However, residents and travelers alike commonly called the area “Fairfax Court House.” It was officially re-named Fairfax in 1874. On January 14, 1805, the Virginia General Assembly established the Town of Providence on 14 acres of Ratcliffe’s land surrounding the new courthouse. By the end of the century, a new crop – wheat – had replaced tobacco. Together, they authored the Fairfax Resolves in 1774, a proclamation of colonists’ rights.

1800sĮighteenth-century Fairfax was home to two of the greatest political figures of the period: George Washington and George Mason. The first session of court at the new courthouse in the Town of Providence convened April 21, 1800. In 1798, county officials chose a new courthouse location, one catering to Fairfax’s economic and political changes. Like the church, large plantation owners controlled the county court, charged with both judicial and administrative duties. Life was first organized around the Truro Parish in 1732. By 1700, European planters and farmers from the Tidewater region migrated westward to the 5 million acre land grant owned by the aristocratic Fairfax family. The church parish and the county court framed both politics and everyday life. While our earliest residents were Native Americans who lived here near the end of the ice age, Colonial Fairfax was a place of tobacco plantations, revolutionary ideas, and a black slave labor force.

It is a story of migration and settlement, of civil war and economic boom, and of respecting heritage – while embracing new cultures.

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