Green Spring Farm Fairfax County, Virginia

Excerpt

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

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....