History

White Oaks Farm – A History

White Oaks Farm was built in 1929 as a Greek Revival-style summer retreat home for the Markman family. Starting in the 1950’s White Oaks Farm became a successful racehorse farm helmed by Samuel & Carolyn Rogers whose family-owned Wilkins Rogers Mills and has milled flour, corn meal and feed in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area for over 100 years. Sam and Carolyn raised their three children on White Oaks Farm and were progressive pioneers in the Virginia Thoroughbred community in which Carolyn was one of the first women to obtain her Thoroughbred Racehorse Trainer's License. Over their 60+ years of racehorse breeding and training, White Oaks Farm bred and sold champion Sharp Cat as well as numerous stakes-winners, including Recapturetheglory, Disco Dandy, Try to Fly, and the White Oaks Farm-bred and Bob Baffert-trained Moon de French.

White Oaks Farm was the last remaining active racehorse farm inside the Leesburg, Virginia town limits. Although the thoroughbreds are now gone, the spirit of breeding quality animals remains in addition to a 7,600-square-foot stone manor house, a modest pool house and its adjacent 25,000-gallon gunite swimming pool, as well as a 2,200 square-foot racehorse stable with second-story hay loft, all surrounded by a forested phalanx of 80-foot-tall white oak trees. The new owners, breeder Melissa Auldridge and her husband Timothy O'Shea, are lovingly restoring the manor house and out-buildings and are driven to continue the history of animal husbandry at White Oaks Farm, breeding the perfect family pet, the Bernese Mountain Dog.