Leesburg Potter’s Field – Established 1839 – Reburials 1983 & 2022

Marker Text: In 1839 the Town of Leesburg acquired from Benjamin Shreve Sr. a half-acre tract of land on the turnpike just east of the town limits. Its purpose was to serve as a public cemetery for indigent citizens. The town’s more prosperous residents were usually buried in church cemeteries.
As both a county seat and a crossroads town, Leesburg’s 1840 population of 1,600 included a number of poorer white residents, a small community of free black residents, and an enslaved population. The deed conveying the property made clear its use.
“one half of which shall be appropriated to the burial of White persons, and the other half to the burial of free persons of color.”
The cemetery, known as Potter’s Field, served as a burial ground until the early 1950s. During those nearly 130 years, more than 300 people were interred at Potter’s Field, including Charles Craven, the victim of a 1902 lynching that occurred there.
Needing to widen the highway and develop the property, the Town of Leesburg sponsored an archaeological excavation of the cemetery in the early 1980s. Remains and artifacts that were recovered were gathered into a single vault and re-interred at Union Cemetery in 1983. In 2022 the vault was moved to this memorial site, where it was interred along with an additional vault containing remains and artifacts found in the original excavation and previously stored in the Loudoun Museum. A line in Potter’s Field separated the grave by race, but the remains recovered in 1983 were reburied together.