Marry your travel to the books that bring history to life.
In the Footsteps of Honor
A traveler's guide to the real Loudoun County places behind Sharon Virts' Fields of Honor saga — the inn, the manor, the mills, the courthouse, and the canal where the novel's world still stands.
Loudoun County, Virginia, is the kind of place where the nineteenth century never fully left the room. You can eat dinner beneath the pulleys of a working mill, pass an inn that was already old when the republic was young, stand in the portico of a manor that sheltered a president, walk the courthouse steps where private quarrels once became public record, and follow the canal a novel's own character cut through the mountainside. For readers of Sharon Virts' Fields of Honor saga, this is not scenery — it is the ground the novels walk on. The series follows the McCarty and Mason families through twenty-seven years of honor, ambition, and reckoning in early nineteenth-century Virginia, and nearly every road its characters ride still exists. By mid-century nearly thirty water-powered mills were turning along the county's creeks, grinding the grain that funded its gentry — and the two in this guide are the ones a traveler can still walk into today. What follows is a traveler's guide to the real places behind the saga — paired with the books that bring them back to life.
The Mills of Loudoun
Two surviving Loudoun mills — one a working monument built by a novel's patron, one a restaurant — and the feud that grew between them.
Loudoun County ran on mills, and two of them still stand where a traveler can walk inside. Aldie may be the one most tightly bound to the series' history. Built beginning in 1807 on the Little River, it was the project of Charles Fenton Mercer — the very man who appears in Fields of Honor as Jack McCarty's patron and eventual rival. A dozen miles north, in Leesburg, the restaurant locals call Tuskies keeps the name of the mill Jack McCarty himself rented and advertised — "no toll required." To stand inside either is to stand inside the rivalry that runs through the novels: one man building for the ages, the other answering in a few lines of newsprint.
A Mill Built by a Novel's Character
Charles Fenton Mercer was not only a congressman and the driving force behind the C&O Canal; he was, quite literally, a mill builder. Aldie Mill's stones first turned in 1809, grinding the grain of western Loudoun and shipping flour down to Alexandria and beyond. In the series, Mercer's investment in Jack McCarty shapes the early books before his expectations harden into rivalry — and here is the physical evidence of the man's ambition, still standing on its original foundations.
The Machinery
Inside, the mill keeps its industrial heart intact: flywheels, drive belts, millstones, and gearing in various states of rest and rust. The light falls through multi-paned windows onto iron and oak, and the whole room smells of the work it was built to do.
Turn a gear stamped LEE in Loudoun County, and you are turning a name straight out of the novel itself.
The County, Mapped
To see the world the McCartys and Masons moved through, there is no better document than Yardley Taylor's 1853 map of Loudoun County, drawn from actual surveys. It lays out the roads, the mills, the court house at Leesburg, and the river locks that bound the county together — the same network of connections that carries the series' characters from one reckoning to the next.
Aldie Mill still turns its stones by water on demonstration days, one of the few restored mills in the region that grinds again. For a traveler following Fields of Honor, it is the closest you can come to hearing the nineteenth century run.
Tuscarora Mill: Jack's Answer
A few miles east in downtown Leesburg, Tuscarora Mill offers a different way to step inside a mill. The building dates to 1899 — originally the C.C. Saffer grain mill, later known as the McKimmey Mill — and was moved one block north to Market Station in 1982 before opening as the restaurant locals call Tuskie's in 1985. One of the first farm-to-table restaurants in Northern Virginia, it kept the original pulleys and drive belts hanging above the bar, so you can eat dinner beneath the very gears that once ground the county's grain.
One man built a monument beside the river. The other left a few lines of newsprint — and a name on a creek.
For readers of the series, Tuscarora carries an additional resonance. In the Fields of Honor saga, Jack McCarty rents a mill and advertises that no toll is required of persons going to mill — a pointed answer to the tollgates on his old patron's turnpike. The historical Tuscarora building postdates that era by decades, but standing inside it, beneath the gears, a traveler can feel the kind of commerce and competition that shaped the world the novels inhabit. Tour Mercer's mill in the afternoon, then drive north to Leesburg and raise a glass to Jack at supper.
The Red Fox Inn
Three centuries of hospitality at a Virginia crossroads — where a traveler far from home could become, for a few hours, someone else.
