2010 Events

Students Rejuvenate Union of Churches Cemetery

Loudoun Valley High School students Elisabeth Harris (right) and Justine McDonald reset a leaning gravestone.

Andrew Masters cleans a broken gravestone before it is cemented and replaced on its footinging. [Photos courtesy A. Rose]

Andrew Masters, cemetery steward Paul Rose, and David Roberts.

The Waterford Foundation would like to express its sincere appreciation to students in the Advanced Placement U.S. history classes at Loudoun Valley High School and their teacher Susan Stevens, who on May 15 dedicated their time to maintenance and renewal of the Waterford Union of Churches Cemetery, on Fairfax Street in the village.

Students cleared branches from the grounds, trimmed shrubs and trees and hauled the debris from the cemetery, which has served as a burial ground for a “union of churches” since the early 1800s. After lunch the students commenced a careful, painstaking process of resetting gravestones, repairing broken ones, and cleaning moss and dirt from their surfaces, making them again readable.

“For the second consecutive year your volunteer work in the historic Waterford Union Cemetery has made a tremendous improvement in the grounds and in the appearance of the monuments,” Trustees President Paul Rose wrote to the students. “You are a credit to Loudoun Valley High School, and to your instructor Ms. Stevens. Thank you for a job well done.”

 The Waterford Union of Churches Cemetery has served all Waterford denominations (albeit segregated into black and white sections), other than the Quakers—whose burying ground adjoins Fairfax Meetinghouse. Both Union and Confederate veterans lie there. Today the cemetery is overseen by a board of trustees that includes area residents and the Waterford Foundation, Inc.
The Union Cemetery was laid out early in the nineteenth century and was strictly segregated, with the black section to the rear. Both sections contain fine marble monuments, but many African Americans could afford no more than a roughly flat stone brought in from some field, or just a wooden marker that quickly weathered away. The resulting gaps in the rows testify eloquently to the inequalities of the day.

Civil War veterans of both races - and both armies - lie peaceably together in the same cemetery. Their graves bear appropriate military markers. One designates the grave of James Lewis (born 1844) who traveled to Pittsburgh during the war where he joined the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, a white-led black unit like the famous 54th that was immortalized in the film, Glory.