Goose Creek Rural Historic District - African American Presence

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Mount Olive Baptist Church. Grace Methodist Church and the shared cemetery appear above the sign. Two miles south of Purcellville on Route 722 (Maple Avenue becomes Lincoln Road)

Quakers from Pennsylvania and nearby Waterford, Virginia, settled here beginning in 1745 and formed a community that was hospitable to free African Americans. Quakers hired men for farm labor and women for domestic work. A few black students attended the Oakdale School, established in 1815. In 1824, antislavery Quakers met in the building and founded the Loudoun Manumission and Emigration Society. In 1827 they hosted the First Virginia Convention for the Abolition of Slavery. In the antebellum period, Goose Creek was a center of Underground Railroad activity. During the Civil War, most residents of the area remained loyal to the Union. During Reconstruction, with the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau, they built a stone school for black children. African Americans established two religious congregations in the village of Lincoln; Methodists in 1872 and Baptists in 1879. Using local fieldstone, they constructed Grace Methodist Church in 1884/85 and Mount Olive Baptist in 1884. Their cemeteries adjoin between them. Mount Olive still has an active congregation, but Grace’s moved to Purcellville—Grace Annex—in 1951, since most of their members lived there.

People in the Places

James R. Hicks (1845-1933)  

The home of James R. Hicks in nearby North Fork. (Virginia Department of Historic Resources)

James Hicks fashioned his world with care, as he did the shoes he crafted to compensate for his shorter leg. Born to Letitia Hicks in Philomont, Va., enslaved until 1865 in the household of a Methodist minister, James managed six years of formal schooling besides learning the shoemaking trade. In 1878 he married Laurinda Murray. They never had children, but they showed special affection for nephew J. Walter Brown, who became a teacher in Hamilton. James Hicks tended his community as well; in 1883 he represented it in a “Colored Mass Meeting” held at the courthouse in Leesburg. Delegates petitioned for rights regularly denied, such as serving as jurors and election officials, though they didn’t accomplish their goal. In 1890 Hicks led in founding the Loudoun County Emancipation Association, established to commemorate Emancipation Day and work for racial uplift. In addition to civic leader, Hicks was an astute farmer, tradesman, and businessman. By 1900 he had clear title to a house and farm on Lincoln Road and a cobbler’s shop and orchard in nearby North Fork. In 1911 he also owned a house in Lincoln. Beginning in 1905 Hicks combined his civic and business interests as he shepherded the Emancipation Association into becoming a shareholding corporation and purchasing land in Purcellville. In 1925 he lobbied for the organization to offer the site to the Loudoun County School Board for a high school. The board did not approve, but his efforts demonstrate his vision and commitment to education and equality.

Resources

• Elaine E. Thompson. “James Hicks.” In The Essence of a People II: African Americans Who Made Their World Anew in Loudoun County, Virginia, and Beyond. Edited by Kendra Y. Hamilton. Leesburg, Va.: Black History Committee of the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2002