Before the republic was born, travelers were already stopping at the stone inn in Middleburg. The Red Fox has welcomed guests since c. 1728 — a date carved into its sign and older than the nation it sits in. For the Fields of Honor saga, an inn like this is more than a setting. It is a crossroads — a waypoint where a traveler chooses a direction, and where, on a snowbound November night in 1824, a good man chose the wrong one.
Middleburg was founded in 1787 by Leven Powell, a Revolutionary War officer and a figure of the same Virginia gentry class the novels inhabit. The town became a stop on the route between the Blue Ridge and the ports of Alexandria — exactly the kind of road Jack McCarty and his contemporaries would have ridden. An inn standing since 1728 would have been a familiar landmark to generations of them.
A house at a crossroads is where a traveler chooses a direction.
The Inn at Middleburg
In the Fields of Honor saga — and in Sharon Virts' Bargains of Fate — the Red Fox appears as the Inn at Middleburg, known in the 1820s as the Beveridge House and simply as 'the Inn' to the locals who passed through its doors. The oldest building in Middleburg and one of the oldest operating inns in the country, it stands on the National Register of Historic Places, nearly three centuries of continuous hospitality woven into its stone walls.
The inn's guest book reads like a century of American celebrity. Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis were frequent guests during fox hunting holidays, drawn to the same hunt country that has long made Middleburg a refuge for the powerful. The town itself was home to the Kennedys. For a series that traces the gentry of early Virginia, an inn that has hosted the famous across three centuries is more than a setting. It is a through-line.
Inside the Tavern
Step through the door and the ceilings drop, the beams darken, and the stone fireplaces take over. This is the room a reader of the series knows — the warm taproom where a traveler far from home could become, for a few hours, someone else. The pine service bar is the inn's most startling relic: tradition holds it was made from a field operating table used by a surgeon with Stuart's cavalry during the Civil War.
Order the Peanut Soup
If you take one piece of advice from a traveler who has eaten here for years, let it be this: order the peanut soup. Rich, velvety, and unlike anything north of the Potomac, it is a Virginia tradition with roots in West African cooking that has been served in the commonwealth's taverns for generations. Eaten beside a stone hearth on a cold afternoon, it is the nearest you will come to tasting the nineteenth century.
The fieldstone walls, the white-columned porch, the fox silhouette atop the pediment — the Red Fox wears its age the way the best old inns do, as an invitation rather than a relic. Stop here on a Loudoun afternoon and you understand why travel in the eighteenth century was measured in inns: each one a small civilization along the road, keeping fire, food, and company for whoever came through the door.
Belmont
A Federal-era manor built by a Lee, visited by a president and a French general, and still doing what it was built to do — filling with people, music, and the clink of glasses.
Few properties in Loudoun County carry the weight of Belmont. Built between 1799 and 1802 by Ludwell Lee — son of Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence — the manor house has welcomed a president, a French general, and the grand families of Virginia across two centuries. In the novels, Belmont is not a backdrop. It is the room where the series' love story begins on a Christmas Eve in 1817, where a prodigal is folded back into the crowd, and where nearly everything that matters in the characters' private lives happens under one man's roof.
A House Built by a Lee
Ludwell Lee built Belmont between 1799 and 1802, constructing a Federal-style manor on land he acquired through marriage to his first cousin Flora Lee. His father, Richard Henry Lee, was one of Virginia's most prominent revolutionaries — a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a senator in the new republic. Ludwell himself had served in the Revolution as aide-de-camp to the Marquis de Lafayette, a bond that would later bring the old general back to Belmont's door. To walk Belmont's grounds is to walk the same estate that shaped a family whose name runs through the founding of the nation and through the pages of the series alike.
Lafayette came to call — and the mantels he is said to have gifted still warm the rooms.
The Lafayette Mantels
Step into either of the twin reception rooms flanking the center hall and the mantels command the room. Both are white-painted wood in the Federal taste — dentil-molded shelves, pilaster legs carved with urns and stylized foliage, and friezes draped with carved swags and garlands. Tradition holds that General Lafayette gave them to Ludwell Lee during his 1825 grand tour, when the old comrades reunited at Belmont after a lifetime of shared service. Whether gift or commission, they are the finest carving in the house, and they have outlasted every family who lived here.
Presidents and Heroes
Belmont's guest book reads like a roll of the early republic. President James Madison was a frequent visitor. And in 1825, the Marquis de Lafayette — Ludwell Lee's former commander and a close personal friend — came to Belmont during his grand tour of the United States. Lafayette was godfather to one of Lee's five daughters, and the visit was a reunion of two men who had served together in the Revolution. For a novel set in the decades when the new nation was still finding its footing, Belmont is the kind of place where that history was not abstract. It was dinner company.
