Waterford Foundation

Stephanie Thompson

In Memory

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Remembering those who have contributed to the Waterford community.

Jill Beach

Jill Beach, Waterford resident and longtime Waterford Foundation supporter, died on March 22, 2025. Jill served on the Board of the Waterford Foundation from 1981 to 1988. Together with her late husband Mark, she was a strong advocate for preservation, supporting the Foundation in the maintenance and preservation of the Schooley Mill Barn and meadow. She was a strong supporter of the Waterford Concert Series and the campaign to build the new Old School Auditorium following the 2007 fire. Jill was also a strong supporter of the Waterford Fair. She opened her home The Dormers on Second Street for the Waterford Fair Homes Tour several times. Together with friend and neighbor Susanne Page, Jill started the Waterford Fair Photography Exhibit and ran the Exhibit for many years. Fellow Photography Exhibit co-chair Schuyler Richardson remembers Jill’s contributions to the Exhibit:

I was the worrier and Jill was always the cool and calm one. I worried about finding the judges; would we have enough entries or too many photographs etc. Jill would always say, “You don’t have to worry, everything always works out.” And it did, until the weekend of the hurricane. We had joined forces with The Fine Arts Show and were located in the Schooley Mill Barn. The show was hung beautifully, but then it started to rain, pour and blow. Jill and I ran to the barn and moved all the photos to her house. That was the year the Fair was cancelled. I am happy to say all the photographs survived.

One of Jill’s superpowers was having such a great “eye” for hanging the show. We would start with a multitude of photographs in numerous categories and Jill could figure out the perfect location for each one. It looked so effortless, but it took a real talent to hang the show. She was so great at it that the Loudoun Photo Club asked her to hang one of their shows.

Kathleen Elder

Kathleen Elder, former Waterford Foundation Board member, died on May 21, 2024 at home with her family. Kathleen served on the Board of the Foundation from 2015-2016 and also served as chair of the Land Use Committee. She was a fierce advocate for historic preservation and conservation in the Waterford community, and she supported the concept of preserving and celebrating the Foundation’s 13 historic properties through adaptive reuse. 

Funeral services for Kathleen will be held at St. James Episcopal Church in Leesburg at 11:00am on June 8, 2024 with a reception to follow at the Waterford Old School. To honor Kathleen’s love of books, the family requests that those attending the reception bring a book to exchange with others.

Read more about Kathleen in her obituary here from the Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Susanne Page

Susanne Page, photographer and Waterford resident, died on May 13, 2024 following a brief illness. A celebrated photographer of indigenous people, Susanne brought her experience and love for photography to the Waterford community when she and fellow resident Jill Beach started the Waterford Fair Photography Exhibit. Together they ran the Exhibit for many years.

As Schuyler Richardson, fellow photographer and Exhibit volunteer remembers:

Page, left, with friend and fellow Photography Exhibit volunteer Jill Beach in 2016. Photo by Schuyler Richardson

“during one of the last Fair photography shows, I was upstairs in the Red Barn, reviewing the many details of the show and feeling rather nervous. I looked up and standing quietly in the doorway was Susanne ready and willing to help. Never have I felt so relieved and happy to see anyone. She was just so kind and so thoughtful. … She and Jill were the heart of the exhibit and they loved every minute. I was lucky to have met Susanne and to call her friend. She was a lovely, brilliant, caring person and we shall all miss her.” 

Read more about Susanne’s life and career as a photographer in her obituary from the New York Times.

Second Street School Program Celebrates 40 years!

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The Second Street School Living History Program celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2024, hosting 33 classes from Loudoun County Public Schools as well as area private schools and homeschool groups. Many thanks to our volunteer docents Emily Baer, Barbara Elbeze, Karen Elliot, Sharyn Franck, Nancy Iarossi and Abigail Pope for together serving 692 students this spring!

Having modified the program curriculum in 2022 to remove role playing in accordance with Loudoun County Public Schools guidelines, students who attend the program today now have greater opportunities to ask questions and compare and contrast the experience of Black students in 1880 with their experiences in modern day schools. In addition, this season we encouraged classes to take a brief bus tour of the village at the start of their field trip, driving past the Waterford Old School (historic school for white students) and the Waterford Elementary School (current school for all public school students) to allow the students attending the program to compare the Second Street School building to those of other Waterford students past and present. 

