Lincoln

Picture-postcard Lincoln on Route 722 south of Purcellville may be tiny, but it loomed large in the struggle for emancipation. Settled in the 1740s by Waterford and Pennsylvania Quakers and initially named Goose Creek, the town led a “spiritual crusade” against slavery from the late 1700s, hosting anti-slavery discussions in the 1765-built stone Meeting House at the south side of the village which still stands today. In the 1820’s black children living on Quaker farms attended school with whites at the Goose Creek Friends Schoolhouse – the first instance of school desegregation in Loudoun. In 1824 Goose Creek Quakers organized the Loudoun Manumission and Emigration Society, offshoot of the American Colonization Society that sought to repatriate freed slaves to Africa. In 1827, the town hosted the first statewide convention for the abolition of slavery. After the Civil War Goose Creek was renamed for President Lincoln and the first public elementary school for African Americans – Janney's School – was built. In 1879, with help from the Freedmen’s Bureau, Mount Olive Baptist Church was established. It still has an active congregation today. Many of the Quaker buildings and schools still stand, and the wider Goose Creek Historic District is listed on the National Register Historic Places.