The Fairfax Independent Company was organized in Fairfax County in September 1774, seven months before the fighting at Lexington and Concord. Its members, men of Alexandria and the surrounding county, called themselves the Fairfax Independent Company of Volunteers, and they trained in blue coats faced with buff. George Washington was their patron. He reviewed them … Read more
On December 14, 1799, George Washington died at Mount Vernon. Four days later, on December 18, George Washington’s funeral brought many of Alexandria’s leading citizens to Mount Vernon — physicians who had fought to save him, clergy who conducted the burial service, and pallbearers who had known him as a neighbor, a merchant, and a … Read more
Updated October 2026: This post now includes Gilpin’s 1791 survey of the first lines of the federal district, his King Street lot on today’s Market Square block, and the role of enslaved labor in the Potomac Company, drawing on Greg A. Beaman’s 2026 Market Square study for Alexandria Archaeology and Gilpin’s correspondence with George Washington. … Read more