Dr. Betsee Parker, an important local preservationist, has purchased the restored Unison store and donated it to the non-profit Unison Preservation Society to become a community and history center.

Dr. Parker, owner of the historic Huntland Estate, came to the rescue of the store after it had been on the market for two years.

Preservation Society President Harry Bigley said "Dr. Parker's generous gift will guarantee that the store and its half acre of open space will continue to be the center of village and area life and activity, as it has been for more than 140 years."

Settled in the 1730s, one of the first five Quaker settlements in Loudoun, the Unison area is today considered one of the best preserved places in Virginia.

The store is at the center of the Unison Village Historic District and the new 8,000-acre Unison Battlefield Historic District. Both are on state and national historic registers. The village is also at the center of Loudoun's Beaverdam Creek Historic Roadways District, the only one of its kind in the nation. More than half of the Unison area is under conservation easement and more than half its roads are still unpaved. Loudoun has more dirt roads than any county in Virginia.

Other Unison neighbors are rallying around Dr. Parker's $400,000 gift by starting an endowment to help create and maintain the new community/history center and the new village green. To support the gift of the store, neighbors already have pledged more than $50,000 to start the endowment.

The store and the half-acre around it are in the center of the village northwest of Middleburg, at the intersection of Unison and Bloomfield Roads (Routes 630 and 626). Today's quiet country crossroad sees little traffic, except for local commuters, horse trailers and tractors, walkers and bicyclists and many neighbors on horseback, including members of the Piedmont Hunt, the nation's oldest fox-hunting club which has its kennels just outside the village.

The annual Unison Heritage Day Fall Festival is held at the store, which last October commemorated the 150th anniversary of the 1862 Battle of Unison with a two-day Civil War reenactment.

This is the second time in 12 years that the 19th Century Unison Store has been saved. In 2001, when the store was in near derelict condition, bankrupt and slated to be sold at public auction within the year, neighbors founded the Unison Preservation Society to help save it.

They did that by creating the village historic district, which made all historic buildings eligible for generous state and federal rehabilitation tax credits. Local builder Coe Eldredge, working with UPS, bought the store on the Leesburg Courthouse steps, outbidding two developers who planned to demolish it. Eldredge restored the store to National Park Service standards, considered the gold standard of historic preservation, using those state/federal rehabilitation tax credits.

Dr. Parker, a PhD in theology, philanthropist and patron of the arts, bought and restored Huntland and its stables, kennels and buildings and put them under conservation easement to protect them permanently.

She is an avid competitor in hunter jumper shows and last fall she broke the record for the number of horse show championships won by a single owner at Pennsylvania's prestigious Devon Horse Show. Her Huntland team of hunter jumpers then won Junior Hunter championships at both the Pennsylvania National Horse Show and six championships at the Upperville Colt and Horse Show.