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1Author:  Slaughter Philip 1808-1890Requires cookie*
 Title:  The History of Truro Parish in Virginia  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Modern English collection | UVA-LIB-Text 
 Description: Among the prominent features in the physiognomy of Eastern Virginia are the great rivers which run from the blue mountains and pour their streams into the bosom of the "Mother of Waters," as the Indians called the Chesapeake Bay. Along these rivers, which were then the only roads, the first settlers penetrated the wilderness. This explains the seeming anomaly, that the first Parishes and counties often included both sides of broad rivers, it being easier to go to Court and to Church by water, than through forests by what were called in those days "bridle paths." Hence Parishes were often sixty or more miles long and of little breadth. The space between the rivers was called "Necks." Among the most historic of these was the Northern Neck, which included all the land between the Potomac and the Rappahannock rivers from their head springs to the Chesapeake Bay. This was the princely plantation of Lord Fairfax. Within this territory were the seats of the Fairfaxes, Washingtons, Masons, McCartys, Fitzhughs, Brents, Alexanders, Lewises, Mercers, Daniels, Carters, Dades, Stuarts, Corbins, Tayloes, Steptoes, Newtons, Browns, Lees, Thorntons, Balls, Smiths, and other leading families too many to mention, who dispensed an elegant hospitality at Northumberland House, Nomini, Stratford, Chantilly, Mount Airy, Sabine Hall, Bedford, Albion, Cedar Grove, Boscobel, Richland, Marleborough, Woodstock, Gunston, Belvoir, Woodlawn, Mount Vernon, etc. Beginning at Lancaster, county was taken from county, Parish from Parish, as the population of each passed the frontiers, until in 1730 Prince William was taken from Stafford and King George Counties, above Chappawansick Creek and Deep Run, and along the Potomac, to the "Great Mountains." This became also Hamilton Parish; which Parish, by an Act of the General Assembly passed at the Session of May, 1732, to take effect the first of the following November, was divided into two Parishes "By the river Ockoquan, and the Bull Run, (a branch thereof,) and a course from thence to the Indian Thoroughfare of the Blue Ridge of Mountains," (Ashby's Gap.) All that part of Prince William lying below the said bounds was to retain the name of Hamilton, "And all that other part of the said county, which lies above those bounds, shall hereafter be called and known by the name of Truro." The Parish was named after the Parish in Cornwall, in England, which is now the Diocese of Truro.
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