| | 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. |
