The Northern Neck was at least broadly defined by Charles II in the middle of the 1600's, and its existence as a proprietorship extended to the time of the Revolution War. During this time, there were different proprietors, but by 1730 Thomas Lord Fairfax, as the legitimate sole proprietor, began to exert his claim to the land in the Great Fork of the branch of the Rappahannock River. What was at stake was the right to sell the land and to collect quit-rents yearly on the land which had been sold. To us the quit-rents seem quite low but when one multiplies the rate by a million acres, it begins to count up and is significant.
In the Northern Neck, the full authority of the Colony of Virginia, as the government, was never in doubt. What Charles II had done was to transfer the ownership of the land from himself to the Northern Neck proprietors. As land owners, they could sell the land, and, as a part of the bargain, ask for a payment each year forever (quit-rents). The crown collected these quit-rents in the normal course of events, on the land outside the Northern Neck, and they were applied to the costs of running the Colony of Virginia. As such, they look a lot like real estate taxes. In the Northern Neck, the Colony of Virginia was the loser.
After Lord Fairfax lost the first round (about 1743), in which it was decided that the Northern Neck did not extend to the south of the northern branch of the Rappahannock River, he appealed to the Privy Council of King George II. There he won his case and there were no further appeals. So in 1743, it was decided that the land that now constitutes the modern counties of Rappahannock, Madison, and Culpeper was a part of the Northern Neck. While the discussion, or more exactly the arguments, went on, the people in the Great Fork had been very nervous because they had taken their title from the King directly. But if the Northern Neck proprietor won, then their titles would be in doubt. The decision though protected the people in their rights to their land; however, many of them took out grants with Lord Fairfax to secure a new, fresh, clean title to their land.
There was another reason that many of them took out new grants for their land. They had been sitting on land and claiming it as theirs, but the legal description in the patent (essentially a deed) did not cover all of the land that they had been claiming. So many of them, in taking their new grants with Lord Fairfax, found that the resurvey disclosed there was a lot more land than they had previously been claiming. After the boundaries of the Northern Neck were decided, our Germanna people were all living in the Northern Neck. The people at Germantown had always been in the Northern Neck, and there had never been question about from whom they secured their title. All of the others had thought at first that they were outside the Northern Neck, and they had bought their land from the King.
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.