Fairfax County, Virginia
Fairfax County, Virginia, is part of the suburban ring around Washington, DC. Its county seat is the City of Fairfax, although because it is an independent city under Virginia law, the city of Fairfax is not part of Fairfax County. Virginia is weird that way. It is an affluent county – it was the first county in the United States to reach a six-figure median household income and has the second-highest median household income of any county-level local jurisdiction in the United States (after neighboring Loudoun County).
The Evolution of Fairfax County Boundaries
As we have seen throughout this series of essays, knowledge of the changing county boundaries, which reflect the need for local government as an area’s population grows, is an important research tool for genealogists looking for records of their ancestors’ presence in each area. All these maps are taken from https://www.mapofus.org.
A (Very) Little History
In the earliest years of settlement of the colony of Virginia, the centers of population, commerce, and government were in the lower Tidewater area of the colony – from Jamestown and Williamsburg on the peninsula between the York and James Rivers to the area at the Fall Line of the James River. This is the area that would emerge as the state capital of Richmond after the American Revolution.
However, a rival center for population and commerce developed further north in the colony, in the area between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, by the end of the 17th century. Called the Fairfax Grant or the Northern Neck Grant, this area became the home to some of the most famous names in Virginia (and American) history – Fairfax, Lee, Mason, Washington, Marshall, and Carter, to name just a few.
For the complete story of the impact of the Fairfax Grant on the evolution of the Virginia Colony, go to the Virginia Places website: http://www.virginiaplaces.org/settleland/fairfaxgrant.html.
To summarize: the grant was bounded by the streambeds of the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers, but, as explorers followed these routes to their origins in the Shenandoah Valley and beyond over the years, people found it difficult to identify which of the many streams and tributaries were the “real” course of the rivers. Selecting one small stream over another could change the acreage included in the grant by hundreds or even thousands of acres. This would change who had the authority to sell these lands, and thus who could profit from them. The controversy over the extent of the Fairfax Grant continued for more than 100 years, being resolved only in the 1790s. The website I provided goes into this story in enormous detail.
By the 18th century, the area that would become Fairfax County was home to both the Washington and Mason families, as well as branches of the Carter and Lee families of the Northern Neck, and had developed as an alternate power base to the Tidewater elites in southeastern Virginia. As Virginians began to look westward for land, access to the Ohio Valley via the Potomac River became attractive, and surveyors and early explorers started to seek viable travel routes west. Fairfax County was on that path. One early surveyor of these prospects was a resident of Fairfax County, George Washington; his half-brothers were investors in the Ohio Company, a land venture that invested a lot of Virginia capital in the exploration and settlement of the Ohio Country, as the area beyond the mountains was called prior to the Revolution.
My Ancestors in Fairfax County
I have two sets of ancestors in Fairfax County – one during the 18th century, and one during the 20th century.
Two sets of Philly’s paternal great-grandparents lived in Fairfax County. Richard Simpson (1692-1762) and Sarah Barker (1706-1766) were living in Fairfax County by 1730, when their son, George Richard Simpson (1730-1782), was born there in 1730. Richard Wheeler (1698-1751) and Rebecca Frizzell (1700-1762) were living in Fairfax County by the time their son, Drummond Wheeler (their daughter Susannah’s brother) was born there in 1726.
The Simpson and Wheeler families came to Fairfax County from Maryland. One of my 7th great-grandfathers, Richard Simpson, was born in 1692 in Ann Arundel County, Maryland, near Annapolis, and married Sarah Barker in Fairfax in 1726. Another 7th great-grandfather, Richard Wheeler, was born in 1698, also in Ann Arundel County, and married Rebecca Frizzell in Baltimore before moving to Fairfax County around 1725. I don’t know much about Rebecca; some records suggest that her father was William Frizzell, who lived in Baltimore in the early 18th century, but there are other men named Frizzell who are also likely candidates. The records are unclear.
