

Miles Lefferts (1916-2001) was born and died in Leesburg, Virginia. He was the sixth child of Ella Adams Lefferts (1871-1954) and Horace Hogeland Lefferts (1879-1949), County Clerk, bookkeeper at the Saffer Brothers Mill, and elder of several area Old School Baptist churches, including New Valley (1911-1949) and Mt. Zion (1917-1949).

Miles Lefferts' wife, Janet Patterson Lefferts (b. 1919), was born Janet Patterson in Round Hill. She is the daughter of Bertha Baber Patterson (1894-1949) and James Samuel Patterson (1892-1985), pharmacist in Round Hill for over 50 years and owner of Patterson's Pharmacy and the Patterson Building.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of newspaper articles, manuscript materials, photographs and artifacts that document the lives of the Patterson and Lefferts families, the history of Leesburg and Round Hill, and numerous businesses that once operated throughout Loudoun County. Three newspaper articles have been photocopied for preservation and discarded. "Corner of the Past," a feature appearing in the Washington Star on 14 November 1965, focuses on Pharmacist James Patterson and Patterson's Pharmacy in Round Hill which opened its doors in 1915. An article in The Washington Post Panorama from 21 May 1970 is titled, "Its Small Town Status at Stake, Leesburg Frets." In the 27 June 1971 issue of The Sunday Star , the article "Out of Town, The Old South, Civil War and Revolutionary War are still having their heyday in Leesburg, VA" by Josephine F. Caplan appeared.

Also included are five post cards of Loudoun County buildings, a single photograph of the Loudoun County Courthouse, and a black and white photograph of Deacon Samuel B. Paxson of Leesburg. There are also two items related to schools in the area; an original Term Report from Mount Gilead, 1916-1917, and an oversized photograph of "The Loudoun School", identified by the donor, Nancy Lefferts Thaete, as a private school in Bluemont, Virginia. Owen Thomas Jr. ("June") appears in the picture and is the donor's great-uncle.

There is a 1971 calendar, a wooden ruler, and two flat paper fans commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Peoples National Bank of Leesburg. A second wooden ruler from the Purcell & Littlejohn Rexall Store in Leesburg is included as well. Letters from the War Department and Certificates of Honorable Service made out to Bertha Baber Patterson and James Samuel Patterson, dated 1944, complete the collection.

Adjunct Descriptive Data

Bibliography

Ancestry.com. U.S., Find A Grave Index, 1600s-Current [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

A Brief History of Leesburg, http://www.leesburgva.gov/visitors/history-of-leesburg/reconstruction-through-world-war-ii#Littlejohn, accessed 13 January 2016.

Lefferts Family Collection (SC 0119), Thomas Balch Library, Leesburg, VA.

Loudoun County Cemetery Database, http://www.leesburgva.gov/government/departments/thomas-balch-library/loudoun-county-cemetery-database, accessed 13 January 2016.

Scheel, Eugene M., Loudoun Discovered: Communities, Corners & Crossroads. Volume 4: Leesburg & the Old Carolina Road. Leesburg, VA: Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2002.

Thomas, Ann Whitehead, A Story of Round Hill, Loudoun County Virginia. Leesburg, VA: Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2004.