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Today, Fairfax County has an affluent, well-educated population, and although many still commute to jobs in Washington D.C., an increasing number both live and work within the County. Fairfax is now the richest and most populous political subdivision in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The history of Fairfax County is of interest and importance to all Americans. George Washington and George Mason are part of our national heritage. Many of Fairfax County’s historic homes and historical places are on the National Register of Historic Places. Many more have been protected or preserved by the county government or private organizations.
Now, after the initial English settlement of Virginia, two other events occurred that were to affect the land that is now Fairfax County. First, b 1634, the Virginia House of Burgesses divided the colony into eight shires or counties for convenience in the administration of colonial law. As the population increased and spread north and west from the settlements on the James River, the original large counties were divided up into smaller ones. Fairfax was first part of a district called Chickacoan. It later became part of several counties as the divisions continued: Northumberland (1645), Westmorland ((1653), Stafford (l664), Prince William (1730), and finally in 1742, Fairfax County, much larger than we know it now. Second; In 1649, the future English king, Charles II; is driven into exile in Europe by the English Civil War and the beheading of his father, Charles I.. While in exile he granted to seven of his loyal supporters all the land between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers in Virginia as a proprietary. By 1690, this land had come under the control of the Fairfax family. Thomas, sixth Lord Fairfax come to Virginia in 1737 installed his cousin, William Fairfax as his land agent and by 1745 had had confirmed the full extent of his proprietary at 5,282,000 acres.
It was William who built the Great Belvoir mansion (on land that is now the U.S. Army's Fort Belvoir) in 1741. The following year William arranged to have Fairfax County created from the northern portion of Prince William County and named for Lord Fairfax. At the time of it’s formation, Fairfax County included all of what are now Loudoun and Arlington counties, and the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church, and Fairfax. The first courthouse was located near the present Tyson's Corner (Routes 7 and 123). In 1752, the court moved its business to a new Courthouse in the recently founded town of Alexandria (1749) where it remained until 1800. In that year it was moved to it’s present location in what is now Fairfax City.
Eighteenth-century Fairfax was an agricultural society based on raising Tobacco with the labor of Negro slaves. In 1749, seven years after the founding of the county 28 percent of it population was slaves; by 1782 this proportion had increased to 41 percent. Although the masters of the great plantations owned large numbers of blacks, most of the slaves were held in small groups by less wealthy farmers.
In 1748, George Washington, Fairfax County's most distinguished citizen, came to live with his half brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon on the Potomac River. After his brother's death in 1752, George rented, and later purchased the estate. By the time of his death in 1799, he had increased his Mount Vernon lands to about eight thousand acres, and held over three hundred slaves. He was also the most famous man in America.
A few miles down the Potomac in Fairfax is Gunston Hall, the home of George Mason. Mason, a very prominent man, also owned much land and many slaves. Yet his important place in America's heritage is often forgotten. It is to Mason that we owe a debt for the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the federal constitution that guarantee the civil rights most valued by Americans today. Mason first set forth these principles in his Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776)and embodied them in Virginia constitution of the same year. He later labored long and hard to have these essential rights guaranteed in the new national constitution.
By 1790, the total population of Fairfax, whites and blacks, was over 12,000. The following year the Virginia General Assembly ceded a portion of Fairfax County to the new federal government in order to create the District of Columbia, originally laid out as a perfect square, ten miles on a side. The national capital developed almost entirely on the Maryland side of the Potomac River, however, and the land on the south side was returned to Virginia in 1847 to become what are now Arlington County and a part of the City of Alexandria.
After 1800, with both Washington and Mason dead, with its river town of Alexandria no longer the county seat, with the soil exhausted from the ruinous growth of tobacco, and with the national economy changing, Fairfax County went into a long decline. Many fields lay fallow, and many planters and farmers left with their families and slaves for new land in the south or west. Some Fairfax slaves, perhaps as many as 4,000, were sold to interstate slaves traders and shipped to the deep south.
By the 1840s, the slave sales had largely stopped, and Yankee farmers began to buy up the worn out fields and dilapidated plantations in Fairfax. Farming with free, largely white, labor, by the 1850s the "Yankees of Fairfax" took many prizes at agricultural fairs in Virginia and Maryland. A recovery was underway in Fairfax, but it was cut short by the Civil War.
Although there were no major battles fought here during the Civil War, 1861-1865, there was much military activity in Fairfax County. Several of the Union forts comprising the defenses of Washington were located in Fairfax. Thousands of troops were stationed in or passed through the county during the war years. The First and Second Battles of Manassas (Bull Run) were fought in neighboring Prince William County. The casualties from Second Manassas and the Battle of Chantilly (Ox Hill), in 1862, were moved to St. Mary’s Church at Fairfax Station, where Clara Barton, later the founder of the American Red Cross, helped care for the wounded. Confederate Major John Singleton Mosby and his band of rangers operated almost at will in Fairfax County, harassing the Union camps, lines, and supplies. In 1863, they captured Union General Edwin H. Stoughton his bed at Fairfax Courthouse. The Confederate spy Laura Ratcliff also lived and operated in Fairfax County.
Following the Civil War, Fairfax County returned to primarily agricultural pursuits. Union soldiers and freed blacks, many of whom had seen Northern Virginia during the war, returned to Fairfax to settle and farm the land. Although local activities in dairying, stock and poultry farming, flour milling, and fruit, vegetable, and flower growing all increased to supply the needs of Washington, D.C., Fairfax remained an essentially depressed agricultural area.
In 1870, under the new Virginia Constitution, local control in Fairfax changed from government by county court to the board of supervisors system, which continues to the present. The local economy continued to grown and by 1925, Fairfax was first among all one hundred Virginia counties in value of dairy products. In the twentieth century, a significant increase occurred in the population of Fairfax over the 12,000 people who inhabited the county in 1790.
As the farmers and dairymen increased business ties in Washington, they needed and got better roads and rail service to get their produce to market. The new roads brought people from the city and the population of Fairfax soon grew quickly. More and more people from the city moved to Fairfax as daily commuters or weekend vacationers. After the Second World War, Fairfax County grew very rapidly in response to the growth of the District of Columbia and further local road improvements. (The number of people who lived here increased from 40,000 in 1940 to 596,901 in 1980.) |