GENTLEMAN FREEHOLDERS: THE MOSS FAMILY (1770-1835)
John Moss built the mansion house in Fairfax County about 1760 and lived in this house until his death in 1809. He raised four sons—John, Samuel, William, and Thomas—the last two of whom successively inherited and worked the farm from 1809 until 1839. On the death of Thomas Moss in 1839, the farm was sold and the proceeds of the sale were divided among his heirs.
It seems evident that during these years, John Moss’s home served as a meeting place for a Methodist congregation which lacked a church building and was served by the occasional visits of itinerant preachers. That the congregation grew and prospered also seems evident from the fact that in June 1789 John Moss served as a trustee of a Methodist Episcopal church to be built in Alexandria “just north of the Presbyterian Meeting House” (Duke and Fairfax Streets) for the use of Reverend Thomas Cooke and Reverend Francis Asbury. John Moss was a party to several land sales and leases which involved Lord Fairfax, from which he acquired extensive lands in Loudoun County as well as land on Dogue Creek in Fairfax County.
In colonial times, he served the Crown as Commissioner of the King’s Revenue in Fairfax County and also as a justice of the County Court. In the War for Independence, he served as a captain and afterward took an active part in organizing the new government—in particular, serving on a commission to supervise the Presidential election of 1788. Under the new State Government, he continued to serve as the Commissioner of Revenue for the county and a justice of the County Court. In 1796, in a law suit in Prince William County, John Moss, then age 72, was able to state that he was the oldest justice of the court in commission at that time.
Source: Green Spring Farm, Fairfax County, Virginia by Ross De Witt Netherton.
Genealogists and historians may find the Fairfax County old wills and estates from 1742 to 1806 online at virginiapioneers.net. Click on the link below:
