This volume is available on Amazon.com, or for sale at Photoworks in Leesburg. It can also be found at the Balch Library in Leesburg. A free on-line version is available at this link.

Articles in the 2024/2025 Edition

The Upward Struggle Statue: Erected 10 May 2024 in front of the former Douglass High School in Leesburg is an iconic statue of two African-American youths, a young man and woman, climbing up a steep hill.  What is the monument’s purpose and what is its history?  

Fighting Segregation at the Purcellville Library. The Purcellville Library was the first free public library in Loudoun County when dedicated in 1938 and was also the only one for the next thirty-five years.  How did it become desegregated?

Tracing an Enslaved Community Trafficked from Virginia to Louisiana. This research is a continuation and expansion of an ongoing effort to document the experiences of people enslaved by President James Monroe. Prior research by Lori Kimball and Wynne Saffer resulted in detailed documentation of the individuals enslaved at Monroe’s Loudoun County property, Oak Hill. Miranda Burnett and Martin Violette’s research has focused on people from Monroe’s Albemarle County plantation, Highland, and their experiences as they were trafficked to Monticello County, Florida, in 1828. This article focuses on the enslaved people who were at Oak Hill at the time of James Monroe’s death and in the subsequent years. Previously, little was known, but newly located documents have proven that Samuel Gouverneur, Monroe’s son-in-law, inherited the Oak Hill plantation and sold the enslaved community to a Louisiana plantation owner named Christopher Adams Jr. The goal of this research is to assist living descendants tracing their family history, and foster connection between the descendant community in Albemarle County Virginia, with those in Florida, and those who were sold from Oak Hill in 1838.y vol. 98 no. 2 (Fall 2019), pp. 79-104.

Exploring the Old Shop at Douglass. Next to the former Douglass High School building in Leesburg is the Daniel, Hankerson, Knox building (aka the workshop), which is frequently used for meetings and small conferences today.  In the past, it was used to teach carpentry, masonry and music.  In the forthcoming edition of the Bulletin, to be published in the fall of 2025, we plan to publish a story exploring the history of the space, its instructors, and the man who built it, with the help of students.  The builder was Moses Knox.  Readers of this edition are invited to offer thoughts, because there are people in Loudoun County today who knew the Knox family, as well as other instructors who worked in the building.  We also want to explore all the courses taught in the building and are looking for photographs.