If pictures are worth 1,000 words, maps are worth a million - and Virginia is rich in mapping resources. From John Smith in 1607, through the Census in 2010, people have crafted maps to show the places where history happened. There are maps showing locations of Native American villages, shifting boundaries of counties, and the location of coal, gold, and other mineral resources in Virginia. Speculators planned railroad lines, soldiers documented locations of battles, and training camps in Northern Virginia for the Spanish-American war are marked on maps. Large-scale migrations of groups and an individual family’s past can be tracked through place names, and Geographic Information System (GIS) products document visions for the next 20 years of land use in Loudoun. Come discover the wide range of maps one can use and explore the stories behind those maps. Charlie Grymes taught “Geography of Virginia” at George Mason University (see www.virginiaplaces.org). He retired from the US Department of the Interior after over 30 years in a variety of jobs, including park ranger, scenic easement administrator, and information technology manager. He now serves on the boards of local non-government organizations and pesters his local officials regularly.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Join Betsy Arnett for an illustrated journey through nearly three centuries of Leesburg history. Currently a Senior Management Analyst with the Town Manager’s Office, Betsy has worked for the Town of Leesburg for more than 20 years and holds a master’s degree in Public History from the University of South Carolina.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

The Road to Here is a combination of Andrew Jampoler’s personal memories and history of the past eight decades all recounted in his usual illustrated book talk format. The point of departure is a quick scamper through German interwar history and the attack on Poland. Jampoler was born in German-occupied Eastern Poland on 15 January 1942, just five days before “the final solution” of the Jewish question was presented to Hitler. He spent the war years in Lublin, cared for by a couple who found him abandoned on the steps of a church in Warsaw where his desperate mother had left him. Improbably, Jampoler, his mother and paternal grandmother, survived the war, the only family members along with a young cousin to survive. All other family members died in the Holocaust. The three family members arrived in NYC at the end of July 1946 as quota immigrants. Since then, his biography has mirrored American history. Twenty-four years in the navy (one in Vietnam) flying. A dozen years or so in industry, and another twenty or so writing books… eight have been published. Such is the gift of citizenship that his family moved in a generation from the west side piers of NYC to the House of Representatives, where his daughter sits as a Member.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Wendi Manuel-Scott and George Oberle are George Mason University faculty and co-directors of the Center for Mason Legacies. CML is an interdisciplinary and collaborative research center established by the University Libraries and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The Center's mission is to preserve and examine the legacy of George Mason IV (1725-1792), his ancestors and heirs, and the people he enslaved.

Manuel-Scott and Oberle co-teach courses and lead collaborative research projects with undergraduate and graduate students to explore how the ongoing logics and structures of slavery continue to produce inequality in and around George Mason University. With their students, via CML, they produce original research in an Omeka S site after scouring local archival repositories and connecting with local knowledge keepers and elders. Manuel-Scott, Oberle, and their students will discuss their prior successes on digital public history projects such as the 2017 project Enslaved Children of George Mason, their 2021 project Black Lives Next Door, a co-taught course also titled Black Lives Next Door, and ongoing spatial and oral history research efforts. They will also discuss how they empower students to engage anti-racist research methodologies and complete fieldwork based on original research questions that center Black life.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Washington, DC-based photojournalist Sophie Medina is not a murderer, but someone is determined to make sure she goes down for a crime she did not commit. When billionaire philanthropist and art collector Robson Blake hires Sophie Medina to take photographs for him, she doesn't expect to show up and find her client dead. It seems he was the victim of a burglary gone wrong. But why was his state-of-the-art security system turned off and why, in a house full of priceless Old Masters, is the only thing missing a beautiful but insignificant Ukrainian religious icon? Before long, Sophie finds herself in the crosshairs of a DC homicide detective who she suspects knows more than she is saying about Blake's murder. To Sophie's mixed delight and horror, she's recently learned she has a half-brother who might also be an international art thief, with eyes on Blake's collection. As the police get closer to finding Blake's killer, Sophie is certain someone is trying to frame her for his murder. Can she find the real killer in time even if it means turning in her own brother to prove her innocence?

Ellen Crosby, the author of the Sophie Medina mysteries, will be talking about Dodge and Burn, the third book in the series. She has also written 12 books in the Virginia Wine Country mysteries and Moscow Nights, a standalone mystery. Previously Crosby was a freelance reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and an economist at the US Senate. She and her husband live in the Washington, DC suburbs of northern Virginia after living overseas for many years.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

ames Roberts, a native of Leesburg, former member of Thomas Balch Library Advisory Commission, 2008 recipient of a Loudoun History Award, and recognized in 2011 by Loudoun Laurels, will lead a walking tour of Leesburg. The tour is an insider’s commentary of local people, places, and points of interest both in and around Leesburg. Particular detail is paid to how Leesburg has grown and evolved through the years architecturally, economically, and racially. Factual, historical, and anecdotal information is intertwined and presented in storytelling fashion as only someone who lived through it and thoughtfully observed it, can do. This unique tour will leave from Thomas Balch Library parking lot at 9AM. Note: This tour requires good walking shoes.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Meet in the parking lot of Thomas Balch Library by 1:45PM. Eric S. Larson, Historic Records Manager for the Clerk of the Circuit Court, will lead a tour of the Clerk’s Office and the Historic Court Building. He will discuss the extent of Loudoun County’s records holdings, where to look for records of births, deaths, marriages, and deeds, and how to use these records in research. You will need to pass through security so the group will leave the library promptly at 1:45PM.

