may be sure, went from
Alexandria, and like articles were bought and received into its homes.
Perhaps the system was not always so direct, for the average townsman
doubtless relied more upon local merchants as agents. Washington
followed this course at various times, but until the American
Revolution he rather steadfastly depended upon Robert Cary & Company of
London.

With the growth of trade and population came the necessity for expansion
of the town, and we see the Assembly approving the petition of the
trustees and sundry inhabitants of the town of Alexandria in 1762,
"Praying that an Act may pass to enlarge the Bounds of the said
Town."[36] All lots save those in the marsh were then built upon.

On May 9, 1763, the trustees proceeded to sell the new lots, which had
been added by act of Assembly. The town property was enhancing in value
and for that reason the lots were sold with a twelve-month credit,
hoping to increase the sale value. Forty-six lots were disposed of,
among the purchasers being George Johnston, Robert Adam, Francis Lee,
John Dalton, John Carlyle, and George Washington, who at thirty-one
years of age became a _bona fide_ citizen of Alexandria. The town which
he had honored returned the compliment four years later when the city
fathers meeting on December 16, 1766, "proceeded to elect as Trustee in
the room of George Johnston, decd, and have unanimously chosen George
Washington, Esq., as Trustee for the town aforesaid."[37]

Fifteen years after the laying out of the town, at a session of the
House of Burgesses, November 5, 1764, in the fifth year of the reign of
George III it was "Resolved, That it is the Opinion of this Committee
that the Petition of divers Proprietors of Lots, and other Inhabitants
of the Town of Alexandria, in the County of Fairfax, praying that so
much of the Act of Assembly for establishing the said Town as obliges
the Purchasers of Lots therein to build and improve the same in a
limited Time, may be repealed, and the Purchasers left at Liberty to
build thereon when convenient to them, is reasonable."[38] George
Washington found it convenient to build a house on one of his lots in
1769; the other was not built upon until almost thirty years later.

The prodigious development of the new port was accompanied by a growing
civic pride and the demand for better public buildings. A
story-and-a-half brick town hall was erected in 1759 by funds raised by
lottery, tickets selling at