Belmont Chapel

T-59

Margaret Mercer (1791-1846), educator and reformer, purchased Belmont plantation in 1836. Here she ran a prominent academy for young women, waiving tuition for those unable to afford it. Best known for advocating the liberation of enslaved African Americans and promoting their resettlement in Liberia, Mercer also gained recognition for her book Popular Lectures on Ethics (1841). She commissioned the construction of Belmont Chapel, which opened here by 1841. The chapel hosted Episcopal services and a Sunday school at which African Americans were educated alongside whites. Long an important community center, the chapel burned in the 1960s. St. David's Episcopal Church opened here in 1990.

Department of Historic Resources, 2018

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Caspar Morris, Memoir of Miss Margaret Mercer (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1848). Daily National Intelligencer, 14 Feb. 1832, 25 Sept. 1846. Richmond Enquirer, 29 Sept. 1846, 18 June 1847. Washington Post, 12 April 1990. Washington Evening Star, 22 Dec. 1918. William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1910), 275. Eugene Scheel, Loudoun Discovered: Communities, Corner & Crossroads, vol. 1 (Friends of the Thomas Balch Library, 2002), 28-33. Eugene Scheel, “A Life Devoted to Freedom and Opportunity,” Washington Post, 17 March 2002. http://www.sdlife.org/ George C. Kundahl, Confederate Engineer: Training and Campaigning with John Morris Wampler (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2000), 2-11.