Part 1

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GREEN SPRING FARM Fairfax County, Virginia

by ROSS AND NAN NETHERTON

June 1970

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page ILLUSTRATIONS iv PREFACE v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi INTRODUCTION 1 HISTORICAL NOTES I. Gentleman Freeholders: The Moss Family (1770-1835) 3 II. Orchard and Dairy: Fountain Beattie (1878-1917) 19 III. The End of the Farming Era: Michael Straight (1942-1969) 31 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION: THE MANSION HOUSE 36 ASSOCIATED BUILDINGS I. The Tobey House 51 II. The Barn 55 III. The Log Cabin 57 IV. The Spring House 59 APPENDIXES A. Fairfax County Historic Landmarks Survey Form 63 B. Summary of Ownership 64 C. Will of John Moss, 1809 66 D. Inventory of Personal Estate of William Moss, April 15, 1835 68 E. Affidavit of Thomas Love and Alfred Moss, October 29, 1839 74 F. Inventory of Personal Estate of Thomas Moss, December 2, 1839 76 G. "A Visit From Mr. Polevoy," _The New Republic_, July 16, 1956 77 LIST OF SOURCE MATERIALS 81

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure Page 1 John Warner Survey Map, 1740 4 2 John Halley Survey Map, 1840 12 3 R. R. Farr Survey, 1874 12 4 Hopkins' Atlas Map, 1879 20 5 Fountain Beattie and Annie Hathaway Beattie, c. 1885 22 The Mosby and the Beatties, c. 1890 22 The Old Stone Spring House, c. 1885 22 The Lane to Green Spring Farm, c. 1885 22 6 John Singleton Mosby 24 Reunion at Manassas 24 7 Front View of Green Spring Farm, 1936 30 Side View of Green Spring Farm, 1936 30 8 Berry Survey Map, 1941 30 10 Floor Plans, Mansion House 38 14 Three Views of the Tobey House, c. 1960 50 15 Floor Plans of the Tobey House 52 19 Spring House Floor Plans 58 20 Fairfax County Property Map, 1969 62

PREFACE

In the beginning was the land. It drew human life to our rich area of Fairfax County, and sustained us for centuries before we became so self-conscious about it as to make household language of words such as ecology and bio-degradable waste. This is where we are at, however, and thus it is thoroughly appropriate that the publication of historical research reports in this format, a new program for Fairfax County, should commence with a study of the Green Spring Farm. There is no better site for an example, probably, to illustrate the early patterns of life on the agricultural land of Fairfax County as well as to follow the changes and pressures that have come about through war, depression, boom, and technological change down to the present. Anyone familiar with the history of this parcel of land, the Green Spring Farm, will be familiar with a great deal of the history of Fairfax County--told not so much in terms of its famous and powerful people as in terms of those who drew sustenance directly from the land.

This report is published under authority of the Board of Supervisors of the County of Fairfax. It is one result of a program of historical site survey and research carried on by the Fairfax County Division of Planning in cooperation with the Fairfax County History Commission. The original selection of Green Spring Farm as a research topic was made by the Fairfax County Historical Landmarks Preservation Commission, Bayard D. Evans, Chairman, the predecessor of the present History Commission as the chief historical agency of the County Government.

Reproduction of the material in this report is invited, subject to the customary credit to author and publisher.

John Porter Bloom Chairman Fairfax County History Commission

April 1970

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

These notes are part of a series of research reports on the historic and architectural landmarks of Fairfax County, Virginia, prepared pursuant to a resolution of the Board of County Supervisors calling for a survey of the county's historic sites and buildings.

Green Spring Farm was selected in 1967 by the Fairfax County Historical Landmarks Preservation Commission as a subject to be researched, and was later incorporated into a successor research program sponsored by the Division of Planning in cooperation with the Fairfax County History Commission.

The authors of this report wish to acknowledge with special thanks the assistance of the following: Mr. and Mrs. John Mosby Beattie, Admiral Beverly Mosby Coleman, Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Straight, Mr. and Mrs. John Quast, Mrs. Victor Fahringer, Mrs. Gwen Hempel, Mrs. Don Ritchie, and Mrs. Edith Moore Sprouse.

The authors also extend their thanks to the Honorable Thomas P. Chapman, former Clerk of the Fairfax County Circuit Court, and the Honorable Franklin Gooding, present Clerk of the Fairfax County Circuit Court, for assistance in making available court records of the clerkships of various members of the Moss family. The Honorable George R. Rich, Clerk of the Virginia House of Delegates and Keeper of the Rolls of the State, furnished information on Robert Moss's term as a Delegate from Fairfax County. Thanks are extended to the staff of the National Archives who located and made available for examination the military and civil service records of Fountain Beattie.