While the one room schoolhouse is now closed for the season, we look forward to opening its doors to 4th grade students again in the spring of 2025. Registration for 2025 field trips will open in August. Please contact us at oldschool@waterfordfoundation.org to be added to our contact list and notified when registration opens.

Waterford Historic District Named one of Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places

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Every year during Historic Preservation Month, Preservation VA releases a list of that year’s Most Endangered Historic Sites to raise community awareness of threatened historic places. This year, the Waterford National Historic Landmark was included on the list due to the imminent threat of proposed 500kV transmission lines running through the Landmark. 

Construction of 500kV transmission lines in the Waterford National Historic Landmark would destroy the integrity of the historic and cultural viewshed of Waterford and nullify its Landmark status, a designation that the community achieved in 1970 and continues to fight for. While Waterford’s historic integrity is under threat, we are hopeful that being listed as one of Virginia’s Most Endangered Historic Places will raise awareness of this issue and help rally supporters to our cause. Endangerment does not mean the end, it means that there is a community ready and willing to put in the work to save it. The Waterford Foundation is honored to be a part of that community, and are hopeful that it will continue to grow. 

Endangerment does not mean the end, it means that there is a community ready and willing to put in the work to save it.

The Waterford Foundation thanks Preservation Virginia for its support in our work to preserve the historic buildings and open spaces of Waterford in defense of the National Historic Landmark. To learn more about the Most Endangered Historic Places designation and Waterford’s rich history of grassroots preservation, please attend our Preservation Celebration on Sunday, May 19th from 3-5pm at the Waterford Old School (40222 Fairfax Street, Waterford VA 20197). For more information about the threat of the 500kV transmission lines and what can be done, please visit the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance’s website at www.loudountransmissionlinealliance.org.

The Big Storm of ’94

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Reprinted from the 51st Waterford Fair Booklet, October 7, 1994.

On the afternoon of June 16 this year, a powerful wind storm ripped through the Waterford historic district, taking with it many 200 plus year-old trees. These trees had witnessed the development of Waterford from an 18th Century milling center to a thriving 19th Century commercial town serving the needs of the surrounding farming community. The result was a monstrous tangle of downed electric and telephone wires, broken tree limbs, and upturned tree roots as tall as a grown man. The clean-up process took days of around-the-clock work by power companies, VDOT and tree services.

The storm hit the northeast side of town, working around to the southwest. The highest points of the town and surrounding hills suffered direct hits. 

The damage to buildings was largely the result of huge trees falling on porches or roofs and ripping great gashes in the fabric of the buildings. The homes on the north side of the Big Hill and the east side of High Street felt the full impact of the storm, being vulnerable because of their location on higher ground than most of the town. Two grand Victorian style houses narrowly avoided damage as many of the very large trees between them were destroyed by the wind. One owner described how the wind and resulting internal pressure in her home sent the roof access door to their attic sailing across the garden. Likewise, at Mill End, an imposing house across from the Mill at the lower end of town, the greatest damage was suffered in the gardens surrounding the house where some 22 trees were damaged or destroyed.

This reproduction of an 1882 sketch shows Mill End on the hill above and to the north of the Mill.

The Waterford Foundation’s Mill was a victim of a tree falling from Mill End, which is located on higher ground. The impact of the full length of the enormous tree split the tin roof and pulled the bricks loose down the north face of the two upper stories. Ironically, its location on lower ground did not save it from damage because of the height of its four stories.

Accidental Historians: Uncovering History in the Writings of Waterford Women

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Personal letters and journals can yield a wealth of information about everyday life during significant periods of history, such as in Waterford during the Civil War. Discovering a trove of correspondence is a boon for historians, as described in the About This Book section of To Talk Is Treason: Quakers of Waterford, Virginia on Live, Love, Death & War in the Southern Confederacy:

This account of Waterford’s Quakers during the Civil War came together unexpectedly in the summer of 1996. While several long-time residents of the village had been familiar with the outlines of the story, many of the details were unknown–and the village had lost touch with descendants of those who had lived through the conflict. 

