he Fairfax County Court

INTRODUCTION

Each generation of Americans has acknowledged its debt to Virginia's
leaders whose skill in politics was demonstrated so well in a
half-century that saw independence achieved and a new republic
established. They were products of a system of government which itself
had been perfected over more than 150 years before the colonies
declared their independence. To these men--George Washington, George
Mason, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, George Wythe,
James Madison, and the Carters--the County court was an academy for
education in the art of government. Important as it was to sit in the
House of Burgesses at Williamsburg, the lessons of politics and public
administration were learned best in the work of carrying on the
government of a county. Virginia counties were unique in colonial
history, for the considerable degree of autonomy enjoyed by the County
courts gave them both a taste of responsibility for a wide range of
public affairs and a measure of insulation from the changes of
political fortune which determined events in Williamsburg, and later
Richmond.

In Virginia, the county courthouse was the focal point of public
affairs. Usually built in a central location, with more regard for
accessibility from all corners of the county than for proximity to
established centers of commerce, the courthouse came to be a unique
complex of buildings related to the work of the court. In time, most
of these clusters of buildings grew into towns or cities, but
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many places shown
on Virginia maps as "Court House" consisted literally of a county
courthouse and its related structures standing alone beside a
crossroads.

On court days, however, the scene changed. The monthly sessions of the
court, conducted in colonial times by the "Gentleman Justices",
provided opportunities to transact all manner of public business--from
issuing licenses and collecting taxes to hearing litigation and
holding elections. They also were social events and market days; there
people came to meet their friends, hear the news, see who came
circuit-riding with the justices, sell their produce, and buy what
they needed.

In the two centuries since independence, profound changes have
occurred in all phases of life that were centered in the courthouse.
In Fairfax County, the pace and extent of these changes have been
extensive. Architectural hist