The northwestern part of the County, known as the "German Settlement," a section of about 125 square miles, extending from Catoctin Mountain westward to the Short Hill Mountains and from the Potomac River southward to near Wheatland, was originally settled by a sturdy and vigorous race of Germans,[19] principally from Pennsylvania, but a few from New York, in which two colonies they had settled on their arrival, only a few years before, from the Palatine states of Germany. They came to Loudoun between the years 1730 and 1735,[20] about the time of the Cavalier settlements.
These German settlers were a patient, God-fearing people, naturally rugged, and very tenacious in the preservation of their language, religion, customs and habits. Every stage in their development has been marked by a peaceable and orderly deportment—a perfect submission to the restraints of civil authority.
[19] The first sheep were brought to the County by these settlers.—History of the Loudoun Rangers.
[20] 1732 was most likely the year in which the earliest of these German settlers arrived in Loudoun.
The earliest of these German arrivals, with native foresight and a proper appreciation of the dangers incident to border settlement in that day of bloody Indian atrocities, came to Loudoun in an organized body, embracing sixty or more families.
Many of the males were artisans of no mean ability, and plied their respective trades as conscientiously and assiduously as others, in the rude manner of the times, tilled their newly-acquired acres.
In this way, a congenial, stable, and self-sustaining colony, founded on considerations of common safety and economic expediency, was established amongst these storied hills of frontier Virginia.
Almost simultaneously with these settlements came other emigrants from Pennsylvania and the then neighboring colonies, among them many members of the Society of Friends or Quakers.[21] Not a few of this faith came direct from England and Ireland, attracted by the genial climate, fertile soils and bountiful harvests, accounts of which had early gained wide-spread circulation. They chose homes in the central portion of the County, southwest of Waterford and west of Lessburg, that section being generally known as the "Quaker Settlement."
Each summer brought them new accessions of prosperity and devout brethren to swell their numbers; and soon they had caused the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Here they found freedom of religious and moral thought, a temperate climate, and the wholesome society of earnest compatriots.
Then, as now, a plain, serious people, they have left the impress of their character—thrifty, industrious, and conspicuously honest—upon the whole of the surrounding district.