Remembering the Village of Nokes

Commenting on the names of the roads in the area around Claude Moore Park in Sterling, Assistant Park Manager Meri Breed was pleased to note that Nokes Boulevard–a major thoroughfare that connects Cascades Boulevard with Sully Road–honors the long-gone Loudoun County village of Nokes. “It’s a good that some of our early African-American villages have been remembered,” said Breed.

Nokes, in turn, was named for George Washington Nokes, the first African-American to own property in the area near the park, approximately where Dulles Town Center is located.

Born in slavery, G. W. Nokes farmed on rented property for several years before buying five acres from Martha S. Blincoe in 1901. But the story of his land starts long before then.

The Blincoe family had owned land in eastern Loudoun County for many years, including a 215-acre parcel known as “Stony Hill.” The property was marked by a 440-foot prominence, the highest elevation in the area. Along the old Vestals Gap Road below the hill was the village of Lanesville.

The Blincoe property was bought by the Bridges family in 1829, and through most of the 19th century, high ground was called Bridges’ Hill.

View from "Nokes Mountain" toward Sugarloaf.

During the Civil War, the U.S. Army Signal Corps established the Guilford Station near the summit of Bridges Hill, part of a network of signal stations linking Maryland Heights, Sugarloaf Mountain, Guilford (Sterling) and Thoroughfare Gap. A telegraph line ran from Guilford Station to Gen. Joseph Hooker’s headquarters in Fairfax.

The site of the old signal station is now part of the park, and a central feature of the Lanesville Historic District. 

Changes Come After the War

After the war, former slaves involved in subsistence farming began moving into the area, including the family of G. W. Nokes.

“On their few acres they planted a large garden and a corn patch, they kept a few hogs, a milk cow, and perhaps a heifer and steer. They lived in small cabins and weatherboard homes, unpainted for the most part,” wrote historian Eugene M. Scheel in “Eastern Loudoun: Goin’ Down the Country,” published by the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library in 2002. “When these men were not working their own spreads, they worked for the white farmers in the neighborhood, and they also cut wood and fashioned it into barrel staves, railroad ties implement handles and other tools.”

Eventually, Bridges’ Hill became known as Nokes Mountain, and the settlement around it, the village of Nokes. Family names connected with Nokes included Edds, Fitts, Ewing and Robinson.

Clarence Nokes, about 1913

The village got its first school–housed in a shanty–in 1917. “The new school also served as a community center,” according to “Loudoun County’s African-American Communities,” also published by the Friends of the Thomas Balch Library. “The children walked together to school, the group growing larger with each house they passed. During winter storms, one former student remembers her father wrapping her legs in burlap bags and tying them above the knees, and bigger boys lifting the smaller children over the schoolyard fence.”

After the school burned in 1922, members of the above-mentioned families raised money to buy the land and build a new school–which opened in 1924 and operated until 1929, when it was “closed for lack of children,” according Scheel. It was reopened in 1942 at the request of Dr. Claude Moore, to be used to educate the children of his farm workers. It was closed for the final time in 1957, and burned in 1965.

First Baptist Church

The community did not have its own church until early 1962, when the First Baptist Church was organized by Rev. John Thornton and his wife Edna, who operated the general store at Nokes. For two years, the church membership–about 40 congregants–met in Rev. Thornton’s home as they prepared to build a church, known as the First Baptist Church of Sterling.

Located on the north side Nokes Mountain not far from the signal station site–with a commanding view across Route 7 toward Sugarloaf–the original church building served for nearly four decades.

Rev. Thornton died in 1978, and was succeeded by Rev. James E. Jeffries, who served from 1979-1995, and Rev. Leslie Patterson, the present pastor.

“In April 2001, First Baptist broke ground for a new church edifice (at the site of the original church.) In July 2002, Pastor Leslie Patterson was appointed to the office of Bishop, thereby, expanding First Baptist to a worldwide ministry,” according to the church Web site. “In October 2003, the new church edifice was completed and the start of ‘New Beginnings’ commenced.”

Nokes Today

In the path of growth, even the topography around Nokes has been altered. Scheel notes that “To make room for commercial structures at the north and west sides of Nokes Mountain, a good third of the hill was gouged away in the 1980s and early nineties.”

Last house in old village of Nokes still stands on Thayer Road.

Only one of the early Nokes family homes remains, located at what is today 45564 Thayer Road, and surrounded by a shopping center and fast-food restaurants. It was owned by Clarence Nokes (born in 1890) who bought the property in 1913, and the home of his daughter, the late Carrie Elizabeth Nokes (1913-2008). With her death last year, it is likely that the last living link with the village has passed on.

Some day, the old house may also be gone, leaving only the Nokes cemetery–believed to be the largest African-American graveyard in Loudoun County–in silent testimony of what was once there.