Modern location of the long-vanished original Fairfax Stone
"Fairfax" and "Culpeper" are names closely linked in the formation of Virginia, though the counties today are not adjacent to each other. The civil War in England in the mid-1600's led to the defeat of King Charles I. The victorious Puritans cut off the head of Charles I on January 30, 1649 (1648, Old Style). His son declared himself to be the next king, Charles II, but had to flee to France with his few supporters - he Puritans under Cromwell had won the English Civil War and controlled England.
While in France, the king in exile rewarded his allies with grants of land in Virginia. Lord Culpeper was one of those allies. In September, 1649 Charles II granted the Northern Neck of Virginia to Lord Culpeper and six other supporters - though Charles II couldn't follow through and actually ensure legal title until he regained the throne eleven years later in 1660. A grandson of Lord Culpeper, the sixth person to be called Lord Fairfax, finally established clear legal claim to the land almost a century later. Lord Fairfax's grant allowed him to establish "proprietary" control over the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers.
The Virginia colonial government resisted the land claim that Lord Fairfax inherited, because it reduced the control of the House of Burgesses over the northern part of the colony. In 1675 Lord Culpeper became Governor of Virginia, and in 1688 King James II confirmed that he owned 5/6ths while a cousin (Alexander) owned the remainder of the grant. (You thought regional conflicts between Northern Virginia and other sections of the state were something new?) When Lord Culpeper died, his daughter Katherine Culpeper inherited 5/6th of the "proprietorship." Her mother retained 1/6th ownership until her death. Katherine Culpeper married Thomas, Fifth Lord Fairfax, and their son Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, ultimately inherited it all in 1719. The Culpepers and Fairfaxes had been on opposite sides of the English Civil War, but the Restoration in 1660 had put that dispute behind them.
Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, allowed Virginia agents (primarily Robert "King" Carter) to manage the proprietary until the early 1730's. Continued legislative threats to his legal rights, plus the death of Robert Carter, triggered Fairfax to get the Privy Council in London to order a final survey of the boundaries of his ownership.
Near the Chesapeake Bay, that land is known as the Northern Neck, and the boundaries are clear. Defining the inland edge of the land claim of Lord Fairfax required surveys in the 1730's and decisions in London in the 1740's. The 1688 patent had described the western boundary as the "first heads or springs" of the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers, and Robert Carter had claimed in 1706 that this included all the area between the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers. Virginia claimed the Fairfax grant was limited to the area between the confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac (Harpers Ferry today), and the falls of the Rappahannock (Fredericksburg today).
For the 1736 survey, Governor Gooch of Virginia appointed three commissioners, Lord Fairfax appointed three - and then each side also appointed three surveyors. (Lord Fairfax had George Washington surveying his western lands starting in 1748, years later...) Not surprisingly, separate maps were created by the two sides after the survey, and it took eight years before officials in England decided finally in favor of Lord Fairfax.
A year later, in 1746, a "back line" was surveyed between the headwaters of the Rapidan and the Potomac. The Fairfax Stone was set at the north end, and this time all the surveyors agreed on the boundary - which set aside over 5 million acres of Virginia for Lord Fairfax. Today, the boundary between Shenandoah and Rockingham counties follows that surveyed line, connecting the headwaters of the Rapidan to the headwaters of the North Fork of the Potomac River. (Greene County, Orange County, and Spottsylvania County are south of the Rapidan, so they were not part of the Fairfax Grant.)
Lord Fairfax had come to Virginia in 1735 to defend his claim to the land, returned to England in 1737 to negotiate with the Privy Council, and then returned again to Virginia in 1747. In 1742, while Lord Fairfax himself was in England, the colony carved out a new county from Prince William and named it after Lord Fairfax.
Lord Fairfax was a life-long bachelor. After he returned to Virginia in 1747, he lived at his cousin William Fairfax's home, Belvoir (now the site of Fort Belvoir), before building a hunting lodge he titled grandly "Greenway Court" - far away from the settled Tidewater, west of the Blue Ridge. He added a stone house and settled there permanently in 1761, essentially on the frontier. Though his reasons will never be known for sure, there is some evidence that he was rejected by a woman he intended to marry before he came to Virginia in 1735.
He stayed neutral during the Revolutionary War, and died in December, 1781 (after Cornwallis's surrender at Yorktown). After 10 years of negotiating and lawsuits, the new Commonwealth of Virginia acquired title to the Fairfax lands that had not already been granted to anyone, and a real estate syndicate purchased Greenway Court and other properties clearly owned by heirs of Lord Fairfax.
