Virginia's Northern Neck
and The Culpeppers

Before the first English settlement in the 1600's, the Northern Neck was the land between the "River of Swans" to the north and the "Quick-Rising Water" to the South, two loosely translated Indian terms for the Potomac River and the Rappahannock River. To the east lies the Chesapeake Bay, otherwise known as the "Mother of Waters", the "Great Saltwater" or the "Great Shell-fish Bay", the largest estuary in North America.

In 1649, exiled King Charles II gave the Northern Neck to seven of his supporters including John, First Lord Culpeper. At John's death in 1660, interest passed to his eldest son, Thomas, Second Lord Culpeper, who over the years purchased the shares of the others. At the death of Thomas in 1689, the Northern Neck Proprietary passed to Lord Culpeper's sole legitimate child, Catherine Culpeper who one year later married Thomas, Fifth Lord Fairfax.

Today, the southeastern or lower portion of the Proprietary remains quite rural. It is the only part that is still referred to as the Northern Neck and most of it is shown in the modern-day roadmap at the right. Including the birthplaces of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, it spans the five present-day counties of King George, Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster.

There was substantial disagreement over the boundaries of the upper portion of the Northern Neck Proprietary. The undisputed northern part of the Proprietary spanned the six present-day counties of Stafford, Fauquier, Loudoun, Prince William, Fairfax and Arlington, as well as the independent city of Alexandria. In other words, it included essentially all of what is today considered the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.

In 1730, Fairfax's son--Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax--got into a legal wrangle with Virginia over the extent of his domain, its size being defined by the location of two rivers whose sources were unknown at the time Charles had made his grant. Fairfax argued that the Rapidan River was the real Rappahannock, thus substantially enlarging the proprietorship. Incredibly, he won his case in 1745, throwing into tumult the legal status of land granted by Virginia in the fork of the Rappahannock and Rapidan.

The new definition for the Northern Neck included twenty-six present-day counties with a total area of 8,253 square miles (5,280,000 acres). The southeastern end commences where the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers empty into the Chesapeake Bay and extends northwestward for 204 miles to the headspring of the Potomac River, which is 4 miles north of present-day Davis, WV.

Since the Northern Neck was defined as the land that lies between the Potomac and Rappahannock, but the Rappahannock does not flow west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a southwestern boundary had to be defined. To do this, surveyors in 1745 drew a 76 mile theoretical line between the head of the Potomac River and the head of the northern branch of the Rappahannock / Rapidan / Conway Rivers. This included seven counties that are now in the Eastern Panhandle of WV (Jefferson, Berkeley, Morgan, Hampshire, Mineral, Hardy and Grant). Within Virginia, the expanded Proprietary embraced five counties within the Shenandoah Valley (Frederick, Shenandoah, Clarke, Warren, and Page) as well as three counties between the Rapidan and Rappahannock Rivers (Culpeper, Madison and Rappahannock).

Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, retained control of the Proprietary through the Revolutionary War because he was not recognized as a British loyalist. At his death in 1781, however, the Commonwealth of Virginia considered Fairfax's heirs as loyalists and claimed control over the Proprietary. Ownership of Northern Neck Proprietary was finally decided in favor of Virginia in 1816.