Town Council Work Session - Jul 13, 2026

meeting

Leesburg Town Council 1h 46m 3 speakers 5 agenda items transcribed 2 months ago official recording ↗

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Kelly Burk 1:53

Ms. Nacy, 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.

Kathleen Hughes 2:13

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 the Reverends Chad Martin and Mary Beth Saunders-William and Mills Wilson and Balch Black History Committee member Jim Roberts. And all the rest of the people here are on our committee, including Judge Horne. and a few friends. We have come to tell, let you, to begin, excuse me, we want to tell you thank you for your generous gift, which has launched us in our vision to make our historic cemetery into a place for everyone, for remembrance, recognition, reflection, and healing, not just for our group, it's for everyone in Leesburg.

Kathleen Hughes 3:19

Thanks to you, 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 191 standing monuments. We have a standing memorial monument almost finished, which will honor everyone in the cemetery of all colors and races and ages and places in society. We have one major monument repaired that was one badly damaged and dangerous. We have a landscaping concept which will turn it into a beautiful place of where people can come sit and contemplate the past 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.

Unknown 4:23

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. Just walking back there told us that the ground had been disturbed. Our question was, were people buried here that we didn't know about? Typically, during the early to mid-1800s, Blacks, whether they were free or enslaved, would only be buried at the back of the cemetery and seldom had markers. Then we received the results of the full geophysical survey. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. The orange areas, if you look at the map there, the orange areas represent unmarked burials. The dotted line areas represent probable grave shafts as well as probable grave cuts.

Unknown 5:19

So let that sink in. The number of unmarked graves is astounding and exists throughout the cemetery but most pronounced in the back. There are 191 graves marked and at least 200 or more unmarked. We have our work cut out for us.

Kathleen Hughes 5:40

We also received a detailed cemetery conservation report from very respected Howard Wellman, who took each of the 191 standing monuments, footstones, corner markers, and gave us a report on its condition. and ranked these monuments by the most in need of repair down to ones we might even be able to do ourselves. He also recommended safe treatments and cost estimates. So we now know that we have a big burden, maybe $87,000 to fix all those monuments, but we have four that are being repaired now.

Unknown 6:23

The first tomb repair was for Emily Mason McCarty. Not only was our attempt to preserve the space an 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 microcosm of 18th and 19th century Leesburg and Loudoun County.