own included boot and
shoe makers, saddlers, blacksmiths and tailors. The town's population
totalled 200, of which four attorneys and two physicians comprised the
professions. Somewhat later, the town's industry was augmented by
establishment of the Cooper Carriage Works on the turnpike west of the
courthouse.[40]

This growth of services around the seat of the county government was
an added inducement for the County's residents to gather in town when
court was in session, to trade, transact their business at the
courthouse, and exchange the news of the day. By the 1830's the
schedule of court days had expanded to include sessions of the County
Court (3d Monday each month), the Quarter Sessions (in March, June,
August and November), and the Circuit Superior Court (25th of May and
October).[41]

At these times the court would sit for several days--as long as
necessary--to complete the County's business. A quorum of the total
panel of appointed justices was necessary to conduct the court, but
this number generally was small enough so that no hardship was
suffered by those who had to leave their private concerns. In every
third month, the meetings of the court would also be the occasion for
convening the successor to the colonial courts of the Quarter
Sessions, at which criminal charges not involving capital punishment
were tried.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the sessions of
the County Court continued to be the chief feature of life in the town
of Providence, or Fairfax Court House, as it frequently was called.
When the court was not in session, the regular passage of carriages,
wagons, and herds along the Little River Turnpike was the main form of
contact which residents had with areas outside the locality. This
situation continued even after the coming of the railroads, for when
the Orange & Alexandria Railroad was chartered in 1848, its route was
laid out several miles south of Providence. Thus, the nearest rail
stations for the courthouse community were at Fairfax Station, on the
Orange & Alexandria Railroad, and at Manassas, where the Manassas Gap
Railroad left the Orange & Alexandria and ran to Harrisonburg.[42]

[Illustration: Four acres of Richard Ratcliffe's land near Caleb
Earp's Store laid off for the courthouse and other public buildings.
Record of Surveys, Section 2, p. 79, 1798.]

[Illustration: Ten acres of land surrounding the courthouse laid off
for the prison bounds. Record