Reminder: Cell phones and cameras are not allowed in the Court House.

 Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Hard Aground brings together three intertwined stories documenting the US Navy’s strategic and matériel evolution from the end of the Civil War through the First World War. These incidents had lasting consequences for how the navy modernized itself throughout the twentieth century. The first story focuses on the reconstruction of the US Navy following the swift and near-total dismantling of the Union Navy after the Civil War. The second story relates the short, tragic life of the USS Tennessee (later renamed Memphis), one of the steel-hulled ships of the new Armored Cruiser Squadron, a centerpiece of the navy’s modernization effort. The USS Tennessee was ordered on two unusual missions in the early months of WWI, long before the United States formally entered the war. These little-known missions and the ship's shocking destruction in a storm surge in the Caribbean serve as the centerpiece of the story. Threaded through the narrative are biographical sketches of principal players in the drama that unfolded following the ship’s demise. Jampoler rounds out this account with the story of how the USS Tennessee’s destruction prompted fierce deliberations about the US Navy’s operations and chains of command for the remainder of WWI and the high-level political wrangling inside the Department of the Navy immediately after the war as civilian appointees and senior officers wrestled to reshape the department in their image.

Andrew Jampoler, who has been writing full time for more than twenty years, is an amazing storyteller who has given illustrated presentations on his books and magazine articles, and expeditions and adventures at sea, to audiences at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, in museums and embassies, at libraries and bookstores, aboard cruise ships around the world and virtually during COVID. He is an alumnus of Columbia College, the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and of the US State Department Foreign Service Institute’s School of Language Study. During more than twenty years on active duty with the US Navy, Jampoler, a naval aviator who flew Lockheed P-3 airplanes in search of submarines, also commanded a land-based maritime patrol aircraft squadron and an air station. Later, he was a senior sales and marketing executive in the international aerospace industry.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Wynne Saffer, author of Loudoun County, Virginia 1860 Land Tax Map, will use a case study to demonstrate how to establish chain of title using deed indexes and other types of land ownership changes such as wills, marriages, old advertisements, and chancery cases.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

This book traces the intertwined histories of the Philippines and the United States along the streets of Washington, from the end of the Spanish American War in 1898 through Philippine independence in 1946, and the many years since. West Potomac Park was inspired by Manila's Luneta, and District streets are named after pivotal Philippine battle grounds. These landmarks are often unmentioned in guidebooks. Hidden in plain sight are the stories of the fascinating figures that once inhabited these spaces. Erwin R. Tiongson is a professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. He teaches economics and writes about Philippine history. His essays have appeared in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine, New York Times, Positively Filipino, Slate, Washington Post, Washingtonian, and White House History Quarterly. He is cofounder of the Philippines on the Potomac (POPDC) Project.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Jeanette Irby, retired Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge and former Leesburg Town Attorney will discuss how to use court records and other resources for data that are frequently overlooked in genealogical and historical research. Irby will demonstrate how to mine court records for clues that can be used to collect information for genealogical research. Examples of these records include real estate records, chancery suits, estates, and indexes. Jeanette Irby has researched land records dating from the 1700s and participated in genealogical seminars sponsored by the Warrenton Court House Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution of which she is past Regent. Irby currently serves as secretary of District VI of the Virginia DAR Chapters. She holds a BS from Central Michigan University and a JD from Thomas Cooley Law School in Lansing, MI.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL will be presenting two lectures: After the Courthouse Burns: Rekindling Family History through DNA and DNA and the Golden Rule: The Law and Ethics of Genetic Genealogy.

Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist®, is a genealogist with a law degree who provides expert guidance through the murky territory where law and family history intersect. An internationally-known lecturer and award-winning writer, she holds credentials as a Certified Genealogist® and Certified Genealogical Lecturer℠ from the Board for Certification of Genealogists®. Her blog is https://www.legalgenealogist.com.

Cost per person is $30 for members; $40 for nonmembers; and, if seating is available $60 at the door.