Many helpful suggestions on the interpretation of data concerning the history of agriculture in Northern Virginia were provided by C. Malcolm Watkins, Chairman of the Department of Cultural History, and John T. Schlebecker, Curator of the Division of Agriculture and Mining of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology.

Details of the architectural history of the mansion house were furnished by Walter Macomber, who was in charge of the 1942 renovation, and David Condon, AIA, who designed the additional work done in 1960. Mr. Condon also provided both information and architectural plans for the Tobey House and the Spring House. The authors' sincere thanks are extended to both these gentlemen.

Finally, the authors wish to acknowledge the efficient and valuable help that they, as part of the county's historical research project, received from the staff of the Fairfax County Headquarters Library.

N.N. R.D.N.

Fairfax, Virginia April 22, 1970

INTRODUCTION

The land has always had a special value to Virginians. Land was the first form of wealth which the colonists knew; and it was through cultivation of the land that Virginians first enjoyed the heady feeling of prosperity that came with the rise of their tobacco empire. Ownership and cultivation of the land were the goals of those who indentured themselves to come to the New World, and they were the foundations on which Jefferson placed his reliance for the perpetuation of political freedom and economic strength for the infant republic which emerged from the Revolution. For more than three centuries, Virginians have associated the land with values which are both physical and spiritual.

Against this background, the history of Green Spring Farm serves not only as a chronicle of the lives of three families who resided there but also as a reflection of the history of agriculture in Northern Virginia. Green Spring Farm was not one of the great estates of Tidewater Virginia. By the mid-eighteenth century, most of the original Northern Neck proprietary grants had been broken up and replaced by a pattern of smaller farms whose owners owed no allegiance to the tobacco empire and were willing to experiment with diversified crops. Green Spring Farm illustrated this emerging pattern of agriculture; and its first owners, John Moss and his heirs, who assembled the acreage in the 1770's and occupied it until 1839, were typical of the freeholder classes who took pride in their land and in regarding themselves as farmers. Their farming raised Virginia to its position of preeminance among the colonies and in the new nation after the Revolution.

Farming remained the foundation of Virginia's economy through the nineteenth century, although changes in the methods of husbandry and transportation, together with the opening of farmlands in the Ohio Valley and the prairie states, had important consequences in Virginia. These impacts were followed by the devastating years of war from 1861 to 1865. Agriculture in Northern Virginia reached its low point in the 1870's.

The period of rebuilding in Northern Virginia--the "Energetic Eighties," as one historian has called these years--brought a revival of agriculture. Farmers who could no longer compete in one agriculture market shifted to another where they enjoyed natural advantages. Thus, Green Spring Farm, under the ownership of Fountain Beattie from 1878 to 1917, became chiefly an orchard and dairy farm.

Under the ownership of Michael Straight, from 1942 to the present (1969), Green Spring Farm came under assault from new economic forces which drastically affected farming in Northern Virginia and ultimately brought an end to the agricultural era there. Unlike the changing times of earlier centuries, there was no compromise with the forces of expanding urbanization; and, eventually, even stock farming was ended. Yet, in the twentieth century, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth, the farm continued to represent values which were social as well as economic. The alert eye of a Russian writer catches some of this value in "A Visit from Mr. Polevoy," reproduced in the appendix, just as the inventories of the estates of earlier owners of the farm suggest the social values which were held in their times.

Green Spring Farm therefore offers insight into the lives of Virginia gentlemen of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its owners were men of learning according to their times, and men of affairs. The history of the farm records many references to occasions when it was a gathering place for colorful and talented people whose names were notable in the arts, literature, sciences, and politics of their day. Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, its owners were sought for public service and held positions of trust and responsibility in county, state, and national governments.

The architectural history of Green Spring Farm parallels its chain of title. Both the structure and interior design of its buildings have undergone numerous alterations and remodelings. None of these changes, however, has destroyed the simple dignity of the house, and it stands today as a symbol of the traditional strength of spirit of the Virginia freeholder-farmer in an area which is undergoing the transition of America's urban revolution.

