Saint Louis

Historic site Viewable from the road Properties are privately owned Location Route 611, one mile north of Route 50 west of Middleburg

Former slaveholder Thomas Glascock sparked this settlement in 1881 when he subdivided land and offered one-acre lots for twenty dollars each. African Americans in the area, many of them freedmen from Glascock’s and other local estates, seized the opportunity to become property owners. Perhaps the offer attracted Charles McQuay home from St. Louis, Missouri—it is said that his return inspired the settlement’s name. Wormley Hughes, grandson of Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved gardener at Monticello, helped residents establish St. Louis New School Baptist Church. They built a school in 1887 and worshipped there until they constructed a church in 1893, and adopted the name Mount Zion Baptist Church. The congregation returned to the school when the church burned down around 1918, then rebuilt a church in 1929 that is still in use today. Around 1900, Charles McQuay and Shirley Smith organized the St. Louis Horse Show and established the village’s reputation as a horse center.  Many men in the community worked in the horse industry and some traveled on the national flat-racing and steeplechase circuits. Another fixture in St. Louis was Phil McQuay’s store, which he operated for almost a half-century beginning around 1916. The Middleburg Training track gave the community a boost in the 1920s, as did the consolidated school for children of color, Banneker Elementary School, built in 1948. The old and new school both still stand, an enlarged training track is still in use. It is the largest African American village in Loudoun County; signs relating its history and significance welcome visitors at each end.

Resources

• Deborah A. Lee, Loudoun County’s African American Communities: A Tour Map & Guide. Leesburg, Va.: Black History Committee, Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2004
• Windows on the Past of 'Black Middleburg', Loudoun Village Was Founded on Freedom and Horses, The Washington Post, March 8, 2008