To register, complete the attached registration form. Email it to balchlib@leesburgva.gov or mail or deliver it to: Thomas Balch Library, 208 West Market St. Leesburg, VA 20176 Legal Genealogist Registration Form

Presented by Friends of the Thomas Balch Library

Attendance is limited to 65 – advance registration is encouraged to ensure a spot. Lunch not included.

For registration information or questions contact 703-737-7195 or balchlib@leesburgva.gov

Do you know how to spot the difference between a Georgian house and a Federal house? Or why “haunted houses” are always shown as Victorian style homes? In this engaging class, Morven Park’s Director of Preservation & History, Jana Shafagoj, will teach participants how to identify the various historic architectural styles found in Leesburg and the cultural movements that lead to common architectural trends. Jana Shafagoj has over twenty-five years’ experience in researching, documenting, and restoring historic buildings in Virginia and abroad. She holds a MA in Archaeology of Historic Buildings from the University of York, UK and a BA in Historic Preservation from Mary Washington College.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder were young and unafraid, but their love was doomed. He was Black, she was white and this was Virginia in 1880. When Elvira became pregnant, the couple fled Fauquier County to live in Maryland. But her father found them and recruited neighbors to help kidnap them. Four nights later, a mob dragged Arthur from the county jail in Warrenton and lynched him. Elvira, taken to a hotel in Williamsport, Maryland, was never heard from again. Stories of lynching are all too common in the postbellum South, but this one tells a unique tale of a couple who were willing to sacrifice everything to be together—and did. Author Jim Hall tells a classic tale of forbidden love, one of hope crushed by hate. 

Jim Hall is an award-winning journalist and popular speaker on lynching in Virginia. His book The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain was published by The History Press in 2016. His newest book, Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan, was published by History Press in July 2023. He has a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Mary Washington. A native of Virginia, he is retired and lives now in Fredericksburg.

 Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Property research can be a powerful tool for exploring your family tree. Library Associate Travis Shaw will give a step-by-step introduction to a series of online tools that allow the user to access property records in the state of Maryland. Using these resources you can research deeds, plats, and other records from the 17th century to today from the comfort of the Thomas Balch Library or your own home. Shaw is a public history professional with nearly two decades of experience in historic preservation, archaeology, and museum education. He joined the staff at the Thomas Balch Library in 2015, and also serves as the Director of Education at the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area Association.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

The 28th Annual Meeting and Election of Directors will be on Sunday, January 7 at 2 PM at the Thomas Balch Library. The snow date will be Sunday, January 21. This year’s program is Oral History Series: a Conversation with Betty and Robert Lowenbach

Wynne Saffer, author of Loudoun County Virginia 1860 Land Tax Map, who has previously presented classes on deed research and Northern Neck Land Grants, will show how to convert a metes and bounds survey to a plat of the property. He will show examples of plats and how to identify their location by using roads, streams, and other landmarks and will demonstrate use of current parcel maps to locate ancient property lines.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

In Traveling through Time, author John E. Ross will discuss how we can travel back to the earliest European discovery of America and settling of Virginia through readily available historic maps. He’ll show examples from extensive portfolios of online maps dating back to Diego Riberio’s 1529 sketch of coast of the western hemisphere. We will see how colonial Virginians were certain that seas of China and the Indies lay just beyond the Blue Ridge. Ross marvels at the accuracy of Louis Michel’s 1707 map of the Shenandoah Valley and the 1751 Jefferson-Fry map of Virginia that were with achieved instruments no more sophisticated than compass and pen. “Old maps allow us to see history where it happened,” Ross says. “We are extremely fortunate to have Eugene Scheel’s maps and books to help us understand how Northern Virginia came to be the place we appreciate so much today.”

Ross is the author of the bestselling natural and cultural history from the University of Tennessee Press: Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time. He is currently at a work on a similar book: Beyond the Blue Horizon: Virginia’s Great Valley and Ridges to be published in late 2024 by the University of Virginia Press. He and his partner, Meredith Whiting, live in Middleburg, Va. and are deeply involved in a number of preservation and conservation initiatives.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Thomas Balch Library Advisory Commissioners will present the 31’st annual Loudoun History Awards on Sunday, 5 November 2023, 2 PM. This event honors individuals who have made significant contributions to preserving Loudoun’s past through collection of county documents and memorabilia, preservation of historic landmarks, visual arts, writing, and long-time commitment to local history organizations. For s brochure or information on nominating individuals, contact the Library Director at 703/737-7196.

The popular Thomas Balch Library of History & Genealogy Civil War walking tour of Leesburg offered each March with local historian Rich Gillespie will be complemented in 2023 by an American Revolution equivalent on November 4, 2023.  Leesburg, Loudoun, and the American Revolution, a leisurely two-hour history exploration of Leesburg and Loudoun’s past, will begin at the Balch at 10:00 a.m.  A long-time history teacher in the county, Gillespie is also the Historian Emeritus for the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area.

