In 1734, the General Assembly looked to the past when naming Orange County after William of Orange, who ruled initially with Queen Mary and then solo as King William III.
To encourage settlers to move to the western lands, those who arrived in Orange County by January 1 of 1734/5 (at that time, the "new year" started on March 1) were exempt from taxes for the next three years. How would you like to start a new county's operations if you could not raise funds for three years?
The county boundaries extended "northerly by the grant of Lord Fairfax and westerly by the utmost limits of Virginia." The vague descriptions were common for counties on the frontier of settlement. The boundaries of the Fairfax grant had not been defined at this time.