The Fairfax County Courthouse Part 2

The equipping of the courthouse and transfer of the court's records were accomplished by March 1800, so that the _Columbia Mirror and Alexandria Advertiser_ was able to carry a notice its March 29th edition that

The County Court of Fairfax is adjourned from the town of Alexandria to the New Court House, in the Center of the County, where suitors and others who have business are hereby notified to attend on the 3d Monday in April next.

Thus, the first recorded meeting of the court in the new courthouse was on April 21, 1800.[31] Meanwhile, in Alexandria, the Mayor and Council adopted a resolution giving to Peter Wagener the t.i.tle to the bricks of the old courthouse on Alexandria's market square as indemnity for pulling it down.[32]

_Fairfax Courthouse and the Town of Providence_

The central location of the new courthouse and the improvement of its accessibility through the construction of several turnpike roads commencing in the early 1800's, led naturally to the growth of a community around the courthouse. In the vicinity of the crossroads a few buildings antedated the courthouse. Earp's store, probably built in the late 1700's, was one such building, as were dwelling houses reputedly built by the Moss family and Thomas Love.[33]

Development of more nearby land was not long delayed. In 1805 the General a.s.sembly authorized establishment of a new town at Earp's store, to be named Providence.[34] The future growth of the town was forecast in a plat laying off a rectangular parcel of land adjacent to the Little River Turnpike into nineteen lots for building.[35]

Settlement during the next few decades was relatively slow. Rizen Willc.o.xen built a brick tavern across the turnpike from the courthouse.[36] A variety of "mechanics" and merchants opened their workshops and stores to serve the local residents and travellers on the turnpike, and, on the north side of the turnpike, a store was established by a man named Gerard Boiling.[37] Also, a school for girls occupied land across the turnpike from the present Truro Episcopal Church, and, east of the courthouse crossroads, a Frenchman named D'Astre built a distillery and winery and developed a vineyard.[38]

Martin's 1835 _Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia_ described Fairfax Court House Post Office as follows: "In addition to the ordinary county buildings, some 50 dwelling houses (for the most part frame buildings), 3 mercantile stores, 4 taverns, and one school."[39] The "mechanics" located in the town included boot and shoe makers, saddlers, blacksmiths and tailors. The town's population totalled 200, of which four attorneys and two physicians comprised the professions. Somewhat later, the town's industry was augmented by establishment of the Cooper Carriage Works on the turnpike west of the courthouse.[40]

This growth of services around the seat of the county government was an added inducement for the County's residents to gather in town when court was in session, to trade, transact their business at the courthouse, and exchange the news of the day. By the 1830's the schedule of court days had expanded to include sessions of the County Court (3d Monday each month), the Quarter Sessions (in March, June, August and November), and the Circuit Superior Court (25th of May and October).[41]

At these times the court would sit for several days--as long as necessary--to complete the County's business. A quorum of the total panel of appointed justices was necessary to conduct the court, but this number generally was small enough so that no hards.h.i.+p was suffered by those who had to leave their private concerns. In every third month, the meetings of the court would also be the occasion for convening the successor to the colonial courts of the Quarter Sessions, at which criminal charges not involving capital punishment were tried.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the sessions of the County Court continued to be the chief feature of life in the town of Providence, or Fairfax Court House, as it frequently was called.

When the court was not in session, the regular pa.s.sage of carriages, wagons, and herds along the Little River Turnpike was the main form of contact which residents had with areas outside the locality. This situation continued even after the coming of the railroads, for when the Orange & Alexandria Railroad was chartered in 1848, its route was laid out several miles south of Providence. Thus, the nearest rail stations for the courthouse community were at Fairfax Station, on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, and at Mana.s.sas, where the Mana.s.sas Gap Railroad left the Orange & Alexandria and ran to Harrisonburg.[42]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Four acres of Richard Ratcliffe's land near Caleb Earp's Store laid off for the courthouse and other public buildings.

Record of Surveys, Section 2, p. 79, 1798.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ten acres of land surrounding the courthouse laid off for the prison bounds. Record of Surveys, Section 2, p. 93, 1800.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ten acres of land surrounding the courthouse intended for the prison bounds. Fairfax County Deed Book V-2, p. 208, 1824.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: One-half acre, part of the four-acre courthouse lot, laid off for the Clerk of the County and his successors. Record of Surveys, Section 2, p. 115, 1799.]

NOTES FOR CHAPTER II

[23] Fairfax County Court Order Book, 1789-1791, p. 93.

[24] _Ibid._, pp. 189-191.

[25] Fairfax County Deed Book B-2, pp. 373-377.

