Edwin Washington Project

Background:  

Loudoun County is one of only a few in the Commonwealth that has records dating from the beginning of its founding, which was in 1757 from Fairfax County.  The records were originally kept in a vault at Rokeby, the home of the first Clerk of Court Charles Binns, located near Leesburg. In 1800, an office for the Clerk was ordered to be built on the Courthouse lot to have the records closer to the court. The records were brought to Leesburg and Mr. Binns resigned after being Clerk for 43 years. During the Civil War, George K. Fox, who was the Clerk of Court, was ordered to take the records somewhere for safekeeping and the legend is he took them to Campbell County, Virginia. After the war all the records were returned safely to Leesburg and have been housed in various locations adjacent to the Courthouse ever since (Historic Records Manager n.d.),” such as Wills (1757-1995), deeds (1757-1982), marriage records (1773-1995), birth[1] and death records[2], criminal cases, property tax records, Road Cases (1757 to 1940 regarding roads, bridges and gates), etc. are typical of most county archives and make the office an essential stop.  The archives website has detailed information on many of those resources, some of which were very helpful in the development of the research on the Conklin Colored School Conklin Village story, and which should be valuable in researching pre-integration Loudoun.   A fascinating set of boxes of records in the archives of Circuit Court of Loudoun County is called “Schools,” which needs to be fully scanned and discussed.

Example:  Case of Mathew Kennedy vs. Benjamin Downs, 1795 (first mention of schools)     This is the earliest school document in the files. It outlined a plan to set up classes in an already existing schoolhouse on Colonel Perlor’s land to teach spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic and English grammar.  To be instructed by Mathew Kennedy[1], the classes were to be held for 12 months, except for Saturdays, Sundays and holy days.

School Commissioner and Literary Fund Reports at the Circuit court Archives:  There are a great many of these for the early days of Loudoun in Box One.  Papers describe the appointment of school commissioners from 1818 and minutes of meetings to deal with poor children.  In 1820, one report even described five children and their problems, probably to demonstrate examples of why some children didn’t attend schools.  While these reports do not deal with African-Americans, they are still informative about early educational theory in Loudoun.  Each of the five began school on March 1, 1820.

• James McDonagh was aged 12 or 13 and the son of Mr. Mcdonagh.  James lost 8 or 10 days due to measles.
• Robert Newton was aged 12 or 14 and the son of the Widow Newton.  Robert quit school at the end of April.
• George Darrele, aged 9 or 10 was the son of John Darrele.  George “succeeded his brother Thomas, who succeeded his sister.”
• Ann Jones, aged 10 or 12 and the daughter of the widow Jones.  Ann lost time due to having to take care of her mother, who had measles.
• Henry Langley, aged 10 or 12 and the son of Mr. Langley.  Henry lost a week due to measles.

Early reports were not standardized; but did offer a lot of information, often indicating how many children qualified for Literary Fund support, as well as how many schools existed, and how many of those supported the poor.   For example, in 1823, there were 46 schools in Loudoun of all sorts, about 2/3rds of which assisted poor children.  The reports didn’t say anything about African-Americans, but they did illustrate problems of educating poor children in a sparsely populated rural, agricultural county, issues that surely impacted African-Americans (if they attended even secret schools), as much they impacted white children, 

Many children were pulled out during harvest time to help their parents on their farm.  In addition, as noted in the 1823 report, the number of months of education varied widely from school to school; some were open for 6 months, some for 3 months, and even some for one month or less.  Not surprisingly, this same phenomenon of students being pulled out of classes to work on family farms, usually in September, continued into the 20^th century. However, ironically in September, 1930,  due to the lack on work on the farms at that time, 339 more pupils attended schools than in the same month in 1929 (Washington Post Staff 1930).

Many children didn’t have clothes to handle bad weather and the commissioners felt unfairly restrained because the fund didn’t pay for clothes.  Contrast that, however, with the attitude of the School Board a century later during the great depression.  The school system recognized that the great droughts were diminishing income from farmers which would be used to fund schools and wanted to spare the children of the poorest some “of the sting” of those times.  But unlike the school commissioners of the 19^th century who wanted to buy proper clothing for the needy, the recommendations in the 1930’s included: “Clothing – Teachers and the more fortunate children, can set a dress precedent by wearing plain, even patched and second-hand garments.  It is the proper thing to do when our fellows are caught in a catastrophe.  The very poor children will naturally feel more comfortable as they too, will undoubtedly wear shabby garments from necessity (Lintner 1930).”  A similar topic came up in 1925 at the White Teacher Institute.  The agenda was “Can teachers do anything towards curbing a tendency of parents to dress children more expensively than their financial ability justifies[1].”  More sensitively perhaps, by 1932, it was simply a question of helping needy children[2].

In some cases, geography worked against the system providing proper education. There was also resistance from poor families due to “the mistaken obstinate pride of parents in being obliged in some seasons to keep their children at home to work for the support of their family.”  Diseases of various sorts often prevented children from attending school for weeks at a time, “the parents being perhaps so poor as to be unable to purchase medical and other means of restoration…,” things not so worrisome to the middle and upper classes. 

The reports sometimes also recommended more effective ways of spending money and using the Circuit court system, as well as that while the Commissioners didn’t wish a salary, they did want their costs covered (School Commissioners 1825).