Loudoun County, Virginia: History
=== 18th century ===
Loudoun County was established in 1757 from Fairfax County. The county is named for John Campbell, Fourth Earl of Loudoun and governor general of Virginia from 1756 to 1759. Western settlement began in the 1720s and 1730s with English and Welsh Quakers, Scots-Irish, Germans and others moving south from Pennsylvania and Maryland, and also by English and enslaved Africans moving upriver from Tidewater.
At the time of the American Revolution, Loudoun County was Virginia's most populous county. It was also rich in agriculture, and the county's contributions of grain to George Washington's Continental Army earned it the nickname "Breadbasket of the Revolution."
==== War of 1812 ====
During the War of 1812, important federal documents and government archives were evacuated from Washington and stored at Leesburg. Local tradition holds that these documents were stored at Rokeby House.
U.S. president James Monroe treated Oak Hill Plantation as a primary residence from 1823 until his death on July 4, 1831. The Loudoun County coat of arms and flag, granted by the English College of Arms, memorialize the special relationship between Britain and the United States that developed through his Monroe Doctrine.
The American Civil War divided the county, which saw fighting because of its strategic location. In April 1861, both of Loudoun County's representatives to the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 favored the Union. Delegates elected John Janney, a former Quaker and slave owner, presided over that assembly, which ultimately voted to secede. Loudoun voters also voted to secede. In addition to Confederate cavalry and infantry units formed within the county, other Loudoun residents traveled to Maryland to join Union army cavalry and border guard units. On October 21, 1861, in the Battle of Ball's Bluff along the Potomac River near Leesburg, future jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was critically wounded.
In the spring of 1862, Leesburg was occupied by Union troops and later recaptured by the Confederate Army after Union troops withdrew. Confederate partisan John S. Mosby based his operations in Loudoun and adjoining Fauquier County.
In June 1863, during the Gettysburg campaign, Confederate major general J.E.B. Stuart and Union cavalry clashed in the battles of Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville. By December 1863, Loudoun was held by Union forces, and was among the nine counties which elected delegates to the Virginia General Assembly at Alexandria.
Loudoun voters elected and reelected John J. Henshaw and J. Madison Downey as their representatives to that body, and fellow delegates elected Downey as their Speaker. Loudoun voters elected and reelected William F. Mercer to the upper body of that version of the Virginia General Assembly, and elected him to the Virginia Senate in the 1865–1867 session. They elected former delegates R.M. Bentley and William Hill Gray as their part-time delegates in the lower house in that session. …