* * * * *

All the leading denominations are represented in Loudoun by churches and congregations to the extent shown by the following table of statistics, representing conditions as they existed at the close of the calendar year 1906, and based upon the returns of individual church organizations so far as received by the Census Office, through which Bureau they were obtained for initial publication in this work.

=========================================+=============

=+============
|    Total     |Communicants
|  number of   | or members. 
Denomination.              |organizations.|------------
|              |Total number
|              |reported.
-----------------------------------------+--------------+---

---------
All denominations                        |      97      |   7,606
Baptist bodies:                       |              |
Baptists--                           |              |
Southern Baptist Convention        |      11      |   1,199
National Baptist Convention        |              |
(colored)                        |      15      |   1,235
Free Baptists                        |       2      |      55
Primitive Baptists                   |       6      |     171
Friends:                              |              |
Society of Friends (Orthodox)        |       2      |     122
Religious Society of Friends         |              |
(Hicksite)                         |       3      |     278
Lutheran bodies:                      |              |
General Synod of the Evangelical     |              |
Lutheran Church in the United      |              |
States of America                  |       4      |     645
Methodist bodies:[17]                |              |
Methodist Episcopal Church           |      19      |   1,179
Methodist Episcopal Church (South)   |      21      |   1,716
Colored Methodist Episcopal Church   |       1      |      45
Presbyterian bodies:                  |              |
Presbyterian Church in the United    |              |
States (South)                     |       4      |     345
Protestant Episcopal Church          |       7      |     416
Reformed bodies:                      |              |
Reformed Church in the United States |       1      |     140
Roman Catholic Church                |       1      |      60
-----------------------------------------+--------------+---

----------

[Footnote 17:  Leesburg had, until a year or so ago when it was razed, one of the oldest Methodist churches in America.  The building, a large stone structure, long abandoned, with galleries around three sides, stood in the midst of an old Methodist graveyard in which are tombstones more than a century old.  It was built, according to report, in 1780.

Leesburg is the oldest Methodist territory in the bounds of the Baltimore Conference in Virginia, and it was here that the first Methodist Conference held in the State convened May 19, 1778.]