Shortly after the First Colony members were settled on their own land at what became known as Germantown, Col. Robert Carter renewed his relationship with the Northern Neck Proprietor as the local agent to issue grants. This was to have an impact on the Germans, and, in fact, on the development of the Northern Neck.
In one year, 1722, he acquired 90,000 acres of land in the Northern Neck. Since he was the selling agent, he could hardly sell the land to himself so the tracts were taken in the names of others, mostly his family members. The number of acres and the timing suggest that Col. Carter was influenced by the action of Col. Spotswood who had acquired about 85,000 acres directly from the Crown below the Rappahannock. Apparently Col. Carter wanted to be the tallest tree in the forest as it pertained to backwoods land in Virginia.
One tract, of about 10,000 acres, was directly on three sides of Germantown. Thus, the Germans were blocked in these directions in acquiring additional land. By the standards of the day, the initial acquisition of the Germans had been very modest, about 150 acres per family. Before many years had gone by, they were anxious to expand, but the additional land had to be taken at some distance from Germantown. Within about ten years, there were Holtzclaw and Fishback patents for land across the Rappahannock River in the Little Fork area, but generally the new lands were in Fauquier County to the north of Germantown. By this time, the late 1720's, settlement had been occurring in the lower end of Fauquier and opportunities for land acquisition were limited.
Lord Fairfax, seeing the large tracts being taken up by others, decided to sell land from the proprietorship, which he owned, to himself. The most famous of these was the Manor of Leeds, consisting of more than a hundred thousand acres in the northwest of Fauquier and adjoining counties, including portions across the Blue Ridge Mountains. Thus his lands were in two categories, as the proprietor under the rights granted him by the Crown, and as a private citizen. The distinction was to be important after the American Revolution, as Crown lands were not treated by the Americans as favorably as the land owned by private citizens.
Though I have used the name, Fauquier County, to describe this area, it must be understood that Fauquier did not come into existence until 1759, when it was formed from Prince William County.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.