A History of the Town of Fairfax

by Jeanne Johnson Rust

When the wealthy land-owners of the southern part of the colonized area started buying up land in lower Fairfax County for speculation, they did not buy out the title of the Doeg Indians, who occupied this area at that time. (The white man established no relations with the Doeg except to hold him off whenever possible). A series of murders were committed on the frontier by Doegs and in retaliation the colonists mistakenly killed Indians who were not Doegs. By 1675, through a series of hot-headed misunderstandings the Susquehannock Indians became involved and they struck whenever and wherever they could. Captain John Smith described the Susquehannocks as having booming voices, being seven feet tall and treading on the earth with much pride, contempt and disdain.

Although no records were kept at the time, we can assume that many homes were burned, women and children killed, etc. It is a known fact that thirty-six people were killed on the Rappahannock in one raid and that Indian retaliations of one nature or another caused the English settlements that had reached Hunting Creek to recede to Aquia, where they stayed for the next ten years.

Sir William Berkeley in order to help the frontiersmen, unwisely, and at great expense to the people, commanded a fort to be built at the mouth of each head river; e.g., one was built at Colchester on the Occoquan. These forts proved of no value, being made of mud and dirt. Other precarious forts were built in place of the mud ones. These proved useless too and the governor and gentry declined to do more.

Taking matters into their own hands, two hundred men (including men from the Fairfax County area) joined under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon. They incited the Occannechi to massacre the Susquehannock. Then, having disposed of the worst enemy, they turned on the Occannechi and murdered them. The few Indians who survived stabbed at the colonists occasionally but gradually drifted into Pennsylvania taking the Doegs with them. The frontiersmen and governing gentry, however, still remained at odds and another cleavage began to appear. This one was centered around the men's livelihood—tobacco.

From the first, tobacco had been their staple product. It was Virginia's principal export crop. It was used as money. Salaries of ministers and civil officers were paid with it. Bounty for wolves and Indian scalps were offered in it and necessary equipment was bought with it.

However, due to English navigation laws forbidding the colonists to export to other countries, by 1682 England became over-supplied with tobacco and the planters soon began to feel the effect of this surplus. Growers began to go deeper and deeper into debt.

Major Robert Beverly and William Fitzhugh, young planter-lawyer from this area, concluded along with other prominent men that the solution lay in some type of crop control but England refused. She did not want to lose the two shillings tax on each hogshead of tobacco. She advised the colonists to wait until Thomas, Lord Culpeper, the titular governor of the colony returned to Virginia.

Lord Culpeper had received the titular grant to all of this area and a great deal more besides. He was happy in England, however, and not at all anxious to come to Virginia. He was 47 years old at the time and described as "able, lazy, unscrupulous".

While waiting for his return, the people became desperate. Taking hoes and farm tools, they roamed the countryside pulling up and cutting tobacco plants wherever they went. Some destroyed their own crops. The county militia was called out and plant cutting was brought under control but by this time 30,000 to 50,000 pounds of tobacco had been destroyed.