Place Information
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Loudoun County (pronounced "LOUD-un"; IPA: ) is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state of the United States, and is part of the Washington Metropolitan Area. As of July 2005, the county is estimated to be home to 255,518 people, a 50 percent increase over the 2000 figure of 169,599. That increase makes the county the fastest growing in the United States during that period. Its county seat is Leesburg6. In 2005, Loudoun County emerged as the wealthiest jurisdiction in the nation, with its households having a median income of more than $98,000. [1]
History
Loudoun County was established in 1757 from Fairfax County. The county is named for John Campbell, Fourth Earl of Loudoun and Governor of Virginia 1756-59. Western settlement began in the 1720s and 1730s with Quakers, Scots-Irish, Germans and others moving south from Pennsylvania and Maryland and by English and African slaves moving upriver from Tidewater. By the time of the American Revolution it was the most populous county in Virginia. During the War of 1812 important federal documents and government archives were evacuated from Washington and stored at Leesburg for safe keeping. Local tradition holds that these documents were stored at Rokeby House and thus that Leesburg was briefly the capitol of the United States. Early in the American Civil War, the Battle of Balls Bluff took place in the county October 21, 1861. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was critically wounded in that battle along the Potomac River. During the Gettysburg Campaign of 1863, Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart and Union cavalry clashed in the Battles of Aldie, Middleburg, and Upperville. Confederate partisan John S. Mosby based his operations in Loudoun and adjoining Fauquier County (for a for a more in-depth account of the history of Loudoun during the Civil War see Loudoun County in the American Civil War). James Monroe constructed and resided at Oak Hill near Aldie after his presidency. George C. Marshall resided at Dodona Manor in Leesburg. Entertainer Arthur Godfrey lived near historic Waterford, Virginia. Loudoun County is also notable for being the birthplace of Julia Neale Jackson, mother of Stonewall Jackson, and Susan Catherine Koerner, mother of the Wright Brothers. Timeline
Population History
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