This included almost all of Alaska and about of

This included almost all of Alaska and about of half of what became Canada, a mighty huge Old Dominion for sure! That’s enough to make one take the old steamboat from D.C. to the Point Comfort for a bushel and a beer!

Apparently, the assumption was that the continent was only 300 miles wide; Indians on the two coasts had described mountain ranges that far inland.

Hmmm. Alleghenies in the east, Sierra Nevadas in the west; the “white eyes” assumed it was same range. The little area in between was, for the time being, blissfully ignored - except by the French.

What a package: 90 percent of current U.S., half of Canada, all of Alaska.

Forget Paris, forget the Spanish on the west coast, and ignore the Native Americans. Life was just so much simpler then, was it not? And just imagine the appreciation on the little piece of Rappahannock County that some ancestor may have picked up in that arrangement.

But almost before one could say ‘pieces of eight,’ some of this staggering paper empire collapsed. The Virginia Company went bankrupt in 1624, and James took over its claim. But as they say, possession (and control) is nine-tenths and perhaps all of the law. Not just grains, but a truly gargantuan pile of sand was slipping between the fingers of the Brits.

When James died the next year, actual English control of Sandy’s 16 year-old grant was but one-millionth of its original size. Over the remainder of the 1600s, some of the area of that mother of all virtual states was carved up for North Carolina (1629), Maryland (1632), New Jersey and New York (1664), and Pennsylvania (1681).

During this period, King Charles II handed out the Northern Neck, or Fairfax grant, to seven of his supporters in 1649.

A goodly hunk of this grant was in dispute for nearly a century. Of particular interest for Rappahannock County, the northeast boundary of the disputed area was the Hedgman River, up to and including its headwaters.