The tour leaves from Thomas Balch Library parking lot at 10AM. Note: This tour requires good walking shoes.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Have you come across accounting or financial records in your research? Are you tempted to skip them? Don’t! Alison Herring, a former Audit Senior Manager in a global accounting firm, will discuss historic financial records and how you can use them to shed light on genealogy and other research projects. These records, while often tedious, can be a marvelous source of information on the lives of the people you study, the economic conditions they lived in, and the decisions they made. Alison will demonstrate some practical ways to approach these documents and share examples of the insights you can learn. Alison is currently researching the Powell Family Papers, which are held at Swem Library at William & Mary.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Meet in the parking lot of Thomas Balch Library by 1:45PM. Eric S. Larson, Historic Records Manager for the Clerk of the Circuit Court, will lead a tour of the Clerk’s Office and the Historic Court Building. He will discuss the extent of Loudoun County’s records holdings, where to look for records of births, deaths, marriages, and deeds, and how to use these records in research. You will need to pass through security so the group will leave the library promptly at 1:45PM.

Reminder: Cell phones and cameras are not allowed in the Court House.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Public libraries play a fundamental role in communities providing free educational resources, boosting literacy and knowledge, and serving as a place of refuge. Despite this, many libraries were inaccessible during the Jim Crow era to Black residents, as they continued to resist integration even after the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education. Discover the truth about barriers imposed on the Black community and learn about citizens turned activists who used protests and lawsuits to achieve more equitable library services. Their legacy resonates today, as libraries continue to evolve and embrace more inclusive practices. Join Fairfax County librarians as they investigate the overlooked and little-known history of segregated library services in Northern Virginia and discuss their book.

Chris Barbuschak, a Fairfax County native, is an archivist/librarian at Fairfax County Public Library’s Virginia Room. A graduate in history from Loyola University Chicago, he received his MLIS from Dominican University. Suzanne S. LaPierre is a Virginiana Specialist Librarian for Fairfax County Public Library in Virginia. Her writing has been published in national and international journals. In addition to a MLIS from University of South Carolina, she holds an MA in Museum Studies from The George Washington University and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

The Burning Land! is book two in Stewart’s fictional Overstreet Saga which takes the reader back in time to tell uniquely American stories—full of adventure, excitement, heartbreak, and a tapestry of richly developed characters. This book follows the love of Henry Overstreet of the Twentieth Maine Regiment through Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the battles of 1864 and of Katie Nash of Maine whom Overstreet’s marries on the Fourth of July 1864 while on a two week leave. Their lives are upended by the tragedies of the American Civil War and then of their westward migration to Chicago, both inflict excruciating trials and loss.

After many years as a trial and appellate lawyer, David O. Stewart became a bestselling writer of history and historical fiction. His first novel, The Lincoln Deception, about the John Wilkes Booth conspiracy, was called the best historical novel of 2013 by Bloomberg View. Sequels include The Paris Deception, set at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, and The Babe Ruth Deception, which follows Babe’s first two years with the Yankees. Stewart’s histories explore the writing of the Constitution, the gifts of James Madison, the western expedition and treason trial of Aaron Burr, and the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. In February 2021, Dutton published Stewart’s George Washington: The Political Rise of America’s Founding Father.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

James Roberts, a native of Leesburg, former member of Thomas Balch Library Advisory Commission, 2008 recipient of a Loudoun History Award, and recognized in 2011 by Loudoun Laurels, will lead a walking tour of Leesburg. The tour is an insider’s commentary of local people, places, and points of interest both in and around Leesburg. Particular detail is paid to how Leesburg has grown and evolved through the years architecturally, economically, and racially. Factual, historical, and anecdotal information is intertwined and presented in storytelling fashion as only someone who lived through it and thoughtfully observed it, can do.

This unique tour will leave from Thomas Balch Library parking lot at 9AM. Note: This tour requires good walking shoes.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents (Tour limited to 30 people)

The authors, Susan and Shawn Dilles, have been Fairfax County residents and active members of the Northern Virginia Jewish Community for almost 40 years, including at Congregation Olam Tikvah, Congregation Beth Emeth, and the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. Susan supports activities of several charities in the area. Shawn is a volunteer with JewishGen and has coordinated the translation of Yizkor (Remembrance) books on the Jewish history of Zinkov, Ukraine and Hrubieszow, Poland.

Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents

Gabrielle Sanchez, Contract Archivist and former Library Reference Associate at Thomas Balch Library, will introduce participants to the basics of preservation and discuss the best ways to house and protect personal archives. Topics will include proper ways to handle letters, books, photographs, and other media; common conservation needs; threats to paper and electronic media; and the dangers of non-archival storage products.

 Pre-registration is required for this event. Please call 703-737-7195, email balchlib@leesburgva.gov or register online https://tinyurl.com/TBLEvents