One of those descendants, Miss Phebe Haviland Steer, has miraculously provided the key to unlocking that past. From her home in California, she enquired if anyone in Waterford would be interested in a box of old letters and journals that had belonged to her grandmother, Mary Frances Dutton Steer. They had just been rescued from being discarded by a well-meaning friend.

Miss Steer, three years earlier, had generously given the Waterford Foundation an extraordinary patchwork quilt pieced–in the manner Mollie Dutton herself has described–from the silk wedding dress her great-grandmother Emma Schooley Dutton had worn in 1838. The cover of this book reproduces two colors of that quilt. 

Waterford is forever in debt of these women. For it turned out that Mollie had preserved a rich record of the past, keeping not only her own wartime letters, but also meticulously copying a large volume of correspondence and other writings of family and friends from the early 19th century to the end of her life. Among those treasures is Rebecca Williams’ poignant diary of the war years.

These writings in turn provided clues to other sources. Dutton descendants in New Jersey generously shared period photographs of Lizzie and Lida and Mollie, as well as additional details of their times. A library in Michigan furnished a list in Lida’s hand of Union soldiers who had passed through Waterford. There is every reason to expect that more information will be discovered; it is our hope that this first telling of the stories will spur the search…

In the end what makes this narrative compelling are Waterford’s remarkable Quakers themselves. When disaster struck those peaceful, capable people met the challenge without flinch or compromise. We are grateful that their care in recording their history has given us a chance to know them and their times. May we do as well to preserve what they have left us.

John E. Divine, Bronwen C. Souders, John M. Souders, September 1996

To Talk Is Treason: Quakers of Waterford, Virginia on Life, Love, Death and War in the Southern Confederacy, 1996, WAterford Foundation

The Waterford Foundation maintains an institutional Archives as well as a Local History Collection. If you may be interested in donating documents, photos or artifacts from Waterford’s past, please reach out to our staff for further information via phone (540-882-3018, x2) or email.

Stay Informed and Get Involved

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Show your Support by Signing Our Declaration to NextEra:

Use this link to sign onto the Deceleration by the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance on the NextEra MARL Proposal. Share with your friends and family as well!

Share your Thoughts with NextEra:

Share your thoughts on their current plan to NextEra directly using the contact page on their website linked here!

Follow and share on social media:

  • Follow the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance on Facebook at Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance, and on Instagram @locotransmissionlinealliance
  • Share posts and information with family, friends, and your community!

Share your story with us:

Fill out this form to share what you love about Rural Loudoun, and how the construction of the proposed lines would affect you! These will/can be shared on the website, social media, and Alliance materials.

Get a yard sign:

Pickup a No New Lines in Loudoun yard sign while supplies last at the Waterford Foundation Offices (40222 Fairfax Street, Waterford VA 20197) during office hours T-F 10am-2pm.

Stay in touch:

The Waterford Foundation and the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance is maintaining an email list for those who would like to stay informed about this issue. If you would like to be included, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page.

Donate

Your gifts support the Waterford Foundation’s work to preserve the Waterford National Historic Landmark and oppose threats like this. Please click the button below to make a gift today.

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Position Statements by the Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance:

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Statement on the 8/8/2024 Vote by PJM Board of Managers

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance is Encouraged by the PJM Board of Managers Vote on Updates on the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance is pleased that on 7 August the PJM Board of Managers approved a change in scope for the 2022 RTEP W3 plan that avoids the construction of a new greenfield power transmission line through western Loudoun County by instead making use of existing rights-of-way. We thank all the organizations, communities, HOAs, farmers, businesses, churches, residents, visitors, and individuals from within Loudoun County and beyond whose massive support helped make this goal a reality. We are especially grateful for the critical unwavering support of our Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, County Attorney Leo Rogers, Virginia State Senator Russett Perry, and Virginia State Delegate Geary Higgins.

However, our collective effort is far from complete. The transmission line must still go through the region’s state regulators. In addition, with the continued unprecedented scale and pace of load growth by the data centers and the expected decommissioning of older power generation, PJM in July initiated a new expansion window seeking yet more transmission capacity in Virginia and the surrounding states. Those plans will begin to take shape as early as October. Virginia must also consider new power generation capacity, understanding that new plants in most cases will require new transmission or other forms of energy infrastructure. In the coming year, we will need to focus on new related legislative initiatives.

