Meet Your Neighbor: Hannah Schetselaar, Public Programs Coordinator at VPHA

Written by Bill Kent | Photos by Caroline Gray

Historian Hannah Schetselaar sees connections everywhere in Hunt Country. “The great families,” she begins, “the houses they built, the names of the streets, the Colonial women who made up the rules as they went along, the crafts they made. It’s all here, out in the open.”

Right now, Schetselaar is making final arrangements for the Virginia Piedmont Heritage Area’s Crossroads of Liberty event, where, on Sunday, March 29, at the Caleb Rector House on Atoka Road, reenactors, storytellers, and fellow historians will show how the Hunt Country region is linked to America’s Revolutionary War. She even unearthed a connection that hits close to home. 

During her research into the era’s camp followers — Colonial women who traveled with the armies and helped make uniforms, cook, and sometimes fight alongside the soldiers — Schetselaar read about a Hessian soldier who was among the 1,000 prisoners captured after the 1777 Battle of Saratoga. “Henry Linkous was detained in Boston for a year, then marched through Loudoun County, arriving in January 1779. He was kept at the Albemarle Barracks as a prisoner of war until he was indentured to the Preston family at Smithfield.”

After the war, Linkous settled in the area, married, and had children. Two and a half centuries later, Schetselaar, born and raised in Gainesville to a father who managed distribution for US Foods and a mother who is a school nurse in Manassas City, was working on her master’s degree at Virginia Tech and volunteering at the Historic Smithfield when she found Linkous’ name on her own family tree.

“I didn’t expect it,” she admits. “It really confirmed that the connections are everywhere … if you know where to look.”

She sees her job with the VPHA as helping to point the way.

Schetselaar credits her parents for teaching her to appreciate those who came before. “We were a hiking family, so early in my childhood, we’d go to Sky Meadows and the Manassas Battlefield, where I learned about all the other people who stood on the ground and followed the trails and the streams before me.”

After studying history and psychology at Roanoke College, Schetselaar attained a master’s degree in history and public history certificate from Virginia Tech. “I like all Virginia history, but the Colonial period has my heart. It was a time of great hardship, when people found themselves struggling to survive, making it up as they went along. Women led fascinating lives in the 17th century. Often, while the men were out farming or hunting, the women were doing everything else, and, sometimes, tasks historically reserved for men, like blacksmithing.”

This has inspired Schetselaar to take up crafting — not just as a hobby, but as yet another way to connect with the past.

“Crafting was of vital importance in the Colonial period, when so many women had to make just about everything they needed from what they had at hand. I got some of my interest from my mother, who has a collection of quilts that have been handed down through the generations of women in my family.” She continues, “When I learned what 17th-century women went through, I realized crafting for them was often about the art of survival. I wanted to connect with what it must have felt like to learn the patience and put in the time in weaving, sewing, crochet, embroidering, and how these arts are taught and passed down to women.”

Crafting was done by all women, some of whom were enslaved. The Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation recently published Schetselaar’s contribution to a study about individuals who attempted to escape enslavement in 17th-century Chesapeake. “Going over the documents made me appreciate their courage.”

It also made her curious about a handprint she was shown in Smithfield’s basement between tours with other historians. “It is believed to have been left there by an enslaved person. That single handprint changed the course of my life,” she shares. “I still think about the woman who left it.”

After graduating last May, Schetselaar gave tours and assisted with school programs and summer camps at Oatlands. Lori Kimball, Oatlands’ senior director of programs, remembers her organizing a field trip to the historic house that involved 475 middle school children. “Hannah is very smart, a fast learner, and is a thorough researcher and confident presenter,” Kimball says. “She is committed to telling a full and complete story of our region’s history.”

And yet, for Schetselaar, some of the best stories Hunt Country has to offer don’t have words. “There’s a feeling I get when I go to the Goose Creek Bridge,” she says. “It isn’t just the Civil War battle, though that’s important. It’s about standing on an old bridge, like the Stone Bridge at Manassas, and wondering about all the things that have happened here. Who were the people who crossed the creek before the bridge was built? Whose hands made it? What were the lives of the people like who used it? Where did they go?”

Then there is what’s currently her favorite view in a region that is famous for them. When she signed on with the VPHA earlier this year, Executive Director Ian MacDougall and Education Director Travis Shaw took her to the Bears Den overlook on the Appalachian Trail in Bluemont. “You can stand there and watch the way the landscape flows. You don’t need me to tell you that it’s all connected. Up there, you can feel it.” ML

Published in the March 2026 issue of Middleburg Life.