John Browne

The Story of Ravensworth John Browne

The story of Ravensworth starts with William Fitzhugh's purchase of the Ravensworth landgrant in 1685, the largest colonial landgrant in Fairfax County, Virginia - 24,112 acres (37.7 square miles), about one-half the area of nearby Washington, DC. From a population of zero, not counting Native Americans who may have had encampments there, the 2000 Census recorded about 138,355 people living within Ravensworth's original borders. The land was repeatedly carved into smaller and smaller parcels through inheritance, sale and subdivision. The once uncharted expanse of forest became first a plantation, then a succession of smaller plantations, then farms - both large and small - served by crossroads villages, and finally today's thousands of homes and businesses as well as commercial and government centers. The story of Ravensworth is a story of colonial settlement, early government, tobacco plantations, slavery, civil war, economic expansion, the rise and decline of family farms, and suburban development - next door to the nation's capital - involving people, places and events both famous and obscure. It explores... The people who owned Ravensworth land and disposed of its parts; others who leased, worked, visited and helped shape it How the land was acquired, partitioned, leased and used Ravensworth's enduring landmarks Events that occurred thereTracing the step-by-step partitioning of Ravensworth through the generations of changing ownership involved studying land deeds and mapping their metes and bounds (compass direction and distance of boundary lines). The parcels then were georeferenced to place them in their correct geographic location on a contemporary map. The resulting maps enable visualizing the land where people lived and worked and where events occurred in Ravensworth in the context of today's communities, roads and streets.