HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Britain is an
unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...
village in
Loudoun County Loudoun County () is in the northern part of the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. In 2020, the census returned a population of 420,959, making it Virginia's third-most populous county. The county seat is Leesburg, Virgi ...
,
Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
lying along Milltown Creek. It is located on the eastern flanks of Short Hill Mountain along Mountain Road (VA Route 690) at its junction with Britain Road.


History

Originally known as Guinea, the village of Britain—named after
Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
senator Calvin Britain—became the place of settlement for a free
African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...
community in the mid 19th century. Mount Sinai Free Baptist Church was built here in 1880 and served as a school for the community until 1915. Unlike most of the black settlements in Loudoun County, Britain had a
post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
in operation. Its African American residents began to move elsewhere in the early 19th century with the last black families leaving Britain in the 1920s. African-American history of Virginia Unincorporated communities in Loudoun County, Virginia Washington metropolitan area Unincorporated communities in Virginia {{LoudounCountyVA-geo-stub