Both Richard Simpson and Richard Wheeler appear on the list of voters who chose members of the House of Burgesses from Fairfax County in 1744. I have been able to find out a lot about these two ancestors through the records of Truro Parish of the Church of England, which encompassed the area now occupied by Fairfax County. The Vestry Book of this parish, covering the years from 1732-1785, has been transcribed and is available online; it provides a good record of life in this part of Virginia during precisely the time my ancestors were living there.
There were three churches in this parish, and I am most interested in the Occoquan Church – later known as Pohick Church. For example, one of the duties of the parish vestries was to go around the plantations and renew the landmarks that denoted property boundaries. This was called “Processioning,” and in 1743 the Vestry Book instructed the following:
“that Richard Simpson and Thomas Ford procession all the patented lands that lye between Occoquan and Pohick on the upper side of the Ox road, and between that and Occoquan as far up as Popes Head, and that they perform the same sometime in the month of October or November next, and report their proceedings according to law.”
In later years, two of Richard’s sons – George and Moses – also appear on the list of Truro Parish processioners. I figure that this gave them permission to go wander around on everyone’s land – in fact, the Vestry Book describes this process as “perambulating” – literally, “walking around.” This gave them an opportunity to poke their noses into everyone’s business – something as enjoyable and possibly titillating then as it would be today. Sort of an 18th-century HOA.
The Truro Parish Vestry Book reveals the names of individuals with whom my Simpson and Wheeler ancestors associated during the middle of the 19th century – among them, George Mason and George Washington. Another well-known individual, Parson Mason Locke Weems (Washington's first biographer, and creator of the famous Cherry Tree story), led services at Pohick Church on occasion from the turn of the nineteenth century until as late as 1817.
This map shows property ownership in Fairfax County in 1760. The area within the red square is where my Simpson ancestors lived at the time. The blue circle is roughly where I lived with my family from 1985 through 1998. I had no idea that my ancestors had owned land so close to where I lived. The green circle is in the generation location of Pohick Church. It was about 10 miles from where my Simpson ancestors lived; this trip would have taken them two to three hours. Going to church in the 18th century was an all-day event.
Richard and Sarah had seven children, so far as I can tell. As has been the case in every county in the south that I have researched for this essay series, the records are a little imprecise. Fortunately, Richard’s will has been transcribed; he mentions his children in the will, so that helps. His sons Moses, George, and William appear on the map below as property owners near Richard’s home, which makes sense.
I am descended from George Simpson, Richard and Sarah’s fourth child. He married Susannah Wheeler (1725-1820) in Fairfax in 1742 – probably at the first Truro Church that I mentioned above. Susannah’s parents were also residents of Fairfax County and members of Truro Parish, although her father, Richard Wheeler, was not as prominent in church and local government affairs as my Simpson ancestors.
George and Susannah had 11 children in Fairfax County, including my 5th great-grandfather Charles Simpson (1744-1834), who was their second child. This is where the records dry up; Charles married a woman named Margaret Harris, but I don’t know when or where. Some records suggest that they were living in Kentucky by 1772, but I find that unlikely; the settlement of Kentucky had barely begun at that point, and the counties in which their existence is supposedly documented didn’t exist until after the American Revolution – in some cases, well after the revolution.
A clue to what happened to this family can be discerned by examining the evolution of counties in Virginia and Kentucky. One of their children, my 4th great-grandmother Philadelphia Simpson (1776-1849) was born in Augusta County, Virginia. At the time of her birth (and of her siblings), Augusta County had no western boundary, as this map illustrates:
If my Simpson ancestors indeed were among the earliest settlers in Kentucky, as some records suggest, records about their lives might well be in Augusta County, which extended as far as Virginia claimed – to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
It is a stretch, I think, to assume without evidence that the Simpsons were in Kentucky by the 1770s; I’m going with the idea that they were in Augusta County and well within the Shenandoah Valley. Charles and Margaret’s daughter Philadelphia (Philly) married Charles Stuart (1774-1846) in Madison County, Kentucky, and I believe that they relocated there after the Revolution – although, once again, Charles Stuart’s birth is identified as occurring in Kentucky County, Virginia, which would be consistent with the theory that they were all early settlers in Kentucky and that the county names caught up to them after some time.
