Dumfries on the Potomac

Family Ties at a Colonial River Port

John Smith and Virginia Colonization

In 1608, Captain John Smith and a small crew sailed from the struggling Jamestown colony up the Chesapeake Bay, mapping its many rivers, creeks, and native settlements. His detailed writings, published in 1612, “introduced the English to this region of the world for the first time and triggered a wave of colonization.” ¹

The King’s Highway

A journey south on U.S. Route 1 out of Washington, D.C. is a trip back in time. Long before becoming a bottle-necked commuter route it was a native American hunting trail dubbed the Potomac Path, and later the Virginia portion of the Kings Highway – an early 18th century north-south coastal land route connecting Boston to Charleston. French and American troops and wagon trains followed the Kings Highway en route to their decisive siege and victory at Yorktown, Virginia in September 1781.

Route 1 traverses Fairfax County into Prince William County, spanning numerous tributaries as it parallels the flow of the Potomac River toward the Chesapeake Bay. The communities of Pohick, Accotink, Occoquan, and Quantico bear the names of four of those historic waterways, while once massive 18th century tobacco plantations like Belvoir, Woodbridge, and Rippon Lodge remain familiar to us merely as highway markers. These tidewater plantations, for the most part self-sufficient thanks to indentured servitude and slave labor, came also to depend on organized settlements like Alexandria, Colchester, and Dumfries to get their tobacco and other goods to market.

Historic Dumfries, Virginia

Historian Lee Lansing writes, “Dumfries fair harbor, on Quantico Creek, was first seen by the white man [in 1608]. About fifty years passed, during which hardy pioneers and land speculators were active in claiming land by patent. By 1658, all river front land from Chopawamsic Island to Anacostia Island, on the west shore of the [Potomac] river, had been surveyed and patents issued. It should be noted that most “surveying” had been done from the safety of a vessel, without benefit of going ashore, due to the fear of Indian activity in the area…. Development of river front plantations began before 1690, with the first commercial venture at Dumfries being a water powered grist mill on Quantico creek.” ²

Dumfries was officially chartered in 1749, and named by its predominantly Scottish settlers for the picturesque market town on the River Nith in Scotland. Lee Lansing writes that at its peak Colonial Dumfries boasted a deep-water harbor just one block off the King’s Highway with a busy wharf, grist and saw mills, a brick kiln, tobacco warehouses, and social attractions like a racetrack, cock pits, taverns, schools and theaters, and varied craft shops. In 1763, Lansing notes, the tonnage of Dumfries’ imports and exports equaled those of New York and Philadelphia. However, the rapid clear cutting of land for tobacco along Quantico Creek led to increased silting of the harbor, and by 1800 Dumfries was no longer viable as a commercial port. Cecil W. Garrison Park, current site of the former harbor, now lies nearly a mile from the navigable inlet. Williams Ordinary, an 18th century tavern and inn, (pictured with the four chimneys in the background) still stands in Dumfries, and the historic cemetery and site of the original parish church are preserved in the southwest corner of the town. Much of the northern section of the historic town served as a landfill until very recently, but city plans include a public park at the top of that reclaimed mountain of rubble featuring a stunning view of the Potomac River and the Maryland shoreline opposite.

Benjamin and Ann Grayson

Benjamin Grayson (ca. 1684-1757), our 6th great-grandfather, was a merchant who moved upland from Westmoreland County to Prince William County around 1715. A family history dating to the 1840s relates that Benjamin “became a merchant trading in tobacco with the vessels on the Bay of Occoquan…. Among many branches of his extensive business he started a large wholesale trade in homemade crackers and sea biscuits, and wheat bread, …gladly welcomed by both the colonists and the captains of the foreign vessels trading in the the Bay of Occoquan and at Dumfries.” ³

Ann Grayson (ca. 1695-1746) journeyed north at around the same time as her brother Benjamin, marrying first John Quarles in 1722 then into the pioneer Harrison family about 1731. Her second husband Thomas Jr. served in the House of Burgesses and as a Prince William sheriff and judge in the 1730s, and the couple lived on an estate west of Dumfries near Fauquier County, and also had holdings on Holmes Run in Fairfax County. ⁴

It was in Dumfries that Benjamin married the twice-widowed Susanna Monroe (1695-1752) about 1729. Benjamin helped raise at least three of her children, two of whom became noted citizens in Dumfries,⁵ alongside their joint sons William Grayson (1736-1790), a town lawyer and future Constitutional Convention delegate, and our 5th great-grandfather Rev. Spence Monroe Grayson (1734-1798), Anglican rector of Dettingen parish church in Dumfries.

¹ National Park Service, “John Smith’s Writings” https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/john-smith-writings.htm accessed 11/2023

² Lansing, Lee C. Jr., “Historic Dumfries VA. 1749” (pamphlet and collected works) Historic Dumfries Virginia Inc. (1973, 1987)

³ Grayson, John Breckenridge Jr., “The Grayson Family” (unpublished manuscript, 1877, based on the ca. 1840s Lund Washington Papers)

⁴ Alcock, John P., Five Generations of the Family of Burr Harrison of Virginia, 1650-1800 (1991, Heritage Books) pg. 64-65

⁵ “Tyler-Monroe-Grayson-Botts,” Tyler’s Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 5 (July 1923 – April 1924) pg. 252-253