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About 1700 men fought this battle. When it was over, the Confederates had won after a final charge which drove many of the Union troops into the river. Some Union soldiers drowned, others were wounded and still others were marched as prisoners to Leesburg.
Small skirmishes were fought in many places including Aldie, Leesburg, Hamilton, Waterford, Middleburg and Purcellville. These skirmishes were usually surprise attacks by a small number of soliders and were often for the purposes of taking food, livestock, supplies and ammunition. Although these skirmishes were not considered to be major battles, people from both sides were sometimes killed or wounded in these attacks.
A famous skirmish took place at the Waterford Baptist Church in 1862. Here Union soldiers were attacked by a Confederate force. Both sides stopped fighting, several times while the Confederate commander sent Mrs. Virts, a lady who lived across the streeet from the church, to see if the Union soliders would surrender. They agreed after her third attempt. This ended the fight. One Union soldier had been killed and eleven Union soldiers had been wounded. Many of the men who fought each other had been former schoolmates and friends.
Mosby's Marauders made a base in Loudoun during key part sof the Civil war. John Mosby was known as the Grey Ghost because his style of guerilla warfare was so damaging and he and his men were so hard to find. These days you can find him along a trail in Middleburg where you can follow Mosby's tracks on various escapades.
Loudoun County suffered a lot of damage during the Civil War. Late in 1864, the Confederacy was facing defeat and much of Loudoun County was burned in a massive raid by the Union forces. They burned barns and captured livestock in an effort to end the activities of the Confederate soldiers.
Many of the eastern towns of Loudoun owe their original development to the first railroads in the late 1800s. The last owner of this line was the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad that ran through Loudoun until the mid-1960s. Now a scenic 32 mile bike trail, the W&OD set the stage for Loudoun towns. Ashburn grew around what was originally Farmwell Station. Sterling grew around the Guilford Station. In the West, an early ox cart track which wound westward from Leesburg, known later as the "Great Road" helped to develop Western towns such as Purcellville. The Great Road became an authorized turnpike in 1785 and extended the turnpike system westward from Alexandria to Snicker’s Gap, and beyond to Berryville and Winchester.
Today Eastern Loudoun (Ashburn, Sterling and South Riding) hse fueled the rapid growth the County in the past few years. By design the County government decided to allow the bulk of the development in Loudoun to occur in the Eastern part of the County and leave the greenspace and farms protected in the Western part of the County. That has created a sort of pyschological divide between East and Western Loudouners that meets at Leesburg. Leesburg hosts the County seat of government but ironically is not governed by the County Board of Supervisors as it has it's own elected Town government and jurisdiction.
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