Note: This article is a companion to the Before Waterford video, created for the Waterford Foundation for educational purposes, in order to provide source references.

Research Sources:

Imagine what it must have been like to travel from Pennsylvania to the northern Virginia frontier to carve a living out of the wilderness.

This was a journey taken by many Quakers who saw opportunity in the vast acres of land made available after colonial expansion pushed the indigenous people westward. Quakers were members of the Society of Friends, many of whom lived in William Penn’s colony of Pennsylvania where they escaped European religious intolerance.

One of the earliest Pennsylvania Quaker pioneers to emigrate south to what is now Loudoun County, Virginia was John Mead, who with his father-in-law, had 703 acres of unclaimed land on Catoctin Creek surveyed for settlement.[1] Mead, who acquired the land in 1733, was a carpenter.[2] Quite a handy skill to have on the frontier.

At the time, Virginia was a colony of England and all of the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, including Mead’s land, comprised the Northern Neck Proprietary, which granted land to those who, frankly, could afford to pay an annual sum to the Proprietary. Landowners divided their acreage into tenant farms. Tenant farmers paid rent to the landowner who in turn paid quitrents to the Proprietary.

In 1733, the year John Mead acquired his land, he likely leased a portion to Amos Janney, a fellow Quaker from Chester PA, who with his wife Mary and their young children, traveled along paths and forded streams to arrive in Virginia and settle along the Catoctin. Upon arrival, Janney would have seen plenty of wildlife, such as waterfowl and deer.

In order to be accepted into the Quaker Monthly Meeting associated with his new residence, Janney obtained a certificate in March 1733 from the Falls Monthly Meeting in Bucks County, Pennsylvania recommending Janney and his wife as Members in Unity. When Janney presented the certificate to the Nottingham Monthly meeting in June 1734, he was already living in Virginia.[3]

Once here, Janney had to clear the land for farming and establish paths to his neighbors. A survey plat for land near Janney’s farm depicts a stream named Amos’s Branch.[4] This appears to be the small stream that borders present-day Clarks Gap Road as you enter the village of Waterford. The plat also shows a path from Amos Janney’s to Thomas Johns, a fellow Quaker. This path was in the vicinity of present-day Loyalty Road.

Janney likely leased his farm for about four years before Mead sold about 253 acres to Janney (presumably the farm Janney leased).[5] Mead then sold 147 acres to David Griffith in 1742[6] and the balance of the tract amounting to 303 acres to Francis Hague,[7] who was Janney’s brother-in-law. At some point the Janney family acquired the Griffith parcel, thus enlarging the Janney farm to 400 acres.[8] Francis Hague lived on the northern portion of the tract and Amos Janney to the south.

Hague and Janney each expanded their land holdings and acquired thousands of acres nearby, all within easy distance to the Main Road leading from a shipping port on the Potomac, we know it today as Alexandria, through the mountain gap. The Main Road roughly followed present-day Route 7.

With the size of tenant farms averaging between 150 and 200 acres, Hague and Janney needed to entice a great many families to come to Virginia to lease their land. They succeeded, and more and more Quaker families formed communities in the area where they labored, raised their families, and worshipped.

Tobacco was likely the principal crop in the early days. At Francis Hague’s death, he owned a number of old hogsheads, which were large barrels used to transport tobacco to warehouses at the ports.[9] Grain was also grown and ground into flour. Sheep were raised in the area and their wool spun into yarn.[10] And cows provided milk and beef.

Tobacco cultivation was labor intensive. It is unknown if the earliest Quakers in the area used enslaved labor extensively. Francis Hague had an African American man named Isaac listed in his household from at least 1758 to 1765.[11] By 1758, the Society of Friends discouraged its members from enslaving people.[12]

This prohibition did not extend, however, to purchasing the indentures of convicts transported to America by the English courts. Convicts came to northern neck of Virginia by the tens of thousands prior to the American Revolutionary War.[13] Francis Hague, on whose land the village of Waterford would be established, used convict labor.[14]

Christopher Fiddes, an Irish convict, was sentenced in 1758 to 14 years transportation.[15] He slipped away from Hague near the Quaker meeting house. Hague put an advertisement in the Virginia Gazette offering a reward for his return. He described all of the clothing Fiddes was wearing when he ran away. By my tally, he was wearing two jackets, two shirts, and two pairs of trousers. I suppose it would have been too obvious if he ran away carrying a spare change of clothes in a sack.[16]

Amos Janney died when he was about 46 years old and his young son, Mahlon Janney, inherited his real estate.[17] In 1755 Mahon donated land were the Quaker meetinghouse was built.[18] And seven years later, he purchased a lot of land from his uncle Frances Hague and built a grist mill and saw mill. The mill dam was about 1,000 yards upstream and conveyed water to the mill via a long earthen mill race.[19]

Once the mill was built, the court ordered roads to be built to the mill.[20] This established a foundation for the second generation of Quakers to reshape the landscape after the Revolutionary war when a new federal nation was born.

Endnotes