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From: John Blankenbaker <>
Subject: [GERMANNA] (1423)Germanna Colonies, History of
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 2002 06:01:01 -0400

The fourteen hundred and twenty-third note in a series on the Germanna Colonies

When Oliver Cromwell beheaded Charles I, Charles II was the heir apparent
though as long as Cromwell was in control the claims of Charles II were
doubtful. A group of loyal supporters stood by him (he was in France) and
Charles II rewarded them with a grant of land in Virginia amounting, I
believe, to about 8253 square miles. Of course, no one knew at the time
just how much land was included. Much of it had hardly been visited by
white men and certainly the majority of it had never been surveyed. The
definition was all the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac
Rivers. No one at the time had identified just which water courses
constituted the Rivers.

Thomas the Second Lord Culpeper acquired the interests of the other members
of the group. His property went to his daughter and heir in 1689. She
married Thomas the Fifth Lord Fairfax. Their son Thomas the Sixth Lord
Fairfax inherited the grant about 1720. He began an aggressive campaign to
assert his claim in the broadest geographical sense. Most of the argument
centered on whether the South Fork of the Rappahannock River or the North
Fork of the River was the largest and therefore defined the Rappahannock.

About the time that Spotswood came to Virginia, the south fork of the
Rappahannock was renamed the Rapidan and the north fork remained the
Rappahannock (sometimes called the Hedg[e]man River). I have wondered
whether this renaming of the south fork was an attempt to reduce the
Fairfax claim. Surveyors were sent out to measure the flow of water in the
two courses but the teams representing the two parties (the Colony of
Virginia and Lord Fairfax) could not agree. The Colony of Virginia had Hume
survey a line in 1743 from the headspring of the North Fork of the
Rappahannock to the headspring of the Potomac. This line cuts across the
Shenandoah Valley.

Lord Fairfax was not satisfied and he appealed to the Privy Council in
London. They heard the case and decided in his favor. In reaching their
decision, they noted that the settlers in this Great Fork had taken their
land in good faith with the blessing of the Governor of the Colony of
Virginia who was the agent for the crown. Lord Fairfax could not claim the
land as his that had already been patented. A lot of people were nervous
and applied for a Northern Neck grant from Fairfax just to make sure. Very
often in the resurvey of the property a lot of waste land was found which
was included in the new grant application. It is probably this waste land
that they were nervous about. They had been claiming it without having
taken a patent on it. This has saved on taxes by making their legally
described land seem smaller than the actual land they were telling their
neighbors was theirs.

In 1745 it was necessary to survey a new line, this time from the
headspring of the Rapidan River (using the Conway River as the major branch
of the Rapidan) to the headspring of the Potomac River. The land between
the two forks of the Rappahannock is called the Great Fork. It is one of
the most widely used geographical descriptors in the patents and grants.

John Blankenbaker
http://www.germanna.com/
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~george/johnsgermnotes/germhis1.html
http://www.germanna.net/

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