Virginia’s Loudoun County has long been at the crossroads of American history.
Known recently for giving birth to the parents movement and fight against liberal efforts to keep mothers and fathers out of classrooms, many date its early days back to the Civil War and troops passing through to the battles at Antietam and Gettysburg and the hijinks of Mosby’s Raiders on Union forces.
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But thanks to the research of the Sons of the American Revolution and similar historical groups, Loudoun, like hundreds of other counties as the nation readies for its 250th birthday, is seeing its part in the creation of America better recognized.
One grave at a time, original American patriots are being discovered and memorialized.
Just last month, the latest ceremony took place in Hillsboro, Virginia, 50 miles from the White House. The newly discovered graves of two patriots, Continental Army Capt. James McIlhaney of Loudoun County and Virginia Navy Capt. William Harwar Parker of Westmoreland County, Virginia, were dedicated with bronze SAR markers, a 10-musket salute, and a bagpipe retreat march.
Hillsboro Mayor Roger Vance, attending the rededication of the McIlhaney family plot with about 90 others, said, “Living in Loudoun County, so many people who come here have zero knowledge of even the recent past of what the county was like, its whole history. So, it’s really important that preservation of the land includes these, and these are treasures.”
The mayor added, “It makes that history more real when you know that you can recognize the people here and when you can really reflect on what it took to do what they did. They didn’t know what was to come. Those in there, they joined up and laid it all on the line.”
The discovery of the graves followed a path well-worn by SAR members throughout the nation.
It started in Williamsburg, Virginia, when avid military historian John Lynch, vice president of the Williamsburg SAR chapter, discovered that Parker was likely buried in Loudoun. He tapped Loudoun’s Sergeant Major John Champe Chapter for help.
Chapter Vice President Barry Schwoerer found the grave location with the help of the Loudoun County Library and a well-used genealogical guide. “My wife and I drove out there one day,” he told Secrets. Initially, he couldn’t find it, but a neighbor pointed it out for them.
Inside the stone-walled cemetery were several grave markers, many damaged by fallen trees. One was Parker’s stone, another McIlhaney’s. “It is exciting to find these guys. So many times, you go out to the cemeteries and the stones are missing. They may have only put a wood headstone in, and, of course, that’s long gone. Or it’s fallen over, and it’s buried underneath the dirt,” he said.
Schwoerer, who dressed in colonial attire for the ceremony, added, “One of our major tasks as an organization is to identify and mark patriots that have not otherwise been marked. And it’s always, always exciting to do that.”
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And it’s just as exciting for landowners to discover that history.
Washington communications executive Ron Bonjean and his wife Sara knew that there was an unkempt cemetery on the land when they bought it but had no idea it was the final resting place of two American heroes.
“We always thought there was a special sense of history here, but we really had no idea that there were heroes who fought for the founding of our country buried right here,” said Bonjean, co-founder of ROKK Solutions.
