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 Charles II (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 those 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.
(03 Jul 02)
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.