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Our educational outreach programs work to promote student interest in local history, family exploration of local sites and stories, and a beginning awareness by students of the value of the historic preservation of that local heritage. We hope students will discover the special “sense of place” that our region’s historic landscapes, roads, buildings, towns and villages, and historic sites preserve.
We come to your classroom! Our program is free to schools in the Mosby
Heritage Area (Loudoun, Fauquier, Prince William, Clarke, and Warren counties) , the $250.00 price tag per school having been donated by local citizens eager to encourage more local history in the classroom.
Our program targets fourth grade, coordinating with the SOLs of Virginia Studies. We are also willing to go in to classrooms of other grades where our program will be of benefit when a teacher so requests.
Our program emphasizes storytelling as a key to bringing the past back from the grave . Stories are basic to the story and culture of our part of Northern Virginia. Not so long ago, most native Northern
Virginians knew many stories and places connected with the past of their region; little had changed since the 1800s. Recent rapid suburbanization has bulldozed some landmarks and lesser-known historic sites.
Many newcomers are closeted away with other newcomers, and seldom learn local stories of the past where they now live. The Mosby Heritage Area Association promotes the retelling of classic stories and the uncovering of others by your students using our presentation as a springboard. Their interest piqued, neighbors, relatives, websites, books, and local historical sites become resources for learning more stories thus bringing Virginia and American history alive. The very way the heritage area’s namesake,
John Singleton Mosby, grew into the legendary “Gray Ghost” was, after all, by stories told between soldiers, by civilians who encountered him, and by the veterans returning home and talking with their friends, children, and grandchildren. African-Americans told of the slavery times and Underground
Railroad adventures in much the same manner. Storytelling as a lost art? We think NOT!
We emphasize events that took place in your county and at least one story from near your school to make the presentation more personal for your students. Our stories are gripping, lively, involve your students with photos, artifacts, or play-acting, and work to raise issues that the past helps us confront.
NOTE: We are not a Confederate glorification society —don’t let our use of Mosby stories scare you!
W seek to spark your students interest in their local history. While Mosby and the Civil War or the
Underground Railroad locally might be our focus, depending upon the program —provocative topics from
Virginia’s past, sure to engage your students—we hope that by extension, your students will gain an interest in a variety of stories from your local past.
We also present students with the problem of how rapid change impacts historical sites and the important stories of an area . We provide materials that give students some sense of hope and empowerment —fun things they and their families can do to promote the learning of local heritage and the saving of it. Our local scavenger hunt is very popular with teachers, students, and their families.
After all, some of the best learning takes place after educators have had their “go” in the classroom!
Our presentations key in on Grade 4 Virginia Studies SOLs. You will see the overlap/reinforcement!

90 minutes. We can give up to 3 presentations at your school in a day.
Two medium-sized classes can be handled in each presentation. We can begin our programs as early as 9:00 a.m. (we often have to drive quite a distance because of the size of the heritage area). We prefer 10-15 minutes or so between sessions to move our artifacts, photos, and materials to the next classroom. [ Teachers are expected to stay with their classes and participate in the presentation .]
: Rich Gillespie taught American history for 30 years at Loudoun Valley High School in
Loudoun County. During his time there, he was department chair, founded a 250-member History Club, which celebrated its 25 th anniversary in 2004, began internships at historic sites, ran nearly 500 field trips, and saw many of his students in to jobs with historical sites. He won numerous awards for his teaching, including the Brenton S. Halsey Award for Virginia History Teacher of the Year for 2003 from the Virginia Historical Society, and the A gnes Meyer Award for Loudoun’s Teacher of the Year in 1993.
He is currently the Director of Education for the 5-county Mosby Heritage Area, a great place to help history come alive. In 20062007, he involved 40 local schools in the heritage area’s programs.
: Founded in 1995, this
1600 square-mile area encompasses parts of the counties of Loudoun, Fauquier, Prince William, Clarke, and Warren. While John Singleton Mosby was taken as the figurehead of the heritage area due to the national recognition of “Mosby’s Confederacy” nationwide in television, documentaries, books and magazine articles, the heritage area encompasses more than just the Civil War. The Mosby Heritage
Area features heartcatching “lay of the land”, indigenous architecture, handsome farms, distinctive speech, historical villages and small towns, miles of small country roads and the world famous gentle
Blue Ridge and its foothills. These provide the backdrop to the Mosby H eritage Area’s distinction as
“hallowed ground” for the many soldiers form North and South who fought and died here in the Civil
War’s most famous and deadly guerilla war. The Mosby Heritage Area Association’s mission is to promote and support the preservation of the historic, cultural, and scenic resources of the Mosby
Heritage Area. Our heritage outreach education program is an aspect of that mission.
: E-mail Rich Gillespie at rgillespie@mosbyheritagearea.org
or call him at
(540)-687-5578. You can also submit the attached application if you prefer. Please feel free to ask questions.
: Our flagship program Uses stories of John Singleton Mosby, Civil War cavalry genius and early author of psychological warfare, to bring alive the story of our region of Virginia in the Civil War.
Here, stories highlight a unique aspect of the Civil War and of our local history-- guerilla warfare .
The “Gray Ghost” is certainly one of the best known Civil War figures of story, song, movies, and even a television series. We introduce Virginia at the time, and Mosby; how the need of the Confederacy to drag out the war (in order to destroy Union morale) led to guerilla warfare in Northern Virginia, why and how Mosby became the ultimate “partisan ranger” in the region, how Mosby made his guerilla tactics work so effectively, and what the impact was on the morale of the Union, on the success of the
Confederacy, and on local people in the area become a part of the storytelling. Mosby and his men were controversial, yet even at the time, they fascinated the American public and still do. They were young, bold, handsome, romantic, passionate Virginians defending their homes from invasion, and yet slaveholders, fighting the U.S. Army, to defend a largely rejected Southern way of life. These things get students fascinated, involved, thinking, and questioning, which helps the next day’s lesson once we leave.
Frankly, fourth graders eat this stuff up! We work photos, students, and reproduction artifacts into the story. They may not like Mosby in the end, but they will love the provocative stories of him.

