Evening star., 1961-07-13
Old Foirfox Takes on New Aspect
BY JOHN LAWSON
Star Staff Writer

Star staff Writer
The two women spies would
hardly recognize the place.
Earp's Ordinary is still standG
ing on Main street, and the
old hand press is still in the
newspaper office, and a few Of
the grand old houses remain.
Still, the women who spied
on Union soldiers for the bene-
fit Of the Confederacy would
find things different in the
old town.
There are 70 times as many
people in the new city Of
Fairfax as there were in the
old village. There are nine
churches, five schools, three
shopping centers. several
apartment buildings and two
banks.
A couple of weeks ago the
town made its urban character
official when it became a city
the first major governmental
change in a century-and-a-
half.
And for the first time the
community sprang up around
Earp'S Ordinary about 1740, it
will be virtually divorced from
Fairfax County.
History Part Of County's
That will be in name only,
however. for the community
first called Earp's Corner has
been bound up with the county
throughout its history.
In that history, besides the
women spies, are a raid by the
great Grey Ghost, the death of
the first Confederate soldier in
the Civil War and numerous
engagements during which both
of the villages churches and
some Of its houses were de-
stroyed and its fields burned.
The past has been retold re-
Gently in a book by Mrs. Jeanne
johnson Rust, whose husband
is attorney for the new city.
Until 1905, says Mrs. Rust,
Earp's Corner centered about
the ordinary where guests were
housed, ale was drunk and tolls
were taken for the Little River
Turnpike.
In that year an act of the
assembly established a town
and named it Providence. A
courthouse had been built six
years earlier. and that, too,
became a focal point for the
community.
| The village really wanted the
name Of Fairfax, but another
community had already pre-
empted it. and when that COM
munity -Culpeper-released it
in 1859. Providence took it.
Civil War Events
Two years later a black
haired, personable lawyer
named John Quincy Marr who
had raised a company of men
called the Warrenton Rifles,
was shot through the heart in
a skirmish in Fairfax. He be-
came the first Confederate SOL
der to die in the war.
Later in the war, Mosby's
Raiders descended on a house
which is now the rectory for
Truro Episcopal Church and he
caught a Union general in his
bed. General" said the Grey
Ghost. get up!"
The general was carted off to
Gen. Fitz Lees headquarters
where Mosby reported sourly:
Lee came out of his tent and
welcomed Gen. Stoughton =.
as long, lost brother. He took
him into the tent to give him
a drink and left me out in the
rain"
OF the two women spies, it is
known that one, Laura Rad
cliffe, lived in Fairfax through
out the war, communicating
useful information to Mosby.
The other, Antonia Ford, was
arrested by Union troops and
Jailed.
After the war, the town and
its 200 residents reconstructed
the remains left by war and
grew slowly and almost imper-
ceptibly until the second world
war.
Since then it has, in planners
terms, exploded. Today it has
$4,000 residents, $39.5 million>in
assessed valuation and a total
Of $552 million in real property.
1t also has parking meters in