By the Act of Congress of the 26th January, 1870, the civil disabilities of the former Confederates were removed, Virginia was enabled to take her rightful place again as a sovereign State in the Union and a cleaning up of the carpetbaggers and scalawags was begun; but it is said to have taken nearly another ten years to rid the people of the last of them in those counties with the greater negro population.[185]
The Old John Janney House, East Cornwall Street, Leesburg.
In this period of confusion there came to Shelburne parish in 1869, as its Rector, the Rev. Richard Terrell Davis of Albemarle who had served as a Chaplain in the Confederate Army and whose sympathetic ministrations to his new neighbours were of county-wide solace. About that time the late Charles Paxton of Pennsylvania came to Loudoun, purchased that part of Exeter which lies near the northerly boundary of Leesburg and began the building of the great house which he named Carlheim and which many years later was to become the Paxton Memorial Home for ailing children, established and endowed by his widow in her will in memory of their daughter. Dr. Davis and Mr. Paxton became firm friends and through that friendship and Dr. Davis' knowledge of those most needing help, many a poor man in Loudoun was able to earn a sadly needed living wage during the long construction of Carlheim. It is remembered that on Dr. Davis' greatly lamented death in 1892, so deeply had he engaged the affections of his adopted county, the negroes, upon learning of a project of his white friends to erect in his memory a suitable tombstone, begged that they too might contribute to its cost. It was during the rectorship of Dr. Davis, and largely through his influence, that the building of the present large gray stone church edifice of Saint James in Leesburg was undertaken.
Slowly, very slowly, the people doggedly fought their way up the long and often discouraging hill of recovery. The Spanish-American War, petty in itself, was in its foreign and, particularly, in its domestic implications, of major importance; for it showed that, with a new generation of Americans taking its place, the old sectional tears and rents were growing together and that the national fabric once again was becoming truly restored. In the last decade of the nineteenth century there was a notable inflow of new residents, new money, new determination, which continued with the succeeding years and of which the most significant result was the vigorous growth of the horse and sport-loving community in and around Middleburg, resulting in the development of one of the great, perhaps the greatest, centers of fox-hunting and horse-showing in America. It should be here recorded that to the purchase by Mr. Daniel C. Sands of an estate near Middleburg in 1907 and to his love of horses and country life, as well as his tireless energy in spreading among his many Northern friends knowledge of the charm of his new neighbourhood and building on the Loudoun horse-loving traditions, existing since early settlement, may be ascribed the great prosperity and international repute of the Middleburg environment of today. But the county at large, as well as Middleburg, has reason to be grateful to Mr. Sands. During his more than thirty years of residence here he, consistently and continuously, has been not only one of the county's most constructive citizens but one of the most generous and public-spirited as well.
Again we are reminded of the extraordinary part horses and the various sports connected with them play in Loudoun's life. And all that is no matter of present day chance but the legitimate flowering of very old and greatly cherished traditions. Archdeacon Burnaby, in writing of his travels in Virginia in 1759-1760, was moved to remark that Lord Fairfax's "chief if not sole amusement was hunting; and in pursuit of this exercise he frequently carried his hounds to distant parts of the country; and entertained any gentleman of good character and decent appearance, who attended him in the field, at the inn or ordinary, where he took up his residence for the hunting season."[186] One of the ordinaries thus frequented by Lord Fairfax was West's on the old Carolina Road, just south of the present Lee-Jackson Highway, and in the territory now hunted by the Middleburg pack.
The county supports two hunts—the great Middleburg Hunt, turning out upon occasion a field of over three hundred riders, under the joint mastership of Miss Charlotte Noland and Mr. Sands and hunting the territory around that town; and the smaller but hard-riding Loudoun Hunt, covering the Leesburg neighborhood and of which Judge J. R. H. Alexander is Master. In legitimate succession to those of long ago, annual horse shows are held at Middleburg, Foxcroft, Leesburg, and Unison-Bloomfield, the great Llangollan races are run annually on that beautiful and historic estate, while just over the Fauquier boundary is Upperville with its annual horse show, the oldest in America. In short Loudoun is and always has been a horse-loving county and thus very naturally it is widely known as the Leicestershire of America. Today the raising and training of fine horses, together with the maintenance of numerous herds of dairy cattle (especially of the Guernsey breed) the fattening of great numbers of beef cattle, the raising of hogs, sheep and poultry, the growth and development on her many hillsides of extensive and well cared-for apple orchards, all augment the agricultural revenue Loudoun derives from her ever smiling fields of corn and wheat, grass and clover.
In the year 1900 the Southern Railway Company, then in control of the old Alexandria, Loudoun and Hampshire Railroad, extended it to Snickersville, encouraged by many people from Washington and elsewhere who had built summer homes at and around Snickers' Gap. The railroad company named its new station near the village Bluemont and the postoffice authorities were persuaded also to adopt the new name. Thereafter the old but not very euphonic appellation disappears, save in history and memory of the inhabitants, and the village became known by its new and present designation.
In the World War the county played its part in a manner worthy of its heritage. Her sons to the number of nearly six hundred joined the military and naval forces and during that period the local Red Cross Chapters and other civilian organizations were active and efficient. The list of those Loudoun patriots who responded to their country's call at that time is too long and their services too varied to be fully recounted here; but no narrative, however greatly curtailed, should fail to name those who then laid down their lives for their country. A dignified monument, now standing in the grounds surrounding Loudoun's courthouse in Leesburg, bears these words in letters of bronze:
"Our Glorious Dead
'Their Bodies are buried in peace
but their names liveth for evermore.'
1917-1918.