isposal; the Deputy
Commissioner of Revenue was directed to discharge the duties of the
Commissioner until the latter, currently a prisoner in Richmond, could
return to his duties; payments were approved for wagonowners who had
hauled books, papers and records to the courthouse from various points
in Fairfax and nearby counties. One item of particular interest
stated:

The fact having been brought to the notice of the Court that
degradations were being committed upon the Mt. Vernon Estate, the
Court, under the Chancery powers vested therein, appointed
Jonathan Roberts, the present Sheriff, Curator, to take charge of
all property in Fairfax County, Va. belonging to the heirs of
John A. Washington, dec.[97]

After the cessation of fighting in April 1865, Governor Pierpont moved
his government from Alexandria to Richmond. However, without the
presidential support which Lincoln had provided during his lifetime,
the Pierpont administration found it increasingly difficult to carry
on effective government as the years immediately after the war saw
numerous plans for reconstruction competing for favor. The situation
was further complicated by the fact that in February 1864 the Pierpont
administration had sponsored a constitutional convention which had
adopted a new constitution for Virginia, and that this constitution
had nominally gone into effect in Alexandria and Fairfax counties.[98]
A complex legal problem regarding the succession of governmental
authority thus was added to the formidable task of reconstructing
Fairfax County's economy and physical facilities.

This task was made difficult because many of the records of the County
had been scattered or destroyed during the fighting. Records were
searched out and retrieved whenever their places of safekeeping were
known, a process requiring years of effort. Some record books were
never found. The accounts of how the wills of George and Martha
Washington were recovered are frequently cited to illustrate the
difficulties of reassembling Fairfax County's records.

When, in the fall of 1861, Beauregard's Confederate troops withdrew
from Fairfax County, the will of George Washington was secretly
removed from the courthouse by the court clerk, Alfred Moss, and taken
to Richmond. Here it was placed for safekeeping with the Secretary of
the Commonwealth of Virginia. Following the cessation of hostilities,
it was returned to Fairfax County.[99]

Martha