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"First Washington of All" is based on the belief that the town is nearly 50 years older than that 1796 date, that in the summer of 1749 George Washington as a young surveyor laid out the town which became Washington.
In 1949 as the Town of Washington approached the bicentennial of that event Franklin Clyde Baggarly wrote and the town had published "The History of the Town of Washington, Virginia," which supported this claim. Mr. Baggarly is identified as "formerly attorney for the town.” Mr. Baggarly moved Avon Hall from Gay Street to its current location and was descended from Baldwin Bradford Baggarly who served as the town’s first treasurer under the charter granted to the town by the General Assembly in 1894 which provided for the mayor and town council form of govenment the town still has.
Mrs. Knuepfer of the Historical Society also provided a copy of this 20-page pamphlet.
Mr. Baggarly's history traces the relationship between George Washington and Thomas Fairfax, Sixth Lord and Baron of Cameron, the holder of land grants to much of the land in Virginia from the valley to the Chesapeake Bay.
It was as a surveyor working for Lord Fairfax in Culpeper County that George Washington "Survey'd for Richard Barnes, Gent, of Richmond County, a certain tract of waste and ungranted land situate lying and being in the county of Culpeper" and “On the second day thereafter, accompanied by John Lonem and Edward Corder, I journeyed one half day in a northwestern direction from Fairfax [the name then used for the Town of Culpeper] and in the Blue Ridge mountains in Culpeper County I laid off a town."
This notation is supposed to come from Washington's miscellaneous papers and to be in Washington's own handwriting.
In addition Mr. Baggarly's pamphlet includes a "Plan of the Town of Washington" clearly showing Main and Gay streets running north-south and Wheeler, Calvert, Middle, Jett and Porter streets running east-west with 51 numbered lots. According to the "History” this plan was found in 1847 among the records of the Fairfax surveys and grants which purports to be, and from every appearance is, the origi
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