About Us

A Piece of Loudoun History

The house on Seven Elms farm was built only 5 years after our country had been ravished by Civil War.  Absalom Bean built the house mid 1800s and sold it to the Hatcher family in 1872.  As a wedding gift Elizabeth (Lizzie) Hatcher got a piece of land and the house from her parents when she married Joseph Osburn.  Lizzie and Joseph lived, farmed and raised their two daughters Clara and Jessie until they passed.  Later in 1914 Clara and Jessie sold the property where it became a diary farm and in 1930 the beautiful stone barn with silo, milk house among other structures were added to support the diary operation. In 1980 the property was sold once again. This time it became a peach orchard  with 2.700 peach trees and 3 acres of Raspberries and was known as "Sunshine Farm". This huge farm has been subdivided few times and sold few times since its beginning. Even the land where St Francis Church stands today once was part of this farm. This property is a good example of a domestic and subsistence/agriculture property type during the Reconstruction and Growth Period (1865-1917) and the World War I to World War II period (1917-1945).  The house was  built by hands, the bare timbers under the house show the product of their labor. Tool marks pockmark each unique piece of lumber, imbuing the house with a natural character missing from today's pre-fabricated houses.  Loudoun County grew up around our little farm, the front of the house faced Route 7 and one can imagine what it must have been like to sit on the front porch and gaze at the passersby as they traveled between Leesburg and Winchester.  As time went on, progress dictated that the front of the house now become the back and mother nature hid our little farm from the speedy travelers on Route 7.  Old Loudouners remember our barn as a prominent landmark.