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potential riches this far country might hold. The gentlemen who accompanied him became known as Spotswood’s Knights of the Golden Horseshoe (according to legend, each received a miniature gold horseshoe as a remembrance of the quest). The keepsake was altogether fitting, only a gilded For Sale sign might have been more appropriate. For although the quest for land up to and including the Blue Ridge was already on in other quarters, the Spotswood expedition opened the floodgates of interest that continues even today.
Some believe that one of the Knights was Francis Thornton HI (FT3) who lived at Fall Hill in Fredericksburg. FT3 had been acquiring piedmont land even before the Spotswood trek. Whether he purchased land from the Northern Neck Proprietary or just patented it on his own is not clear. What is certain is that FT3 saw the land that was to become Rappahannock and found that it was good. In the process he left some enduring marks on the County. By the mid 1700s, he had acquired essentially all of what we now know as FT Valley. By no means a retiring fellow, FT3 lent his name to numerous local landmarks besides the valley: a river, a mansion, a mountain gap, a rock (probably named for daughter Mary) and a great little eating establishment in Spenyville, just to list a few.
He built large homes here for two of his sons and a daughter, Mary, built another mansion on some of the family land here following her marriage. The homes and their respective beneficiaries were Champeplain (Mary), Montpelier (William), and Thornton Hill (John), the latter two structures still very much in use today. John (of Thornton Hill) married Jane
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