Fauquier County History

Fauquier County is defined, as it was at the time of its settlement, by its geographical features and natural resources.

Its character is found in the beautiful rolling countryside contained by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers.

The grasslands above the falls of the Rappahannock have been part of Anglo-American descriptions of the area since 1613 when Captain Samuel Argall remarked on the buffalo grazing there.

From 1670 comes the earliest and often-quoted passage about Fauquier when explorer John Lederer chronicled the beauty of what was to become Fauquier County:

"Having travelled through the shade of the vast forest, come out of a melancholy darkness of a sudden into a clear and open skie.

To heighten the beauty of the parts, the first springs of most of these great rivers which run to the Atlantic Ocean, or Chesapeake Bay, do here breakout, and in luxurious branches interlace the flowery meads, whose luxurious herbage invites numerous herds of red deer to feed."

The natural grasses of the lower piedmont provided perfect pastureland for horse and cattle, and fruit orchards soon punctuated steeper slopes.

The streams and runs became the power source for many gristmills. The development of the local economies relating to agriculture and small industry soon became an integral part of Fauquier's identity.

The mountain gaps on Fauquier's western boundary facilitated settlers' paths west and turnpikes back east that in turn encouraged the agricultural development of the county.

As the frontier pushed through and beyond Fauquier, new roads allowed its residents to trade easily in Alexandria and other points east, thereby supporting the agricultural enterprise in a day's travel.

Fauquier's road systems, from Indian trails to colonial roads, from turnpikes to railroads to highways, have played a large role in defining the settlement and the cultural patterns on the landscape today.

The rural architecture of Fauquier County reflects three economic forces at every phase of history.

The majority of the buildings reflect the revolving needs of localized agricultural and industrial development, at times booming with a new road, railroad, or highway.

The second force is seen in the quiet land use of the large horse and cattle farms of the early twentieth century, which continues today to anchor the agrarian image of Fauquier firmly on the landscape.

A third economic force is the use of Fauquier as a resort - hunt country retreat and a healthful escape from the nation's capital, Richmond, Baltimore, and beyond.

From the truck farmer to the plantation owner, the house in Virginia historically relied upon an agricultural setting, whether a single house amid garden plots or a great seat among the many agricultural and domestic dependencies demanded by plantation society.

Evidence of these agricultural roots is clear in the character of Fauquier's countryside today.

The Roots of Virginia, 1649-1759:

Colonial Land Grants and the Founding of Fauquier

The development of Fauquier County was tied to tidewater Virginia and the British colonial land grants that established the county seats and parishes for the settlers of Virginia.

The rural character of Fauquier can be seen as a product of the earliest seventeenth-century Northern Neck land grants.

Bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, the Northern Neck became the territory administered by Thomas Fairfax, fifth Baron Fairfax of Cameron, at the beginning of the eighteenth century.

When settlers began moving west, the sixth baron, Thomas Lord Fairfax, came to Virginia to clarify the western boundaries of his proprietary lands and promote their settlement.

Fearful of losing the charter of the proprietary and attempting to salvage as much land as possible should the Privy Council rule against his claim, Lord Fairfax took an individual grant in 1736 in his own name.

Called Leeds Manor after his family home, Leeds Castle in Kent, England, the territory contained 122,850 acres of land that spread across what is today the northwestern part of Fauquier, as well as parts of Loudoun, Frederick, and Shenandoah Counties.

Leeds Manor was later leased in small holdings of 150 to 200 acres to accommodate the large number of small farmers coming to the piedmont.

Although the land was patented in 1736, its leasing did not begin until 1749. when courts had confirmed the validity of the proprietary and Fairfax had established himself at Greenway Court in Frederick County.

Because the proprietor preferred to make grants of large tracts of land to land speculators and developers, whom he charged a small yearly quitrent, the majority of land in what was to become Fauquier was held in large tracts until after the Revolution.

Some of these tracts were leased out in small parcels, but many settlers passed west through Fauquier to land farther west where freehold settlement enabled a farmer to bequeath developed land to his heirs.

With the founding of Fauquier County in 1759 and the proprietor's active promotion of leases on Leeds Manor at the same time, however, a steady influx of immigrants came to the area, and development of the lands accelerated.

The earliest settlement in Fauquier County occurred along the rivers, creeks, and runs, in the manner that most of Virginia was explored and measured.

Indeed, the first leases issued in Fauquier were those near Carter's Run in the Manor of Leeds.

Although not navigable, these waterways served as important sources of power and food and hence encouraged the development first of large estates and then of smaller farms and mill centers that became the cultural and industrial centers of the county.

The first colonial outposts, initially along the Rappahannock, have left little physical evidence of their existence. Nicholas Hayward's 1687 broadside for enticing settlers to the proposed town of Brenton offers a glimpse of Fauquier's earliest housing:

"The proprietor will offer to lease to such persons 100 acres of land for a farm and one acre in the said town for a house and to furnish to each family nails and other hardware in sufficient quantity to build a house in size 26 to 28 feet long and 14 to 16 feet wide, and 15 bushels of indian corn for their subsistence the first year, all an annual rent of 4 ecus (or one pound) sterling."

The clearing of the land provided the wood for these average-size two-room frame houses. As further enticement, the town was paled or fortified to defend its location on the Indian Road.

The 1719 Germantown settlement, now an archaeological site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, also provides clues to the early built environment in Fauquier.

 In 1718 twelve families from Siegen, Germany, who were dissatisfied with conditions at Germanna, Governor Spotswood's established town on the Rapidan River acquired a warrant to settle 1,805 acres of land in Fauquier County.

The land was laid out in an "oblong square" on both sides of Licking Run and was divided equally among the settlers, each lot bordering the stream.

By 1748 Germantown had a church and school, though it is described as "like a village in Germany where the houses are far apart."