HISTORICAL NOTES

I. GENTLEMAN FREEHOLDERS: THE MOSS FAMILY (1770-1835)

When Green Spring Farm came into being in the middle years of the eighteenth century, it represented the second generation of Virginia's agriculture. By 1750, the great plantations of the proprietor and his grantees, laid out on land cleared from the virgin forest and planted with as much tobacco as the owner's supplies of manpower and London credit would allow, were disappearing. In the evolution of farming, another generation of farms and farmers was taking over the Tidewater. Smaller in size than the great tobacco plantations, these farms utilized a larger proportion of their acreage for crops and cultivated a greater diversity of crops than before. For these second-generation farms, wheat and corn for export to England and the West Indies became the principal income crops.

The men who assembled and worked these new farms were themselves part of a new generation of Virginians. Many belonged to families which in 1750 could look back on more than a century of residence in America, and they were more attuned to the problems and potentials of the New World than those of the Old. They were the generation that successfully brought forth a new nation in their own times and added new dimensions to both its spirit and substances. John Moss was one of this new generation of Virginians.

Precisely when and how John Moss assembled the acreage that comprised Green Spring Farm is not certain. Fairfax County land records show a purchase of land by John Moss in September 1777, but, although this is the first connection of his name with the land of Green Spring Farm in these records, there is reason to believe that he may have occupied and farmed the land prior to that date. For him to have done so would have been consistent with the practice of his times and also would be in accord with the tradition of his present-day descendants which holds that John Moss built the mansion house at Green Spring Farm in or about 1760.[1]

John Moss lived in this house until his death in 1809. Here he raised four sons--John, Samuel, William, and Thomas--the last two of whom successively inherited and worked the farm from 1809 until 1839. On the death of Thomas Moss in 1839, the farm was sold and the proceeds of the sale were divided among his heirs.

In the case of John Moss, more is known of his activities in the community than of his life as a farmer. In particular, he was a leader of the early Methodist church in Virginia. The well-known itinerant Methodist preacher, John Littlejohn, records several visits to the home of John Moss in Fairfax County, beginning in May 1777. Many Methodist meetings were held at Green Spring Farm in the 1770's and 1780's. One, held on April 29, 1778, led to the following interesting note:

At B^r Jn^o Mosses, met with M^r afterward Lord Fairfax we found our trials as to preach^g were very similar, he is very serious but his religion is a mystry to me. Lord help us both.[2]

And, in 1787, Francis Asbury noted in his journal:

Preached at Brother Mosses on 2 Chronicles XV, 12-13 on the peoples entering into a covenant with God.[3]

It seems evident that during these years, John Moss's home served as a meeting place for a Methodist congregation which lacked a church building and was served by the occasional visits of itinerant preachers. That the congregation grew and prospered also seems evident from the fact that in June 1789 John Moss served as a trustee of a Methodist Episcopal church to be built in Alexandria "just north of the Presbyterian Meeting House" (Duke and Fairfax Streets) for the use of Reverend Thomas Cooke and Reverend Francis Asbury.[4]

In the county community, John Moss also was one of the group of gentlemen freeholders in whom the responsibility of power was reposed. He enjoyed the friendship and trust of Bryan Fairfax to the extent that he witnessed and served as coexecutor of the latter's will,[5] and he was a party to several land sales and leases which involved Fairfax.[6] By these transactions, he acquired extensive lands in Loudoun County as well as land on Dogue Creek in Fairfax County.[7]

In colonial times, he served the Crown as Commissioner of the King's Revenue in Fairfax County and also as a justice of the County Court.[8] In the War for Independence, he served as a captain and afterward took an active part in organizing the new government--in particular, serving on a commission to supervise the Presidential election of 1788. Under the new State Government, he continued to serve as the Commissioner of Revenue for the county and a justice of the County Court. In 1796, in a law suit in Prince William County, John Moss, then 72, was able to state that he was the oldest justice of the court in commission at that time.[9]

Service as a justice presumably involved John Moss in a wide range of decisions affecting the life of the county. The business of the County Court in this period was both judicial and administrative. Minor crimes were disposed of monthly, while major crimes and civil cases were handled in quarterly sessions.[10] At these sessions, the justices also acted on appointments, licenses for mills and ordinaries, road construction and repair, and the levying of taxes. Most of the justices were not trained in the law, and law books were scarce; therefore, the quality of justice and the transaction of public business were frequently leavened by reliance on common sense and experience.[11]

