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According to tradition, 17year-old George named the town for himself, inscribing the plat he had drawn “Plan of the Town of Washington," making it the oldest of all towns in the United States named for the first president.
But another version of the naming of the town can be found in the Rappahannock Historical Societys records. Richard Jackson, one of three Jackson brothers who came to Philadelphia in 1775 from Ulster, Ireland, was one of the earliest settlers in what is now known as Rappahannock. He settled about a mile from Washington, Virginia, “which it is said, he named after George Washington, whom he greatly admired," acording to the society’s archives on the Jackson family history. Richard Jackson died in 1826, leaving behind an immense estate that reached
from Washington to Sperryville, five miles long by ten miles wide, covering about 30,000 acres.
Whatever the source of the names, Virginia’s General '■ Assembly formally established Washington as a 1 town in December, 1796, once the population of the village reached the required number of “200 souls."
In 1833, when Rappahannock County separated from Culpeper, Washington became the county seat.
The 1835 edition of a “New and Comprehensive Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia Containing a Copious Collection of Geographical, Political, Commercial, Religious, Moral and Miscellaneous Information Collected and Compiled from the Most Respectable and Chiefly Original Sources” described the town:
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