> Check Charles Poland's book_Frontier to Suburbia_for details of Loudoun's
> cession of the Sugarland area. I've forgotten the circumstances, whether
there
> was compensation or not--of course the shopping centers and $2 million
houses
> weren't there in those days, so the tax base was a little different. Folks
in
> that area probably just found it was easier to get to Fairfax C.H. than to
> Leesburg on court days.
>
I do not have a copy of Poland in my library (an oversight that I will have
to rectify), but the circumstances of the 1798 Act of the Assembly which
gave back the land between Difficult Run and the current Loudoun-Fairfax
line was almost 20 years in the making. The makeup of Loudoun was diverse.
English, Tidewater Cavalier families farming in the south and east, Quakers
to the west and north, Germans to the north and Scots-Irish folk wandering
wherever they could in the west. The tidewater families were in a state of
irritation with the rest of their countymen. They felt outnumbered. Their
first move in 1781 was to petition the State Assembly to divide the county.
Multiple petitions can be found in the Library of Virginia for and against
the concept of creating a new county out of Loudoun. It was not until 1798
that the Assembly changed the boundaries giving back the land to Fairfax
county, making the discontented much happier.

    The movement of the Fairfax courthouse out of eastern Fairfax did not
occur until 1798 also as a result of an Act of the Assembly, so it is
unlikely that the location of the courthouse influenced the decision.

    Although no longer a resident of Loudoun, I honestly believe that the
situation is now reversed. Today the population of Loudoun east of Goose
Creek greatly exceeds that of the western part of the county. Now the west
does not get its way as it did in the colonial period. The placement of the
Loudoun Hospital in the eastern half of the county tells the story.

C.

Craig R. Scott, CGRS

Willow Bend Books
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Westminster, MD 21157-5026
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