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The Night Belonged to Mosby: Accounts from the War Years in the Mosby Heritage Area
-biographical sketch of Mosby
“Top 10” issues for students raised by Mosby’s Rangers
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“Top 10” feats of John Singleton Mosby
-suggestions for activities before and after our visit to your school
-Mosby book suggestion with ordering information for avid readers among your students
-cooperative learning worksheet to follow classroom presentation
-suggested websites on Mosby and his Rangers and for further exploring your local history
-small classroom poster announcing to students, faculty, and parents the coming program
Flyer: “Being a Student Heritage Steward”
-Local History Scavenger Hunt keyed to your county (Fauquier, Loudoun, or Clarke). Students who participate with their families get a Mosby Heritage Area t-shirt!
-Relevant web sites for understanding Mosby, Mo sby’s Rangers, and the Mosby Heritage Area
-Poster for upcoming presentations by the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group designed for students
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“Time Travellers” Passport--a Virginia Association of Museums program to encourage students to visit other Virginia history sites (Virginia t-shirt is sent to students visiting 6 historic sites)
This program keys in on Loudoun’s 250 th anniversary by examining stories that get to the heart of the Loudoun experience in the last 250 years. Six stories covering the span of Loudoun’s history are included, including a look at the founding of Loudoun in 1757 through one refugee family’s eyes, President Monroe of Oak Hill, the Underground Railroad, Mosby and the guerilla war in Loudoun during the Civil War, the all-important W & OD railroad in Loudoun, and the civil rights effort by African-
American parents for a better black high school in the early 1940s. Photos are used to bring these stories alive, and typically, a local story is worked in that occurred near the school. Relevant sites from these stories can be visited in the Loudoun Heritage Scavenger Hunt that each student will receive.
-suggestions for activities before and after our visit to your school
-suggested websites for further exploring your local history
-small classroom poster announcing to students, faculty, and parents the coming program
-
Flyer: “Being a Student Heritage Steward”
-Local History Scavenger Hunt keyed to your county (Fauquier, Loudoun, or Clarke). Students who participate with their families get a Mosby Heritage Area t-shirt!
-Relevant web sites to further explore local stories
-Poster for upcoming presentations by the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group designed for students
“Time Travellers” Passport--a Virginia Association of Museums program to encourage students to visit other Virginia history sites (Virginia t-shirt is sent to students visiting 6 historic sites)

There is huge interest by both students and teachers in the Underground Railroad, but it tends to be on a generic basis, and particularly during Black History Month in February. But that story is a local story, too, and so we have designed a program to examine Slavery and the Underground
Railroad right in Loudoun County. Starting with a look at an overgrown slave grave in Loudoun, we use photos and stories from local historic sites to examine the mechanics of slavery here , how slaves were ever-so-practically managed, what led some slaves to run away, and what led some in the white community to actively help them. We also look at examples of local freedmen who made the changes in their lives they had so long yearned for when freedom came. This is a gripping story that fully involves students. The Loudoun Heritage Scavenger Hunt distributed to students at the end of the program helps students and their families to find a number of the historic sites referred to in the program —including the slave Jemima’s lonely grave.
-suggestions for activities before and after our visit to your school
-suggested websites for further exploring your local history
-small classroom poster announcing to students, faculty, and parents the coming program
Flyer: “Being a Student Heritage Steward”
-Local History Scavenger Hunt keyed to your county (Fauquier, Loudoun, or Clarke). Students who participate with their families get a Mosby Heritage Area t-shirt!
-Web sites to further explore local stories
-Poster for upcoming presentations by the Gray Ghost Interpretive Group designed for students
“Time Travellers” Passport--a Virginia Association of Museums program to encourage students to visit other Virginia history sites (Virginia t-shirt is sent to students visiting 6 historic sites)