able
or end of such house be on or next to the street, except an angle or
where two streets cross, otherwise to be pulled down."[22]

While the trustees were feverishly building the new port, the Assembly
at Williamsburg was discharging the purchasers of marsh lots from the
necessity of building on and improving them; approving the proposition
"for appointing fairs to be kept in the Town of Alexandria."[23] Fairs
and lotteries were the principal source of municipal income in early
years; the journals of the House of Burgesses contain frequent requests
for such from many of the Virginia towns.

[Illustration: Plan of the Town of Alexandria by George Washington.
(From the Washington Papers in the Library of Congress)]

On March 10, 1752, a committee reporting to the House of Burgesses
"Resolved That it is the opinion of the Committee that the Proposition
from the County of Fairfax, in opposition to the proposition from that
county, for appointing the Court of the said County to be held at the
Town of Belhaven, be rejected."[24] A somewhat complicated manner of
ordering the court to be held at Alexandria.

[Illustration: The good ship Metamora of Alexandria, John Hunter,
builder and owner. He was the founder of Hunter's Shipyard, "the most
complete private establishment of the kind in the country."]

Four days later the Burgesses rejected "the proposition from the Town of
Alexandria for altering the name of that town to Belhaven."[25] There
had been much talk about this, and for long "The Town at Hunting Creek"
was the only designation. The Alexander family, which was both numerous
and important (the head of the clan bearing the title Lord Stirling),
and the bulk of the land upon which the town was built having been a
part of its patent,[26] it was deemed appropriate to name the new town
Alexandria. Save for an occasional slip in some old letter (Washington
dated some letters Bellehaven) Alexandria is the name by which the town
was called since this time.

By 1753 a village had become a town with the market place located
exactly in the middle. The first courthouse of frame was built on the
east side of lot No. 43, at the intersection of Cameron and Fairfax
Streets. South of the Town House on Fairfax stood the jail, stocks, and
whipping post for the use of those who failed to keep the law. Directly
behind these buildings the market square, or green, occupied all of lot
No. 44. Here the town militia drilled, here were