12 Comments
May 12, 2021Liked by Addison Del Mastro

Great article, Addison. Waterford is an exquisitely lovely little town "off the beaten path" of the burgeoning exurban DC sprawl. The preservation of beauty is a worthwhile trade-off for McMansion developments and a broader tax base (as seen in the highest-income strata VA town of Upperville). Waterford also has the advantage of not being a through-village like nearby Hillsboro, also a lovely little place.

One example of a small town caught between a historical central main street and upper-income strata growth in the outlying environs is Libertytown, Maryland, which might be worth a trip for you to drive out there and examine. The old village has a busy artery (MD RT 26) that connects Frederick to Baltimore running through the main street. https://www.fredericknewspost.com/news/community_page_news/bulletin/libertytown-at-a-crossroads/article_2a4b81fd-c1a9-53cf-b6ca-7e947d43a03b.html

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May 12, 2021Liked by Addison Del Mastro

Thank you for such a thoughtful piece on my hometown. I have never met anyone from anywhere else with such deep connections as those of us who grew up in Waterford have; possibly because it was so small, and we all knew each other and could not really choose friends because there were not that many of us! And in a society where people report fewer connections to others, people who have lived in Waterford remain connected, through having lived in this tiny village, for a long time. I’m sure neighbors are as welcoming now as they were to my parents in 1969 when we moved there, too. It’s such an active and vital community, and a wonderful place to have kids or to be a kid.

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Great piece...many thanks..

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Dude..what does "middle age" have to do with anything? Heh.

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Nice article. One correction.... Waterford has more than one church.

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Enjoyed the article; appreciate the observation that perhaps it's okay if some places stay unchanged.

Suggestion for a place: Sandy Spring, in Montgomery County, about 25 min. north of the Beltway. Also a Quaker town, settled 1715. It's a striking contrast with Waterford, because it retains only a handful of publicly-visible historic structures, perhaps because of dispersed settlement patterns, but its traditional institutions remain strong. There's a newly expanded museum, which I'd estimate at 30–40,000 square feet (!), a Quaker meeting in an 1817 meetinghouse, a Friends school, nursing home, independent bank, and several Black churches.

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Thank you for the beautiful images. I am no historian, but an avid cyclist. Waterford is a nice cycling destination from the W&OD. Speaking of which, I recall one day years ago and please indulge me here, I'm just sharing what I heard from a resident. The reason Waterford is so out of the way is because when the RR was being planned the citizens were pacifists and did not support the growing Virginia militia. Therefore the RR took a different route to keep the town from prospering from the trade the RR would eventually bring.

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