The Colonel's Study
Of all the rooms at Belmont, the one a reader of the series will want to find is the Colonel's study — where Ludwell Lee's portrait still hangs. In the novels, the author calls these quiet visits 'field trips': walking the center hall and standing in this room to find her characters' voices before she writes them. It is here that the Colonel — 'Uncle Ludwell,' with his scarlet coat and his pipe — presides over the household, and here that a traveler can stand closest to the man who made Christmas Eve at Belmont the scene the series returns to in every book.
The Margaret Mercer Era
After Ludwell Lee's death in 1836, Belmont was purchased by Margaret Mercer, daughter of former Maryland Governor John Francis Mercer. Mercer converted the estate into a school for girls — one of the earliest such institutions in the region — and freed the people she had inherited in bondage, setting out to prove that a Virginia farm could prosper without slavery. The conservatory plaque that still marks the dining room carries her name, a quiet reminder that Belmont's history includes not only the gentry who built it but the educator who gave it a second life.
The McLean Era and the Hope Diamond
In the early twentieth century, the property passed through several hands — including Kansas governor Frederick Staunton and Pittsburgh attorney John Scott Ferguson — before being sold in 1915 to Edward B. McLean, son of the publisher of The Washington Post. McLean built a thoroughbred horse stable and training track, and the estate became a center of the sporting life of Virginia hunt country. His wife, Evalyn Walsh McLean, was one of the most famous owners of the Hope Diamond, and their social circle included presidents, senators, and the titans of the Gilded Age. The glamour of that era still clings to the property, layered over the older, quieter history of the Lees.
Belmont Today
After passing through several more owners in the twentieth century — including Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley and, later, IBM — the manor fell into disrepair before being purchased and restored by Toll Brothers, who made it the crown jewel of a residential development. The restoration preserved the character of the original home: the portico with its Doric columns, the paneled wainscoting, and the mantels in the reception rooms that are said to be gifts from General Lafayette himself. What moves a traveler most about Belmont is that it never became a relic. It is still doing what Ludwell Lee built it to do — filling with people, music, argument, and the clink of glasses. For a traveler following the Fields of Honor saga, Belmont is a place where the nineteenth century did not disappear. It put on a new coat and kept the doors open.
The Family Burying Ground
West of the house, beside Belmont Manor Lane, lies the family burying ground — a brick-walled enclosure where Ludwell Lee rests, and with him Frances Carter Lee, the mother of the Lee sisters at the heart of the series. A bronze plaque set into a granite boulder marks the Colonel himself: born at Chantilly in 1760, died at Belmont in 1836, builder of the house. It is the quietest corner of the estate, and the one a reader of the novels will not want to miss.
The Roadside Marker
At the roadside, the Commonwealth of Virginia has set its own summary of Belmont into cast iron. Erected by the Conservation and Development Commission in 1933, marker T-30 distills two centuries of the estate's history into a few lines: the patent by Thomas Lee of Stratford, the house built about 1800 by Ludwell Lee, the entertainment of Lafayette in 1825, and the arrival of Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley in 1931. It is the state's word for a place the novels have already made familiar — a traveler's last stop before turning back toward Leesburg.
Charles Hamilton Houston Courthouse
The columns that have watched Loudoun's public life change hands for generations.
Court days in nineteenth-century Loudoun brought the whole county to town — farmers, lawyers, litigants, and politicians converging on the seat of justice. The courthouse that presides over that square still stands, its brick and columns carrying the weight of every case tried beneath them. In the world of Fields of Honor, this is where private quarrels became public record.
The trials, elections, and reckonings that shape the McCarty and Mason families all pass through a building much like this one — a place where the law and the code of honor met face to face, and neither walked away unchanged. The classical facade, the arched doorway, the bell tower above: this is the architecture of a county that took its public life seriously.
Every feud in the series, sooner or later, finds its way to a door like this one.
The bronze figures on the lawn bring the past down to human scale — men, women, and children cast in metal so they would outlast the generations who made them. They are the people the courthouse was built to govern, rendered at life size and set where the living still pass them every day. For a traveler standing between the columns and the sculpture, the distance between the novel and the place it was built from shrinks to a single step.
The C&O Canal
The grand failure that became a park — a canal a novel's patron championed, a railroad that overtook it, and a towpath a traveler can still walk.
