ations, as to His Majesty's Wisdom, shall appear Necessary."[5]

From 1742 a series of petitions from the inhabitants of Prince William
and Fairfax[6] counties, asking authority from the Assembly at
Williamsburg to erect towns in the county, were presented to the
Burgesses. Several years passed before any notice was taken of these
requests.

At a General Assembly, begun and held at the College in Williamsburg on
Tuesday, November 1, 1748 (sixteen years after the establishment of the
warehouse at Hunting Creek) in the twenty-second year of the reign of
George II, a petition was presented from "the inhabitants of Fairfax in
Behalf of Themselves and others praying that a Town may be established
at Hunting Creek Ware House on Potomack River."[7] On Tuesday, April 11,
1749, a bill for establishing a town at Hunting Creek Warehouse, in
Fairfax County, was read for the first time.

The bill went through the regular proceedings and was referred to
Messrs. Ludwell, Woodbridge, Hedgeman, Lawrence Washington, Richard
Osborne, William Waller, and Thomas Harrison. On April 22, the ingrossed
bill was read the third time, and it was "resolved that the Bill do
pass. Ordered, that Mr. Washington do carry the Bill to the Council for
their concurrence."[8] On May 2, 1749 the bill came back from the
Council (the upper house) with additional amendments to which the
Council desired the house's concurrence. Washington was again sent up to
the Council with the approved amendments, and on Thursday, May 11, 1749,
Governor Gooch commanded the immediate attendance of the house in the
Council chamber. The Speaker, with the house, went up accordingly; and
the Governor was pleased to give his assent to the bill "for erecting a
town at Hunting Creek Ware House, in the County of Fairfax."[9]

The act stated that such a town "would be commodious for trade and
navigation, and tend greatly to the best advantage of frontier
inhabitants."[10] Within four months after passage of the act, sixty
acres of land belonging to Philip Alexander, John Alexander, and Hugh
West, "situate, lying and being on the South side of Potomac River,
about the mouth of Great Hunting Creek, and in the County of Fairfax,
shall be surveyed and laid out by the surveyor of the said County ...
and vested in the Right Honorable Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the Honorable
William Fairfax, Esq., George Fairfax, Richard Osborne, Lawrence
Washington, William Ramsay, John Carlyle, John Pagan, Ger