What: Lovettsville Historical Society Spring 2023 Mini-Course—Where We Live: The German Settlement
When: Monday nights May 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th (Memorial Day) from 6:30-9:30 p.m..
Where: Meeting at the Lovettsville Museum, 4 E. Pennsylvania Avenue, Lovettsville VA 20180
For further information, contact:
Richard Gillespie at (540) 822-4351
After our trial run in this past October, the Lovettsville Historical Society and Museum will once again be offering a fall mini-course in the field this spring, offered on Monday nights May 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th (Memorial Day). Entitled Where We Live: The German Settlement¸ the four-session field trip-based course will use the Lovettsville Museum, the Town of Lovettsville, and the surrounding German Settlement of Northern Loudoun to better familiarize local residents with the history, artifacts, stories, and key historic sites of their neighborhood.
Conceived and co-taught by Lovettsville Historical Society Board Members Rich Gillespie and Mike Zapf, sessions of the class will be partly in Lovettsville proper and partly on the road exploring the greater Lovettsville area. “Our community has many long-time families, some dating back to the mid-18th century,” says Rich Gillespie. “Among long-time residents, there is a fundamental understanding of place, of landmarks, of the basic arc of our local history, of its stories. Remember the airline crash outside Lovettsville? Those Union Civil War encampments around town? The Revolutionary War veterans from the German settlement? That Confederate guerilla Mobberly who pistol-whipped the Virts girl? That whiskey distillery over near Taylorstown by the bend in the creek where Mosby and the Loudoun Rangers went at it? Over the years, when they come into the museum on Saturday afternoons, those stories are known and when they see them on display, they have a basic familiarity. But Loudoun has long been growing and changing, Lovettsville and the German Settlement with it. Our population today are mostly “new people”—people who’ve chosen to move here and help our community be vibrant with new ideas and new enthusiasm, but who haven’t been given the opportunity to know that history. We want to widen the group who ‘gets’ the German Settlement’s heritage and appreciates the insider stories, places, and history that’s here. Adding to our monthly lecture series on topics of local historical interest, we thought a course in the field might be an exciting and fun way to go to reach folks.”
The four sessions are not sold individually, but rather as a package, because the sessions build on each other.
“We hope people who sign up for the class can come to the majority of sessions, though we understand that some may miss a class or two,” said Gillespie. “We’d like to build a community of fellow learners who think a spring night would be a great time to go exploring and learning.” The class will use the Lovettsville Museum at 4 East Pennsylvania Avenue in Lovettsville as our base of operations, then use local cemeteries, in-town structures and landmarks, and key nearby places such as Taylorstown, George’s Mill, Morrisonville, and Brunswick to make sense of our local area and its arc of history. Each session will be a mix of teaching and exploring filled with a sense of place and great stories to pass on.
To sign up for the class, go online to www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org where you can sign up and even pay for the class online in the Museum Store. The cost of the class is $50.00 and will be used to help with the Lovettsville Museum’s upcoming expansion. To keep the class intimate and allow for sensible caravanning, the class will be limited to 25 people. Please consider joining us and making some new friends!