On July 4, 1828, President John Quincy Adams drove a ceremonial spade into the bank of the Potomac to launch a canal that would climb the valley, cross the Alleghenies, and join the Chesapeake to the Ohio. At his side was Congressman Charles Fenton Mercer — Jack McCarty's patron in the early books, and the driving force behind the whole enterprise. The canal never reached the Ohio. The railroad won. And yet, nearly two centuries later, it is Mercer's ditch that draws more than four million visits a year — a grand failure that became a park, and a towpath a traveler can still walk.
A Canal Built by a Novel's Character
Long before he invested in Jack McCarty or quarreled with him, Charles Fenton Mercer was a congressman with a continental vision: a canal to carry the produce of the interior down to tidewater along the Potomac. The C&O Canal was that vision made stone and water, and its route runs directly past Harpers Ferry — where the river narrows, the bluffs rise, and the work of cutting a channel into the living rock becomes visible. To stand inside one of its tunnel mouths is to stand inside the ambition of a man the series knows well.
The canal a novel's patron championed still runs the cliff it was cut from — a monument to the same ambition that shaped the McCarty family's fortunes.
Harpers Ferry itself sits at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah, the meeting of waters that made it a crossroads of commerce and conflict alike. The rivers carried the grain of the valley, the iron of the foundries, and eventually the armies of a later war. For the families of Fields of Honor, this stretch of the Potomac was the western edge of their world — the place where the Piedmont broke against the Blue Ridge and the rules of the lowland gave way to the frontier.
Point of Rocks
Where Catoctin Mountain presses so close to the Potomac that there was room for a canal or a railroad but not both, the two rivals fought for years in court before agreeing to share the ledge. They share it still: the towpath runs beside tracks that carry commuter trains to Washington, past a much-photographed Victorian station of the 1870s. It is a short drive from Leesburg across the Route 15 bridge — and the place where the author once boarded the morning train, and can vouch for the river at dusk.
The Iron That Followed the Water
History rarely abandons a good path — it just finds a faster way to run it. The same corridor Mercer carved for the canal was claimed within a generation by the railroad, which laid its iron along the river's edge and ran the freight the mules could no longer keep up with. Where the canal was slow, deliberate, and built for the patience of a young republic, the railroad was loud, urgent, and built for the one that was growing past it. Standing at Harpers Ferry today, you can watch both histories run side by side: the canal's stone ruins going quiet in the shade, and a CSX freight still climbing the gorge on the rails that inherited its route.
The canal cut the path; the railroad kept it. The gorge remembers both.
Williamsport: The Aqueduct
Nowhere else along the canal can you see so many of its working parts in one place: the Cushwa Basin and its warehouse, a lockhouse, a railroad lift bridge, and the Conococheague Aqueduct. Built between 1833 and 1835, the aqueduct lost a wall in 1920 when a boat broke through and fell into the creek below. The National Park Service restored and rewatered it in 2019, and boats cross it once more — a stop worth the drive for a traveler who wants to see the canal whole.
Brunswick: The Towpath
Twenty miles downriver from Harpers Ferry, the canal widens into a quiet pool at Brunswick — a stretch where the towpath slips into the trees and the nineteenth century asks to be walked rather than driven. Lock 34 still stands beside the path, marked by the National Park Service in the same brown and white that signs every lock along the canal. Step through the gates and the gravel goes quiet underfoot; the mules are long gone, but the path they wore is still here, shaded by the same canopy that shaded the boatmen.
The Brunswick Visitor Center
Brunswick was a canal town before it was a railroad town, and its visitor center — a brick building on the main street — tells both stories. Operated by the National Park Service for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park, it stands within sight of the railroad yards that eventually overtook the canal's trade. For a traveler following Mercer's ditch down the valley, it is the natural place to stop, orient, and step onto the towpath with a map in hand.
What remains today is the quiet of a path that once roared with industry — the towpath worn by the mules that drew the barges, the stone arches that carried the canal over the crossings, and the tunnel mouths that let it pass clean through the mountain. Walk it in autumn, with the leaves on the path and the river just visible through the trees, and the nineteenth century is not a distance to be imagined. It is a step off the road.
Walk the roads they walked — in the books.
The Fields of Honor saga carries these real places into fiction. Begin with Masque of Honor and follow the McCarty and Mason families through twenty-seven years of honor, ambition, and consequence.
Explore the Books