Green Spring Farm, Fairfax County, Virginia

Green Spring Farm, Fairfax County, Virginia

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 acreage in the 1770s and occupied it until 1839, were typical of the freeholder classes who took pride in their land and in regarding themselves as farmers. Their farming raised Virginia to its position of preeminance among the colonies and in the new nation after the Revolution. Farming remained the foundation of Virginias economy through the nineteenth century, although changes in the methods of husbandry and transportation, together with the opening of farmlands in the Ohio Valley and the prairie states, had important consequences in Virginia. These impacts were followed by the devastating years of war from 1861 to 1865. Agriculture in Northern Virginia reached its low point in the 1870s. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 33272
Author: Netherton, Nan
Release Date: Jul 27, 2010
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Netherton, Ross De Witt, 1918-2010