Run, Rabbit, Run Productions, Inc. ©2003 All Rights Reserved

LOUDOUN'S QUAKERS -

By the early nineteenth century, most Loudoun Quakers associated themselves with the Hicksite faction of the church which espoused a more liberal point of view than Orthodox Quakers. By the time of the Civil War, they were still pacifists, met twice weekly for Meetings, disciplined their members, and encouraged plain dress, but further assumptions are destined to break down.[8] They had been living in the middle of a heated political situation for several years, and their pacifism had been sorely tested. When John Brown's Raid occurred so near to Loudoun, local militias were formed. Quakers were told to show up for muster or pay a fine. At the beginning of the war, the Confederate army took Quakers for laborers or jailed them for use as bargaining chips. As a result, most headed north, but several men risked the discipline of the Quaker meeting and joined the Union Army.

One of those men was young James Dutton, brother to Lida and Lizzie.[9] By 1862, Lizzie had fallen in love and become engaged to a Lieutenant Holmes of the 7th Indiana Regiment. The matter had become personal, such that when it came to a choice of allegiance between country or faith, Quaker women like Lida, Lizzie and Sarah stubbornly chose to support both. A Waterford News editorial boldly stated, "Christians make the best soldiers."[10]

Lizzie Dutton

(photo courtesy of descendants and The Waterford Foundation)

At every turn, Loudoun's Quaker women refused to be categorized. Regarding the tradition of Quaker "plain dress," for example, there is this interesting notation in the very first edition of The Waterford News: "Great distress is felt by the ladies of this vicinity at not being able to appear at meeting in new bonnets, dresses and wrappings, owing to the stringent blockade."[11]

These women were well educated and had been strongly encouraged to express themselves. Only a few years before the war, Lida, Lizzie and Sarah were active members of a Waterford Literary Society, writing essays whose topics ranged from a thoughtful, "What is There Left to Write About?" to a hilarious ode "On Chickens." Essays were read aloud to the group, gently critiqued by the members present, and then recorded in a large bound book. Thankfully, the Society's volumes survived the war and rest in the archives of The Thomas Balch Library of Leesburg, Virginia.[12] One of the anonymous notes in the Society Essays reads, "Take life as it is, a real matter-of-fact thing, and do it justice." It's easy to imagine one of the "Fair Editresses" of The Waterford News penning that line.

Although the Literary Society provided a place for young ladies to sharpen their wits as well as their pencils, their excellent educations began at home. Several years before the war, Sarah Steer had been sent north to a Ladies Academy. In the Dutton home, Lida and Lizzie's parents, John and Emma, always encouraged their four daughters to exercise full use of their minds. In a letter written in 1864 to the youngest daughter, Anna Ellen, John wrote, "I take great pride in my childrens' writing. I want each to exert themselves in this particular branch of learning and now is the time whilst thy little fingers are limber... Make it a rule to study - to think - weigh thy thoughts well for thy self. Don't conclude things are right just because the mass of the people say so."[13] As a result of such parenting and the Quakers' insistence on female education (all this, despite 19th century 'Woman as Shelf-Ornament' thinking), Lida, Lizzie and Sarah's writings are a treasure of womanly expression:

The young ladies of Waterford, Loudon [sic] Co., Va., are hereby notified to meet the first opportunity and lend their mutual aid in filling a large mud-hole with stone, said mud-hole being located in the middle of Second Street... the men have driven around it so much that it is extending each side. Being fearful the gentlemen will get their feet muddy, the ladies will try and remedy it.[14]

With no paper and no money, getting a newspaper out of Confederate Virginia was no small task. Draft copies of The Waterford News needed to be smuggled north across the Potomac River. The Baltimore American voluntarily printed the newspapers for them. Subscriptions were handled through the Federal Post Office at Point of Rocks, Maryland (the active Confederate troops made it impossible for the girls to distribute the paper from their homes). For their efforts, the young women risked severe "discipline" by the Confederate army, as did all of Waterford for its pro-Union sentiment.

The Waterford Friends' Meeting House was used as a Confederate Headquarters at the very beginning of the conflict.

