Landmark Not Showing Its Age

1797's Rock Hill Farm Noted on Virginia Register

As an architectural historian working for the state, David Edwards surveyed about 500 historic properties in 1980. Of the dozens of houses, barns, schools and churches he evaluated, Rock Hill Farm in Loudoun County stood out.

"It struck me at that time as an unusually preserved site," Edwards said.

He remembered Rock Hill last year when he noticed it had been nominated for the Virginia Landmarks Register.

The 68-acre farm, five miles south of Round Hill, was one of 28 historic sites added to the register this month. Most of the farm's buildings were constructed in 1797, and they include a Quaker-style house, a two-level barn, a tenant house and a smokehouse.

The farmhouse still has its stucco exterior, metal roof and original woodwork. Other structures, including the smokehouse, are also intact.

Although the house was built using a Quaker floor plan, its original owner, Abner Humphrey, was a slaveholder who was not a Quaker. Humphrey's taste "shows the Quaker cultural influence on the non-Quakers who also settled in Loudoun," Edwards said.

Quaker houses were built with a large room and two smaller rooms on the first floor. The hall usually had a fireplace and a wood staircase that led to the second floor, which had two additional smaller rooms.

Historians attribute the farm's preservation to the fact that it stayed in Humphrey's family for 150 years. The family made additions to the farm, such as a corn crib, a dairy and an expanded kitchen in 1873.

"Rather than modernizing the house, they just kept building on these different wings," said Jane Covington, an architectural conservator who worked on the farm's nomination. "Nothing was torn down."

Rock Hill had a brief role in the Civil War. It is believed to be the site where Mosby's Rangers, a guerrilla-style band of Confederate soldiers, divided up money from the Green Back Raid. The raid occurred in October 1864, when Confederate Col. John Singleton Mosby and 80 of his men derailed a train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad near Duffields station in West Virginia. The men stole $173,000 that was headed south to pay Union Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan's troops.

In 1951, Rock Hill was conveyed to sisters Mary K. Willis and Ann A. Titus, who raised thoroughbred horses there for many years. Willis donated the farm upon her death in 2007 to the Nature Conservancy, which placed the property under a conservation easement.

In 2008, Linda Devan and her husband, Vas, purchased Rock Hill, attracted to its open space and historical significance.