We will all need to stay engaged in these County, Commonwealth, and regional stakeholder discussions. Technology might be key to future prosperity in the region, but implementation of new infrastructure must include transparent planning and the best available methods and technologies to ensure preservation of our rural communities and businesses, our historical legacy and environment, and our way of life.

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Statement on the 5/8/2024 NIETC Phase Two Announcement by the Department of Energy

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance Disapproves of the Department of Energy’s Decision to Include Loudoun’s Potential NextEra Route in NIETC Designation

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance (LTLA) finds the Department of Energy’s (DOE) decision to include rural Loudoun as a Potential NIETC Designation Geographic Area- an area part of the proposed NextEra transmission line- alarming and detrimental to residents of Loudoun County.

Today, the Department of Energy released Potential National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) Designations Geographic Areas moving forward to Phase Two. This includes Loudoun County, and the NextEra proposed line in Rural Loudoun. According to the Department of Energy, a “NIETC designation also allows the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to issue permits for the siting of transmission lines within the NIETC under circumstances where state siting authorities do not have authority to site the line, have not acted on an application for over one year, or have denied an application.” This would allow NextEra to build a greenfield power corridor within the wide swath in the geographic area of Rural Loudoun to support the Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link project, even if the State Corporation Commission (SCC) denies construction.

While we understand the need for power in a growing area such as Loudoun and Northern Virginia, we do not believe that it should come at the expense of the community, local businesses, agriculture, conservation, and preservation. Denoting Loudoun a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor would meet the power needs of a few while endangering the future of an entire region. The Alliance continues to call upon NextEra to withdraw their plan, and build within existing right-of-ways. The current trajectory of NextEra’s proposal in Rural Loudoun, and its application for a NIETC designation, would put Loudoun County’s economy, environment, and historic legacy at grave risk.

Phase two public comment period has opened, and will close on June 24, 2024 at 5:00PM ET. We encourage the Loudoun Community to send comments to NIETC@hq.doe.gov. Accordingly, the LTLA will respond to DOE within this period with a clear and complete report of local impacts on Rural Loudoun for its further consideration.

For more information about the NIETC designation and how it would impact our community, please visit our website at loudountransmissionlinealliance.org.

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Statement on the April 16, 2024 Board of Supervisors Resolution

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance Commends the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors’ No New Route in Western Loudoun Resolution

The Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance (LTLA) applauds the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors’ resolution opposing the Western Loudoun Route for the proposed 500kV electrical transmission lines proposed by NextEra Energy.

On April 16th, the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 9-0 to approve a resolution encouraging NextEra to use an existing electrical transmission right-of-way instead.

LTLA is elated to have the support of the Board of Supervisors. “We applaud the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors for leading the way, insiting that pristine and hsitoric greenspace and economic drivers of Rural Loudoun be preserved intact,” said Susan Manch, President of the Board of Directors for the Waterford Foundation, Inc.

Building a new transmission line through Western or Rural Loudoun would be severly detrimental to all residents and impact the past, present, and future of Loudoun County. While the LTLA understands the need for power in a growing county like Loudoun, it believes it should not come at the cost of agriculture, tourism, local businesses, the community, conservation, and preservation. “For NextEra, this is a commercial decision, but for Loudoun it’s existential,” said Jim Hanna, Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance member, quoting the Declaration on the NextEra MARL Project.

The LTLA continues to call upon NextEra Energy to reconsider its plan and build within the existing right of ways. The current trajectory in Rural Loudoun would put all of us, our environment, and our historic legacy at risk.

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Pre-Loudoun Transmission Line Alliance Opposition Letters:

Opposition Letters (2023):

  • See Waterford Foundation President Susan Manch’s letter to PJM here.
  • Waterford Citizens’ Association letter citing alternative routes.
  • Read the opposition letter from the National Park Service here.
  • Opposition Letter from the Maryland Office of People’s Counsel.
  • Opposition Letter from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation.
  • Opposition Letter from the Loudoun HRDC

Other letters: