Springwood Select Home School for Young Ladies 1866

Access and use

Location of collection:
Thomas Balch Library
Thomas Balch Library
208 West Market Street
Leesburg, Virginia 20176
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Alexandra S. Gressitt
Phone: (703) 737-7195
Fax: (703) 737-7195

Summary

Creator:
Springwood Select Home School for Young Ladies
Abstract:
Four page brochure for the 1866-67 school year for the Springwood Select Home School for Young Ladies.
Language:
English

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains a four page brochure advertising the Springwood Select Home School for Young Ladies for the 1866-67 school year, and a transcription of the brochure. Its content is broken up into several sections including an outline of the rules and regulations, directions to the house, tuition and boarding rates, current faculty, and references on behalf of the Ball family. There are also three different sections of additional notes, hand-written in the margins. In whose hand the notes are written is not known. A photograph of the Ball home at Springwood is attached onto the front page.

Biographical / historical:

The Springwood Select Home School for Young Ladies was begun shortly after the Civil War in the home of Capt. George Washington Ball (1828-1889) and his wife Mary Beverley Randolph Ball (1826-1888). Springwood, near Leesburg in Loudoun County Virginia, was the estate of the locally established Ball family. The Ball Cemetery, where G.W. Ball and his wife are buried, still sits on the property.

Springwood and the Ball family have various connections to the Civil War. George Washington Ball obtained the rank of Captain in the Confederate army in October 1861, and was put on the staff of General Richard Griffith (1814-1862). Springwood is also near the location of the Battle of Ball's Bluff fought in the fall of 1861. Orphaned children of Confederate families were taken in for free at the home school. It is unclear how long the school operated or when it closed.

Acquisition information:
Loudoun County Historical Society, Loudoun County, VA
Physical description:
2 items