By the Act of Congress of the 26th January, 1870, the civil disabilities of the former Confederates were removed, Virginia was enabled to take her rightful place again as a sovereign State in the Union and a cleaning up of the carpetbaggers and scalawags was begun; but it is said to have taken nearly another ten years to rid the people of the last of them in those counties with the greater negro population.[185] [185] R. L. Morton's _The Negro in Virginia Politics_ and H. J. Eckenrode's _Political Reconstruction in Virginia_. [Illustration: THE OLD JOHN JANNEY HOUSE, East Cornwall Street, Leesburg.] In this period of confusion there came to Shelburne parish in 1869, as its Rector, the Rev. Richard Terrell Davis of Albemarle who had served as a Chaplain in the Confederate Army and whose sympathetic ministrations to his new neighbours were of county-wide solace. About that time the late Charles Paxton of Pennsylvania came to Loudoun, purchased that part of Exeter which lies near the northerly boundary of Leesburg and began the building of the great house which he named Carlheim and which many years later was to become the Paxton Memorial Home for ailing children, established and endowed by his widow in her will in memory of their daughter. Dr. Davis and Mr. Paxton became firm friends and through that friendship and Dr. Davis' knowledge of those most needing help, many a poor man in Loudoun was able to earn a sadly needed living wage during the long construction of Carlheim. It is remembered that on Dr. Davis' greatly lamented death in 1892, so deeply had he engaged the affections of his adopted county, the negroes, upon learning of a project of his white friends to erect in his memory a suitable tombstone, begged that they too might contribute to its cost. It was during the rectorship of Dr. Davis, and largely through his influence, that the building of the present large gray stone church edifice of Saint James in Leesburg was undertaken.