The Fairfax Line was a surveyor's line run in 1746 to establish the limits of the "Northern Neck land grant" ("Fairfax Grant") in colonial Virginia.
The land grant, first contrived in 1649, encompassed all lands bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, up to 5,000,000 acres (20,000 km2). By 1719, the lands had been inherited by Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1693–1781). By that time the question of the boundaries of the designated lands had also become highly contentious. It was decided that a line between the sources of the North Branch Potomac River and the Rappahannock River would constitute the western limit of Lord Fairfax's lands.
Contents |
The Fairfax Line runs through exceptionally rugged terrain from the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia to that of the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, traversing the headwaters of the Shenandoah River along the way. It runs for about 77 miles (124 km) from the source of the Conway River tributary of the Rappahannock (approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Charlottesville, Virginia) in a northwesterly direction to the source of the North Branch Potomac (where the present West Virginia counties of Preston, Tucker and Grant meet at a point).
The Northern Neck Grant has its genesis in 1649 when the exiled King Charles II of Britain rewarded the two Colepeper (Culpeper) brothers and five other loyal friends by issuing a grant for a "porcon of Virginia ... bounded by and within the heads of the Rivers Rappahannock and Patawomecke....". The grant actually took force when Charles was restored to the throne in 1660 and it was recorded and a "Proprietary" created in the New World. At that time, the territory encompassed by the grant had not been explored and was not known. The seven original shares ultimately devolved to Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper (1635–89) and his only child, a daughter named Catherine, who married Thomas Fairfax, 5th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1657–1710). Thus the Northern Neck grant is commonly referred to as the "Fairfax Grant" and the 1746 survey is referred to as the "Survey of the Fairfax Line".
John Savage and his survey party had located the site of the source of the North Branch Potomac River (the northern boundary of the tract) in 1736, but had made no attempt to establish the western boundaries of the 6th Lord Fairfax's lands. The 1746 survey, however, accomplished by Colonel Peter Jefferson and Thomas Lewis under extremely arduous conditions, resulted in both the emplacement of a boundary marker (the "Fairfax Stone") at the source and the establishment of the line of demarcation known as the "Fairfax Line", extending from the Stone south-east to the headwaters of the Rappahannock River. Lewis's journal of the expedition provides a vivid account of the extraordinarily difficult terrain of the pre-settlement Allegheny Mountains.