A Virginia Farm’s Lesson for America at 250
The family’s roots in the region trace to the 1730s, when Richard Brown from Pennsylvania moved to a Quaker settlement in Loudoun County. Ms. Brown keeps yellowed documents from the farm’s early days, including the 1741 deed to the property from Lord Thomas Fairfax, who owned millions of acres in Virginia.
During the Revolutionary War, Loudoun County supplied the Continental Army with grain and livestock. “Loudoun was called the breadbasket of the Revolution,” said Denise Mo, executive director of the Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum.
During the Civil War, Oakland Green was wedged between opposing armies. To prevent Confederate cavalry commander Col. John Mosby and his rangers from using the county’s farms for food and shelter, the Union Army burned more than 200 barns in the winter of 1864. The Browns’ barn was spared.
The post-Civil War expansion of railroads opened new markets, enabling Virginia farms to ship perishable milk to the District of Columbia. By the 1890s, lines such as the Washington & Old Dominion Railroad carried fresh milk to the district daily. Oakland Green adapted, operating a dairy in the late 1800s.
