Morgan Breeden is a fourth-generation Brentsville resident. When the 63-year-old married his wife, a fifth-generation resident, in 1963, about 80 percent of Brentsville’s population attended the wedding, he said.
Breeden’s mother and father attended school at the courthouse, and his aunts and uncles are graduates of the one-room schoolhouse. Breeden went to dances at the courthouse and services at the Union Church. When the jail was converted into a house, Breeden’s family lived there for a year.
“The community hasn’t changed a whole lot in the past 100 years. New people came and old people died off, but the houses are still here,” said Breeden from his old room at the jail, with the original bars on the window and 8-inch oak timbers lining the walls for security. “It still has that very small-town community mentality.”
As workers were restoring the Union Church, they would walk across Bristow Road and knock on a neighboring front door and say, “‘Now Gladys, what are we doing again?’” said Wilkie Leith, a “newbie” who moved to the area in 1952. The woman inside, the “unofficial mayor of Brentsville,” was a longtime resident who had been married in the church and happened to have a picture-perfect memory, Leith said.
The partnership between the county and community makes the Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre much stronger, Leith said.
“Here you have a cluster of buildings that people have connections to that are still residents of Brentsville. That is special. I don’t think there is another historic group of buildings in Prince William County that has that connection to people today,” said Brentsville Supervisor Wally Covington.
cgoodman@dcexaminer.com