None of these ancestors shows up in Kentucky until 1789, when Charles Stuart appears in the Kentucky census taken that year. I’m not sure I’ll ever resolve this question.
This essay is, fundamentally, the reason I do genealogy. Our daughter, Lori Marie McPherson, was a year old when we moved to Fairfax County from Falls Church in 1973, and our son, Kevin Timothy McPherson, was born in Fairfax Hospital in Fairfax County in 1977. We lived in Fairfax County for 25 years and both of our children graduated from Fairfax High School in Fairfax County.
My parents, Lloyd Cecil Arnold (1918-2001) and Violet Henrietta Workman (1921-2012) had moved from Pima County (Tucson), Arizona, in 1942. After World War II, my parents relocated permanently to Northern Virginia, living first in Arlington County. They moved to Fairfax County in 1950 and lived in the county until 1986, when they relocated to Madison County, Virginia.
My older brother Kenneth Lloyd Arnold (1944-2014) and I were born in Arlington County, and of course we moved with our parents to Fairfax County when they relocated in 1950. We lived for the next 10 years in a part of Fairfax County near the independent city of Falls Church. That’s where we went to elementary school, and where our younger sister, Maribeth Kay Arnold, was born in 1954.
We moved to Annandale in 1960, and we all went to Annandale High School before going away to college. Neither Ken nor Maribeth ever moved back to Fairfax County, but I did. After graduating from high school and marrying Timothy Charles McPherson in 1969, we lived for three years in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Tim went to law school at the University of Virginia. That’s also where our first child, Lori Marie McPherson, was born in 1972.
After a brief sojourn in San Antonio, Texas, while Tim fulfilled his military obligation, we moved back to Fairfax County, where Tim took a job at a law firm in Fairfax. After living for one year in the city of Falls Church, we moved to Fairfax City and then to Fairfax County. Tim continued to practice law in the county, establishing his own business in the late 1970s.
I went to graduate school at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, DC, from 1973 through 1980, earning an MA and Ph.D. in political science. While I was in grad school, our second child, Kevin Timothy McPherson, was born in Fairfax County.
After working for a few years in the United States Senate, for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and for two defense contracting companies at Tysons Corner, I changed careers and began teaching. My first teaching job was at Woodbridge Senior High School in Prince William County; we continued to live in Fairfax County through that time. Both of our children graduated from Fairfax High School before they went off to college. Neither of them ever returned to live in Fairfax County.
I didn’t realize until I was working on this week’s essay that I drove past the land owned by my 18th-century ancestors in my commute during the ten years I taught in Prince William County. You can’t make this stuff up.
Tim and I soon left the county as well. Once our children had moved away and we were pretty sure they were not planning to move back to Fairfax County, we decided to move also. In 1998, we relocated to Williamsburg, Virginia. We had met at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg in 1965, and we always enjoyed being there. We weren’t old enough to retire yet; I continued to teach, and Tim switched careers to become a middle school teacher.
This map combines these two stories.
Here's the key to the numbers on this map:
Pickett Homes, Arlington, 1947-1950.
Bel Air, Fairfax County, 1950-1960.
Annandale, Fairfax County, 1960-1969.
Falls Church, Virginia, 1973.
Fairfax City, 1974-1977.
Fairfax City, 1977-1980.
Fairfax City, 1980-1986.
Fairfax County, 1986-1998
The red dot, near the top of the map, was where my husband Tim lived in Arlington County.
The green circle, near the bottom of the map, is where my Simpson ancestors lived in Fairfax County in the 18th century.