amination the
military and civil service records of Fountain Beattie.

Many helpful suggestions on the interpretation of data concerning the
history of agriculture in Northern Virginia were provided by C.
Malcolm Watkins, Chairman of the Department of Cultural History, and
John T. Schlebecker, Curator of the Division of Agriculture and Mining
of the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of History and Technology.

Details of the architectural history of the mansion house were
furnished by Walter Macomber, who was in charge of the 1942
renovation, and David Condon, AIA, who designed the additional work
done in 1960. Mr. Condon also provided both information and
architectural plans for the Tobey House and the Spring House. The
authors' sincere thanks are extended to both these gentlemen.

Finally, the authors wish to acknowledge the efficient and valuable
help that they, as part of the county's historical research project,
received from the staff of the Fairfax County Headquarters Library.

N.N.
R.D.N.

Fairfax, Virginia
April 22, 1970

INTRODUCTION

The land has always had a special value to Virginians. Land was the
first form of wealth which the colonists knew; and it was through
cultivation of the land that Virginians first enjoyed the heady
feeling of prosperity that came with the rise of their tobacco
empire. Ownership and cultivation of the land were the goals of
those who indentured themselves to come to the New World, and they
were the foundations on which Jefferson placed his reliance for the
perpetuation of political freedom and economic strength for the
infant republic which emerged from the Revolution. For more than
three centuries, Virginians have associated the land with values
which are both physical and spiritual.

Against this background, the history of Green Spring Farm serves not
only as a chronicle of the lives of three families who resided there
but also as a reflection of the history of agriculture in Northern
Virginia. Green Spring Farm was not one of the great estates of
Tidewater Virginia. By the mid-eighteenth century, most of the
original Northern Neck proprietary grants had been broken up and
replaced by a pattern of smaller farms whose owners owed no allegiance
to the tobacco empire and were willing to experiment with diversified
crops. Green Spring Farm illustrated this emerging pattern of
agriculture; and its first owners, John Moss and his heirs, who
assembled the ac