August, 1862 - A Confederate ambush of Union troops quartered at the Waterford Baptist Meeting House did severe damage to Virginia's only Union troop, The Independent Loudoun Rangers.

But Waterford's closest call occurred in1862: Confederate troops arrived to forage and announced that, when they were through, they would burn the village down. Rachel Means, wife of Samuel Means of Waterford, ran to the only person she knew who still had a horse: a farmer just outside of town. She asked him to ride to Union General Geary, stationed just a few miles away, and tell him to send Union troops to save the town. The fellow flat-out refused. She then asked him to lend her his horse so she could make the ride. Again he told her "no." To that she replied, "Then I will steal thy horse and go myself." And so she did. General Geary promptly dispatched troops to the town, and Waterford was saved.[16]

With war literally at their doorstep, Lida, Lizzie and Sarah chose to publish the newspaper, despite personal risk, and even personal tragedy.

The July 2, 1864 edition of The Waterford News told its readers to press on:

Let not kind words, loving tones, and love of good deeds cease to find a place in our hearts. Now, if ever, is the time to 'cast bread upon the waters,' when tired and weary ones are all around us, and starvation stares so many in the face; when loved ones are struggling with pain, and joy and happiness are hidden in the distance; when hope leaves us and misery looks at us with hollow eyes. Let us be up and doing - old and young - we have no time to idle; every quickly flitting moment is to be improved, every space filled up.

This editorial, which the modern reader might be tempted to dismiss as flowery patriotic sentiment, becomes poignantly descriptive when we discover it was written almost immediately after Lizzie received news that her fiancé, Lieutenant David Holmes, had been killed in the Battle of Petersburg.

In late November of 1864, General Grant authorized a raid on Loudoun County. This Union foray (a precursor to Sherman's March to the Sea) has become known in local lore as "The Burning Raid," but The Waterford News called it "The Fury Order." Grant's concept was to burn out the farms still able to provide forage to Confederate Colonel Mosby and his men. To this end, he ordered barns to be burned and livestock killed or driven off. Furthermore, men under 51 capable of bearing arms and any slaves remaining in the area were to be taken.

For the people of Loudoun who suffered from this order, political sentiment became unimportant. Mosby gathered forage from whoever had goods, thus the Union army visited whoever had goods.

So, in a sad twist of fate, pro-Union Loudouners had the unpleasant task of watching the Union army destroy in less than a week what they'd been hiding and protecting from bushwhackers and Confederates for four years. Between November 27th and December 2 of 1864, the skies over western Loudoun were dark with the smoke of hundreds upon hundreds of fires.[17]

But again Loudoun's Quaker women persevered. Major J.B. Wheeler of the 6th New York recorded that, "At Waterford, Loudoun County, Virginia, two young ladies perched on the wide gate posts in front of their home, waving American flags and said as their hay was being destroyed, 'Burn away, burn away, if it will keep Mosby from coming here.' "

Tradition holds that one of those young women was Lida Dutton.[18]

Not everyone was as stoic as Lida. When Union soldiers demanded matches from Quakeress Ruth Hannah Smith for the sole purpose of using them to burn down her barn, she quietly held the lucifers in the steam from her teakettle before handing them over. Her barn was saved.[19]

There is no doubt the soldiers were unhappy in their work. Briscoe Goodhart, who wrote an account of his years with the Independent Loudoun Rangers (the only Union troop ever formed in Virginia), mentions many successful and unsucessful adventures - but he skips the Loudoun Rangers' part in the burning raid completely.

Perhaps to assuage the soldiers' guilt, an editorial in the Jan. 28, 1865 edition of The Waterford News read:

We do not believe, if our Government had been as well acquainted with us as we are with ourselves, the order for the recent burning would be have been issued; but having suffered so much at the hands of the Rebels ever since the commencement of this cruel war, we will cheerfully submit to what we feel assured our Government thought a military necessity.

While Loudoun Quakers struggled to remain patriotic, the Burning Raid did have the intended affect on the Confederate populace: it broke the spirit of rebellion. By April the people were ready for peace.