1730 and 1735,[20] about the
time of the Cavalier settlements.

These German settlers were a patient, God-fearing people, naturally
rugged, and very tenacious in the preservation of their language,
religion, customs and habits. Every stage in their development has
been marked by a peaceable and orderly deportment--a perfect
submission to the restraints of civil authority.

[Footnote 19: The first sheep were brought to the County by these
settlers.--_History of the Loudoun Rangers._]

[Footnote 20: 1732 was most likely the year in which the earliest of
these German settlers arrived in Loudoun.]

The earliest of these German arrivals, with native foresight and a
proper appreciation of the dangers incident to border settlement in
that day of bloody Indian atrocities, came to Loudoun in an organized
body, embracing sixty or more families.

Many of the males were artisans of no mean ability, and plied
their respective trades as conscientiously and assiduously as
others, in the rude manner of the times, tilled their newly-acquired
acres.

In this way, a congenial, stable, and self-sustaining colony, founded
on considerations of common safety and economic expediency, was
established amongst these storied hills of frontier Virginia.

Almost simultaneously with these settlements came other emigrants from
Pennsylvania and the then neighboring colonies, among them many
members of the Society of Friends or Quakers.[21] Not a few of this
faith came direct from England and Ireland, attracted by the genial
climate, fertile soils and bountiful harvests, accounts of which had
early gained wide-spread circulation. They chose homes in the central
portion of the County, southwest of Waterford and west of Lessburg,
that section being generally known as the "Quaker Settlement."

Each summer brought them new accessions of prosperity and devout
brethren to swell their numbers; and soon they had caused the
wilderness to blossom as the rose. Here they found freedom of
religious and moral thought, a temperate climate, and the wholesome
society of earnest compatriots.

Then, as now, a plain, serious people, they have left the
impress of their character--thrifty, industrious, and conspicuously
honest--upon the whole of the surrounding district.

[Footnote 21: The term Quaker, originally given in reproach, has been
so often used, by friend as well as foe, that it is no longer a term
of derision, but is the generally accepted designation