History

Neersville takes its name from brothers Conrad and William Neer, who leased and later owned the surrounding land in the 1770s. It sits on Harpers Ferry Road at the base of Short Hill Mountain in the Between the Hills valley of northwestern Loudoun, along Piney Run. The Alliance includes it among its vanished villages, though its page is still blank.

In 1834 the local Lutheran congregation received a half-acre lot and built St. Paul’s Church, and a post office named Neersville opened in the mid-1830s, earning the village a reputation as the ‘capitol’ of Between the Hills. By 1850 it had a sawmill and a gristmill, although Piney Run carried too little water to run both at once. The Civil War cut it off from Harpers Ferry, the railroad and the canal when the Potomac bridge was burned; both armies passed through, but no major fight took place. Confederate guerrilla John Mobberly was born here.

A one-room stone schoolhouse was operating by the 1880s and closed in 1930. The general store followed in 1956 and St. Paul’s Church by 1970, as poor roads left the village isolated from Lovettsville. A volunteer fire company still serves the area.