The Leesburg Town Council held a work session on the evening of July 13, 2026, beginning at 7:00 p.m. The agenda included updates on the St. James Historic Cemetery Project, discussion of the 16 Wirt Street property, bicycle infrastructure planning, and the first of several in-depth reviews of the zoning ordinance rewrite. Council also approved three proclamations and agreed to add a Clubhouse Drive improvement discussion to a future meeting.
Miss Nasi, you just made it. Yay. I would like to call tonight's town council work session, July 13th, 2026, to order. Our first item for discussion tonight is the St. James Historic Cemetery Project. Kathleen Hughes, you're going to present. Okay. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Mayor Burke and Town Council members. We of the St. James Historic Cemetery Committee are very proud to stand before you today and tell you what we've done with your very generous grant that we received from you last summer. I'm joined by uh the Reverends Chad Martin and Mary Beth Saunders William and Mills Wilson and Bulch Black History Committee member Jim Roberts, and all the rest of the people here are on our committee, including Judge Horn. And we and a few friends. So we have come to tell that you um to begin. Um excuse me. Not just for our group, it's for everyone in Leesburg. Thanks to you, um, the historic St. James Cemetery now has a complete ground penetrating radar study that was very new and high-tech. We have a detailed cemetery conservation plan that covered all hundred and ninety-one standing monuments. We have a landscaping concept, which we will turn it into a beautiful place of where people can come sit and contemplate the past and and the future with benches and flowering trees and a unique flowering garden. And we have, we believe, put this all together to make a very significant historic site for Leesburg. The ground penetrating radar shows what we know to be true by sight alone. What we suspected is that the whole area at the back of the cemetery was filled with unmarked burials. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. The orange areas with you look at the map there. The orange areas represent unmarked burials. The dotted line areas represent probable graveshafts as well as probable grave cuts. So let that sink in. So we have our work cut out for us. He also recommended safe treatments and cost estimates. So we now know that we have a big burden, maybe 87,000 dollars to finish to fix all those monuments, but we have four that are being repaired now. Not only was our attempt to preserve the space and eyesore to us and to the town, it was potentially unsafe for anyone exploring our cemetery. It has now been repaired. That one's been completed, and we have three more tombstones that have been contracted for repairs to be completed by the end of October of 2026. Through exhaustive research, we have found that our cemetery holds war veterans from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican American War, not including those in the Columbarium. There are also many tradespeople, slaves, free blacks, a mailman, a gardener, and many town leaders creating a markercosm of 18th and 19th century Leesburg and Loudoun County. This is truly an historic site of significance. With the involvement of the Sons of American Revolution, we hope to have markers for many of the war veterans soon. And have we got stories to tell? We brought a whole bunch of them. We had over 40 that are now documented on these signs we put out for the flower and garden show and for visitors to walk around and see who was there. So some people only have this sign, and others do have a marker. But that's what we're working towards the memorial monument in the works, and our Lakesley was the designer. It's waiting now for a brass plaque with just the right words on it to honor every single person in there without but not by name but by recognition. That's our next project. We also are continuing our research into historic sources and reaching out to community groups and historians and descendants who might have more stories to tell. And one of the nicest things we got out of this, it didn't cost us anything because it was done by our landscape designer who's on our committee, Sandy Wilson, is this lovely concept for what the seminary could turn out to be for the town of Leesburg and Loudoun County. You can see around the columbarium this over where the original church was built in 1812, that we have flowering trees there and benches, and then this cross shape was her solution, which I think is brilliant to put over the area where there's so many unmarked graves. It will be a cross memorial garden of low low growing bulbs that will arise in the spring and honor all those who are buried underneath them.