If gentlemen freeholders held the power of government in colonial and post-Revolutionary Virginia, they also paid much of the cost of government. In 1786, John Moss and James Wren, Gentlemen, were appointed Commissioners of the Land Tax, the large counties in Virginia being allowed to have two such officials.[12] They were responsible for maintaining the tax book, personally calling on every person subject to taxation, and making four lists of taxable property in the county. (One was for the Clerk of the County Court, one for the sheriff, one for the Solicitor General, and one for the commissioner.) Annually, they submitted a list of changes in land ownership, by sale or inheritance.[13]

For his service as a justice and as Commissioner of the Land Tax, John Moss's compensation came in the form of fees; he received no salary but under certain circumstances he was reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses connected with his duties.[14]

As one of the results of the American Revolution, the Anglican church was disestablished, and many of the welfare functions formerly performed by the parish vestry were assumed by the Overseers of the Poor. John Moss served as an overseer, and the powers and duties he had in this unusual office were set forth in detail in the revision of the state laws in 1792.[15] Overseers could prevent the poor from moving from one county to another and could get a warrant from any magistrate ordering the removal of a pauper back to his former county, with a court hearing to determine residence in case of a dispute. On the other hand, each county was obliged, through its overseers, to look after its own poor; and if the overseers refused to provide needed relief, there could be an appeal to the County Court.[16]

Further, they could bind out dependent children placed under their care as apprentices, appoint collectors-for-the-poor rates, have a paid clerk, and be paid for attending meetings. They had power to control vagrants, force fathers of bastards to contribute to their support, and operate the county poorhouse. In 1806, they were given the power to take over funds and endowments left in the charge of the vestries, accounting to the court annually.[17]

John Moss served as justice of the County Court until his death, and so saw the time come when the county courthouse was moved from Alexandria to its present site. His view of the history of his county, state, and nation saw more than mere physical change, however, and he was sensitive to the changing spirit of the time and place in which he lived. As to the depth of this feeling, there is no evidence in the form of public document or speech; but eloquent testimony comes from a simple, personal act he performed in 1795. As recorded in a deed of manumission issued to his slaves, he wrote:

I, John Moss ... being fully satisfied that it is contrary to our bill of rights as well as to our principles and sentiments as a free people and also contrary to common justice to hold and keep in a state of slavery any part of our fellow men ... [release and set free at various specified times from the date of this deed] Sarah, Nan, Harry, Maria, Hannah, Nero, Abram, Fox, Nat, David, John, Sam, Milla and Sal....[18]

The tradition of public service which John Moss commenced was carried on by his son, William Moss, who was appointed Clerk of the County Court in 1801. The duties of the clerk at this time differed somewhat from those of the clerk in colonial times. As enumerated in the general revision of the law in 1792,[19] the clerk must be a resident of the county and keep his office in the courthouse, unless ordered to do otherwise. He received his compensation in small fees charged for performing small acts, but in a growing county this produced a substantial income. His chief functions involved issuing licenses, warrants, writs, and orders connected with litigation. He also took inventories, recorded legal instruments, and kept vital statistics. Frequently, the clerk was the only officer of the court who was in any way learned in the law, and thus his advice on the law was regularly sought by the court. As the information he gave frequently was seasoned with experience, he became sought after for advice on many issues and problems which reached beyond the technical terms of the law, and his importance in the county's government was substantial.

William Moss served as Clerk of the County Court for 32 years, until 1833. In 1831, he was appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court, when that body was created by the General Assembly, and he served in that position until 1835, the year of his death. At this time, William Moss's brother, Thomas, who had served as a Delegate from Fairfax County to the Virginia General Assembly in 1828, was appointed to fill the vacancy left by William's death. When Thomas Moss died in 1839, his son, Alfred, was appointed Clerk but served in that office only one month. Later, however, Alfred Moss moved from Alexandria to Providence [Fairfax] where in 1852 he was again appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court. He served in this capacity until 1861, at which time Civil War activities in the area disrupted the normal conduct of county business.[20] It was at this time that Alfred Moss removed George Washington's holographic will from Fairfax Courthouse to take it to Richmond for safekeeping for the duration of the war. Because there was considerable risk in getting it to Richmond, Alfred's wife, Martha Gunnell Moss, hid it for a time in her daughter's home, "Evergreen," in Fauquier County. Alfred Moss was captured and sent to Capitol Prison, and when he was released by exchange, he took the will to a safe place. Shortly after the war, the Fairfax County Court sent a private citizen, O. W. Hunt, to Richmond where he found the Washington will, some other papers, and the County Seal, which he returned to the Fairfax Courthouse where they may be seen during regular hours of business.[21]