Friends in Loudoun owned slaves in the early years and for the first quarter of a century the Fairfax minutes mention only that “Blacks in the home should be well treated,” and “African children” should be given a useful education. In 1790 a committee was appointed “to care for freed slaves.” Later there was considerable opposition against slavery in the meetings, several Friends were disowned for owning slaves. In 1836 a committee “treated” with William Stone for hiring a slave, and in 1856 Mary Jane Hough was disowned for doing the same, though her husband escaped a like fate by saying he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again. It was not until 1818 that the last ownership of slaves by Friends ceased in Virginia. The story is told that John Woolman talked long and earnestly with William Nichols that he free his slaves but when William died in 1804 there were slaves mentioned in the inventory of his estate. My grandfather, Francis Hogue Janney, was disowned for hiring a slave and marrying out of meeting. A manumission society was organized in the Oak Dale schoolhouse in 1824 for the purpose of sending slaves to Haiti and Africa, though we have no information of any being sent. It is my understanding that the small colored settlements at Rock Hill and Guinea Bridge were made on land (rocky and poor, it is true) sold cheaply to free negroes by Friends that they might build a home of their own and not be sold back into slavery. The first county map published in what was once Prince William County was that of Loudoun by the Quaker Yardley Taylor. This work of enduring value was published in 1853 and up to its time was the finest in Virginia. Yardley was a nurseryman and the beautiful spruce trees around Lincoln are his still living legacy to the beauty of Loudoun. Yardley Taylor was engaged in the underground railroad trade. He was castigated for it in at least one newspaper article in the fifties written in the peculiar vehemence of the time. Samuel M. Janney never said he helped a slave along physically but he was brought before the county court for publishing that “the owners had no right of property in their Slaves.” His Statement to the court, “That the more you keep this subject before the people the more they will be to my way of thinking,” had the desired effect and the indictment was squashed.