Recent notes have tossed around the words "patents" and "grants". Grants were issued by the proprietor of the Northern Neck lands to the first purchaser of the property from him (or her). Patents were used in the rest of Virginia and were issued to the first purchaser of the property from the crown. The person who took title to the land paid an initial fee and later paid annual quit rents to either the crown or the Northern Neck proprietor. Quit rents may be likened to real estate taxes, except that in the Northern Neck the payment went to the proprietor, not to the crown. The proprietor provided no government services in return for the quit rents.
There was a long argument as to what constituted the lands of the Northern Neck. Charles II had given the land between the Rappahannock River and the Potomac River to a group of supporters. The question arose as to what constituted the Rappahannock River. This river branched into two forks, the southern fork, called the Rapidan, and the northern fork, which was sometimes called the Rappahannock or the North Fork or Hedgman's River. The land between these two branches was called the Great Fork and land in this area was said to lie in the Great Fork of the Rappahannock.
The change in the name of the southern fork, from the South Rappahannock to the Rapidan, seems to have originated with Alexander Spotswood. One wonders if this name change was an attempt to whittle away some of the lands of the Northern Neck and return them to the Crown. The argument as to whether the lands in the Great Fork were in the Northern Neck or not went on for more than thirty years. During this time, the Crown issued patents for the land in this area. The Second Colony lived in this area and so their deeds were in the form of patents. The First Colony clearly lived in the Northern Neck at Germantown, so their deed to the Germantown tract was a grant.
The argument about the original ownership of the lands in the Great Fork was resolved in the early 1740's, with the decision that the lands of the Great Fork did belong to the Northern Neck. (The question hinged on which branch of the Rappahannock was the larger,and this question did not have an obvious answer.) This same decision said that the purchasers of the land in the form of the patent process had been innocent and their patents were declared to be valid deeds to the land. But, anyone taking up unclaimed land in the Great Fork after this date had to obtain a grant from the Northern Neck Proprietor, not from the Crown.
Thus John Fishback had a patent in 1730 for land in the area, known today as the Little Fork, which was in the Great Fork. Later, John's son, Frederick, wanted to extend the land to include some adjacent land that was unclaimed. By then, he had to deal with Lord Fairfax. He obtained a grant, which included all of the land that had been in the patent, plus the new unclaimed land. Thus, he had one title to the entire 790 acres. Presumably, he had to pay Lord Fairfax only for the new land. After the grant was issued, he had to pay quit rents on the entire property to Lord Fairfax.
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.