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the Northern Neck Proprietary to seven of their favorites at court. And this Proprietary did contain all the land that is now Rappahannock County. And by 1670, one Lord Culpeper (yes, it is named after him, but that was before all the toney restaurants and Target’ came to town) had control of much of this vast area but had not done much with it. And this Lord begat a daughter, Catherine, who married another Lord, one Fairfax, the Fifth. And lo, my little ones, this latter Lord begat (by Catherine) a son, Thomas, who was called Lord Fairfax VI (just to be consistent). But by the time little Tbrnmy came into his rightful inheritance, a lot of other people were interested in his great-grand daddy’s Proprietary. Most of this vast tract was wilderness, the wild west of its day. So lots of real estate speculators masquerading as gentleman explorers were busily patenting large chunks of the region for themselves. Land Patents are a charming aspect of our history. Definition of the term is hard to locate but these patents do seem to be the gentleman’s equivalent of the king’s declaration of continental ownership, just on a (slightly) smaller scale: “I do declare this 2,000 odd acres to be mine, free and clear” or something similar.
Alexander Spotswood, who was governor of Virginia in the early 1700s, generated a great deal of this interest. He and his associates had acquired interest (via patents) in lands around Germanna, west of Fredericksburg, land that fell under the Fairfax Proprietary. In 1716 he took a little trip to the Blue Ridge and beyond, a gentile adventure really, complete with lots of good food and drink. That now legendary journey was to determine just what other
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