For some time prior to the organization of the county there had been a small backwoods settlement, perhaps only a few scattered log houses, near the intersection of the Carolina and old Ridge Roads. This tiny hamlet had dignified itself with the name of George Town in rugged loyalty to King George the Second. Deck and Heaton say that in 1757 a little fort was built there. Protection from attack by the French and Indians was deemed necessary to every frontier settlement. Nicholas Minor, who was a captain in the Virginia Militia and in active service at this period, may have had a hand in the building of this fort and it is probable that he was in military command there. He lived on his nearby plantation of Fruitland and his estate included some sixty acres or more at the intersection of the Carolina and Ridge Roads. In the year 1756, it is believed, he employed John Hough (who, as stated in the last chapter, had in 1744 settled in these backwoods and was acting as a surveyor for Lord Fairfax) to survey this land for a town site. Hough thereupon made his survey and perhaps mapped his first rough draft in 1757, probably making a more carefully detailed copy in 1759, after the establishment of the Town had been formally authorized by the Legislature and Minor had sold off a number of the lots as plotted on the plan. If so, this first rough draft is now lost or has been destroyed and the copy of 1759 was destined for many years also to be involved in mysterious disappearance. Though constantly in use for the first forty years of its existence, through oversight or negligence neither this 1759 "edition," nor the original draft, had been entered on the county records. Then in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the 1759 copy was used as an exhibit in the suit of Cavan vs. Murray, involving land adjacent to the town and in 1798 folded up and filed with the county clerk together with other exhibits in that litigation. The story of its disappearance and recovery is attached to a photostatic copy of the map now before me:
"For generations the mystery of its disappearance has been a subject of speculation and many believed that it had been withdrawn from the public records into private lands, and there held or possibly lost. In November 1928, the bundle containing the papers in the above suit was opened by Charles F. Cochran, and the old plat brought to light, just 130 years after it had been placed there. The paper was worn through at many of the creases, being completely in two through the middle, many minute bits were turned under or hanging only by a shred, and in places there has been shrinkage. Through the courtesy of Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, and Col. Lawrence Martin, Chief of the Division of Maps, and in return for permission to file a photostat of the plat in the Library of Congress, the plat was mounted by Mr. William F. Norbeck, the Library's expert in the restoration of old maps. It was due to Mr. Henry B. Rust of Rockland, near Leesburg that the extended search of the Loudoun County records was made, in which the plat was brought to light, and he has had it framed."[80]
This framed map of 1759 was presented to the county, by delivery to Mr. B. W. Franklin, then county clerk of Loudoun, on the 30th December, 1928, by Mr. E. Marshall Rust, the brother of Henry B. Rust.
Upon the organization of the county, the matter of location and establishment of a county seat had to be determined. It was not, however, until the 15th June, 1758, that the Council of the Colony, by deciding to locate the courthouse of Loudoun on the lands of Nicholas Minor on the old Carolina Road near the crossing of the Alexandria-Keys Gap Highway, fixed the importance of what was to be known as Leesburg. The order of the Council reads:
"The Council having this day taken under Consideration the most proper Place for establishing the Court House of Loudoun County, it appearing to them that the plantation of Captain Nicholas Minor was the most convenient place and agreeable to the Generality of the People in that County, it was their opinion, and accordingly Ordered, That the Court House for the said County be fixed on the land of the said Minor."
When this order of the Council was made on the 15th June, 1758, the Loudoun Court, as we have seen, had been duly organized and from time to time was meeting for the performance of its duties since the preceding 12th July. Where these early meetings were held does not appear on the records, nor so far as I can learn, is now known. The record of the court's sittings at the time generally begin "At a court held at the courthouse" so that the presumption arises that, for the time being, the residence of one of its members may have been used for that purpose. Apparently the court was becoming impatient to have an official home and weary of the Council's delay; for at the court's session of the 11th day of July, 1758, or four days before the date of the Council's order, we find that it is, by the Loudoun Court,
"Ordered that the Sheriff of this County Advertise for Workmen to build a Courthouse to meet here at the next Court to agree for the same."
The proposed edifice was so carefully described that we can get a very clear idea of its appearance from the specifications recorded at this session of the 9th August, 1758. It was to be a brick building 28 x 40, with a jury room added sixteen feet square, having "an outside chimney and fireplace, eight feet in the clear from the foundation to the surface, two feet from the surface to the water table four feet, from thence to the joist ten feet." There significantly follows "and also a Prison and Stocks of the same Dimensions as those in Fairfax County for this County."[81]
A month later, at the court's sitting of the 12th September, 1758, it was
"Ordered that the courthouse for this County be Built on a Lott of Captain Nicholas Minor's No. 27 and 28 and that he convey the same to William West and James Hamilton Gent. as Trustees in Fee for the use of the County."[82]