Beginning with the early interactions between Native Americans and European explorers and settlers, this history traces three and a half centuries of change in Fauquier County, Virginia. Commissioned by the Fauquier Historical Society to commemorate the county's 250th anniversary, this engrossing narrative tells the story of the men and women, black and white, who built the region's farms, plantations, schools, and churches. Individual biographies are interwoven with a social, political, and military history of the American Revolution and Civil War, allowing crucial events in the county's history to come alive. This book also explores Fauquier's depressed economy after the Civil War and shows how the area's location and natural beauty drew wealthy outsiders to purchase estates in the early part of the twentieth century. After midcentury, the enormous expansion of the Washington suburbs ignited a heated and ongoing debate over the county's position on growth and development. Related here is the fascinating story of a historically significant county. The volume has more than two hundred illustrations, some displaying the county's stunning beauty, which enhance the book throughout.

Fauquier County, officially established in 1759, was named after Francis Fauquier and has long been known for its Civil War history, large farms, country estates, small towns including Warrenton and Marshall, and quaint villages including Upperville, Delaplane, and The Plains. Today its rural historic beauty and preserved open spaces lure Washingtonians away for day-trips and weekend retreats. Well-known industry baron Walter Chrysler, philanthropist Paul Mellon, and movie and television stars Robert Duvall and Willard Scott have all called Fauquier home.

Fauquier County, in Northern Virginia, was established in 1759. It was formed from Prince William County and was named for Virginia lieutenant governor Francis Fauquier. In 1790, there were 6,642 slaves in Fauquier County. By the eve of the Civil War, there were 10,455. From 1817 to 1865, the county was home to 845 free black people. The African American population declined at the end of Reconstruction, and by 1910, the white population was double that of blacks. The population imbalance continues today. Through centuries of slavery and segregation, Fauquier County's African American population survived, excelled, and prospered. This minority community established and supported numerous churches, schools, and businesses, as well as literary, political, and fraternal organizations that enhanced the quality of life for the entire county.

This true crime history reveals the harrowing story of a black man brutally murdered by a lynch mob in 1932 Virginia. In 1932, a black man was found hanging on Rattlesnake Mountain in Fauquier County, Virginia. Though a mob set fire to his body, officials were able to identify him as Shedrick Thompson, who had been wanted for the abduction and rape of a local white woman. Some claimed Thompson killed himself, framing his gruesome death as the final act of a desperate fugitive. But residents knew better. Thompson had been the victim of a lynching—the last one known in Virginia. In The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia, author Jim Hall pieces together Thompson’s life, the weeks-long manhunt to find him, and his final hours. He also details the lawless practice of lynching in Fauquier County. This true crime chronicle takes an in-depth look at Thompson’s case to expose a complex and disturbing chapter in Virginia history.

When romance was met with murder... Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder were young and unafraid, but their love was doomed. He was black, she was white, and this was Virginia in 1880. When Elvira became pregnant, the couple fled Fauquier County to live in Maryland. But her father found them and recruited neighbors to help kidnap them. Four nights later, a mob dragged Arthur from the county jail in Warrenton and lynched him. Elvira, taken to a hotel in Williamsport, Maryland, was never heard from again. Stories of lynching are all too common in the postbellum South, but this one tells a unique tale of a couple who were willing to sacrifice everything to be together--and did. Author Jim Hall tells a classic tale of forbidden love, one of hope crushed by hate.

Regarded as one of the most vocal, well-traveled, and controversial statesmen of the nineteenth century, antebellum politician Henry Stuart Foote played a central role in a vast array of pivotal events. Despite Foote’s unique mark on history, until now no comprehensive biography existed. Ben Wynne fills this gap in his examination of the life of this gifted and volatile public figure in The Man Who Punched Jefferson Davis: The Political Life of Henry S. Foote, Southern Unionist. An eyewitness to many of the historical events of his lifetime, Foote, an opinionated native Virginian, helped to raise money for the Texas Revolution, provided political counsel for the Lone Star Republic’s leadership before annexation, and published a 400-page history of the region. In 1847, Mississippi elected him to the Senate, where he promoted cooperation with the North during the Compromise of 1850. One of the South’s most outspoken Unionists, he infuriated many of his southern colleagues with his explosive temperament and unorthodox ideas that quickly established him as a political outsider. His temper sometimes led to physical altercations, including at least five duels, pulling a gun on fellow senator Thomas Hart Benton during a legislative session, and engaging in run-ins with other politicians—notably a fistfight with his worst political enemy, Jefferson Davis. He left the Senate in 1851 to run for governor of Mississippi on a pro-Union platform and defeated Davis by a small margin. Several years later, Foote moved to Nashville, was elected to the Confederate Congress after Tennessee seceded, and continued his political sparring with the Confederate president. From Foote’s failed attempt to broker an unauthorized peace agreement with the Lincoln government and his exile to Europe to the publication of his personal memoir and his appointment as director of the United States mint in New Orleans, Wynne constructs an entertaining and nuanced portrait of a singular man who constantly challenged the conventions of southern and national politics.

Not quite the Cotton Kingdom or the free labor North, the nineteenth-century border South was a land in between. Here, the era's clashing values—slavery and freedom, city and country, industry and agriculture—met and melded. In factories and plantations along the Ohio River, a unique regional identity emerged: one rooted in kinship, tolerance, and compromise. Border families articulated these hybrid values in both the legislative hall and the home. While many defended patriarchal households as an essential part of slaveholding culture, communities on the border pressed for increased mutuality between husbands and wives. Drawing on court records, personal correspondence, and prescriptive literature, Marriage on the Border: Love, Mutuality, and Divorce in the Upper South during the Civil War follows border southerners into their homes through blissful betrothal and turbulent divorce. Allison Dorothy Fredette examines how changing divorce laws in the border regions of Kentucky and West Virginia reveal surprisingly progressive marriages throughout the antebellum and postwar Upper South. Although many states feared that loosening marriage's gender hierarchy threatened slavery's racial hierarchy, border couples redefined traditionally permanent marriages as consensual contracts—complete with rules and escape clauses. Men and women on the border built marriages on mutual affection, and when that affection faded, filed for divorce at unprecedented rates. Highlighting the tenuous relationship between racial and gendered rhetoric throughout the nineteenth century, Marriage on the Border offers a fresh perspective on the institution of marriage and its impact on the social fabric of the United States.

Take a tour of Virginia's scenic rail trails with author Joe Tennis as he explores restored train stations, discovers a railroad's lost island graveyard and crosses the commonwealth on its idyllic paths. These classic rail lines of Virgina that were once only accessible to train engineers or a few lucky passengers can now be enjoyed by anyone looking for a scenic hike or bike ride. The trails highlight the natural beauty of Old Dominion, from the sunrise side of the Eastern Shore to the setting sun at the Cumberland gap, and each trail, with names like the "Virginia Creeper" and the "Dick & Willie," has a personality and grandeur all its own.