[26] _Columbia Mirror & Alexandria Advertiser_, June 19, 1798. John Bogue had arrived in the United States with his family in 1795. On June 20, 1795, the _Alexandria Gazette_ published his signed statement thanking the captain of the s.h.i.+p "Two Sisters" for a good voyage. In the August 1, 1795 issue of the _Gazette_, he advertised as a joiner and cabinet maker on Princess Street near Hepburn's Wharf, "hoping to succeed as his abilities shall preserve him deserving."

[27] Fairfax County Deed Book, B-2, p. 503.

[28] Fairfax County Record of Surveys, 1742-1850, p. 115.

[29] Fairfax County Deed Book, B-2, p. 503.

[30] Interview with former Clerk of Courts, Thomas Chapman of Fairfax, Virginia, February 13, 1970.

[31] One of the items to come before the court at this session involved winding up the county's contract with John Bogue and Mungo d.y.k.es. The Court's Clerk, Robert Moss, was summoned to appear and show cause why he had not paid the contractors in conformance with the commissioners' report accepting the buildings. Moss produced a receipt for this payment, signed by Mr. Bogue's agent, who apparently had not pa.s.sed it along to his princ.i.p.al. Fairfax County Court Order Book, 1799-1800, p. 509.

[32] Powell, _Old Alexandria_, p. 38.

[33] Elizabeth Burke, "Our Heritage: A History of Fairfax County", _Yearbook of the Historical Society of Fairfax County_, 1956-7, 5:4.

[34] _Ibid._, 32.

[35] Fairfax County Deed Book, M-2, p. 56.

[36] Rust, _Town of Fairfax_, p. 3.

[37] Gerard Bolling was the father-in-law of Richard Ratcliffe who had provided the four-acre tract on which the courthouse had been built.

Rust, _Fairfax_, p. 31.

[38] _Ibid._

[39] Joseph Martin, _Gazetteer of Virginia and the District of Columbia_, (Charlottesville, 1835), p. 168. The name "Providence"

apparently was less favored than the traditional Virginia style of referring to the seat of county government.

[40] Rust, _Fairfax_, p. 37.

[41] Martin, _Gazetteer_, pp. 168-169.

[42] Marshall Andrews, "A History of Railroads in Fairfax County", _Yearbook of the Historical Society of Fairfax County_, III (1954), 30-31.

CHAPTER III

THE COUNTY COURT AND ITS OFFICERS

_The functions and officers of the colonial court_

In colonial Virginia local government was centered in the County Court. Its origins as a political and social inst.i.tution have been attributed to various prototypes in Tudor and earlier English history.

By the time Fairfax County was established in 1742, this inst.i.tution and its functions in colonial Virginia had been clearly formulated and accepted.[43]

The County Court evolved from the colony's original court established at Jamestown and consisting of the Governor and Council sitting as a judicial tribunal. In 1618, the Governor ordered courts to be held monthly at convenient places throughout the colony to save litigants the expense of traveling to Jamestown. Steadily the numbers of these courts increased and their jurisdiction expanded until, by the end of the seventeenth century, these local courts could hear all cases except those for which capital punishment was provided. In effect, their jurisdiction combined the contemporary English government's King's Bench, Common Pleas, Chancery, Exchequer, Admiralty, and Ecclesiastical courts.

During this period the local courts acquired numerous non-judicial responsibilities connected with the transaction of public and private affairs. Because of both tradition and convenience, the County Court was the logical agency to set tax rates, oversee the survey of roads and construction of bridges, approve inventories and appraisals of estates, record the conveyance of land, and the like. Therefore, the court's work reflected a mixture of judicial and administrative functions, and the officers of the court became the chief magistrates of the Crown and of their communities. Once this pattern of authority and organization was developed, it continued with very few basic changes throughout the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries.

Highest in the hierarchy of the officers of the county and the court were the justices. Originally designated as "commissioners", and, by the 1850's referred to as "magistrates", their full t.i.tle was "Justice of the Peace" after their English counterparts of this period.[44]

Popular usage in Virginia, however, fostered the custom of speaking of the members of the court as "Gentleman Justices". They were both the products and caretakers of a system that placed control of public affairs in the hands of an aristocratic cla.s.s, and at any time in the County's history up to mid-nineteenth century a list of the County's justices was certain to include the best leaders.h.i.+p the County had.

Appointments were for life, and lacked any provision for compensation.

Service on the court was, therefore, considered an honorable obligation of those whose position and means permitted them to perform it. That this was considered a serious and active responsibility was indicated by the fact that justices could be fined for non-attendance at court.[45] Through the colonial period and well after the War of Independence the justices of the county court were appointed by the governor, and, although episodes during this period indicated the recurrence of friction between the governor and General a.s.sembly over the power to make these appointments, neither the local court nor the a.s.sembly was able to a.s.sert permanently its claim to partic.i.p.ate in the appointment process.[46] The number of justices of the county court varied considerably in different counties and times. By law the number was set at eight members; yet in 1769 Fairfax County had 17 justices, and appeared to be typical of other counties in the region.[47]