Germanna Road
Three Hundred Year History of Lower Orange County, Virginia, with particular attention to the Alexandria Tract and Lake of the Woods
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The Germanna Road area traveling east from the Germanna Memorial was little changed from any other summer. The Germanna Ford Bridge was 30 years old and two lanes wide. Most of the land was forested and owned by timber companies, some locally as by the Goodwin brothers and others from Fredericksburg to Maine. Most of the few houses still standing pre-dated the Civil War. Only Routes 3 and 20 were paved, all the other roads were gravel, at best. The turkeys ran wild and the area was a principal hunting region. The Apperson cousins had pastureland with cattle on both sides of Flat Run, itself no more than a small creek except where it got truly flat, and there it was a swamp. Ms. Roach still cooked and heated from the same wood fireplace. In a home with no utilities at all, she subsisted on her 125-acre farm. The Masons had the only convenience store within several miles, located next to the National Battlefield Park. The park itself was little more than a few cleared acres alongside Route 20 where battle trenches had been restored and a marker placed alongside the road. Only a few houses existed in the battlefield area including the Middlebrook and Apperson homes built in the 1950s. Along Germanna Road stood the old Flat Run Baptist Church and the Ferris house. By the summer of 1964, James C. Foote was traveling the East coast looking for a stream surrounded by cheap land he could change into a vacation community. When the word got out that Foote was buying up enough land to build a 500-acre lake no one took him seriously.
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About the Book
This is a history of the land and the landowners along Germanna Road and connecting roads, from the Rapidan River to Wilderness Run. The chapters that follow provide the history of the lower end of Orange County, especially the Alexandria Tract, with particular attention to the land in and around Lake of the Woods. My brother asked me, "Why should I care about the Alexandria Tract?" My simple answer was, "Because we are descendants of Alexander Spotswood." He got me to thinking about what motivates anyone to write and especially to research and record one's findings for posterity. When the English settler came to Virginia, he brought his law and his library. The concept of land boundaries and personal ownership were foreign until then, as was the concept of written records. The land records, journals and family records of the five generations of Spotswoods, their relatives and neighbors that lived on and near the Lake of the Woods area have been preserved, but their story has not previously been written. Similarly, the modern pioneers that came in the late 1960s and later to form the community of Lake of the Woods should have their story preserved. Of all the places within a few hours of Washington, D.C., why pick the Wilderness to develop a large lake recreational community? The answer to this question cannot be found in any published history of Orange County. Why would families sell their home of generations including the family cemetery? The simple answer of “for the right price” is not the only explanation.
About the Author
Peter G. Rainey was born and raised in Chicago. He grew up listening to stories of how his great-grandfather Philip got his leg shot off at Bull Run. He also was given a family tree drawn by his uncle that listed him as a descendant of Alexander Spotswood. Dr. Rainey left Chicago at the age of 17 to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he earned his B. Eng and was commission an Ensign in the US Navy. After a twenty year Naval career during which he earned his Ph.D. in Mechancial Enginering, he served as a Senior Scientist in the CIA and later established an engineering consulting company. Ever since the Navy assigned him to Washington, D.C., in 1974, he has researched his family roots in Virginia. While he had spent considerable time in Williamsburg researching the Alexander Spotswood and related families, it was not until he moved to Lake of the Woods, in Orange County, that he discovered the heritage of Germanna and the several generations of Spotswoods that had lived in this area. Dr. Rainey is a member of the Orange County Historical Society, the Culpeper Minute Men Chapter of the Virginia Society Sons of the American Revolution, charter member of Spotswood Family Descendants and a past Director and Treasurer of the Lake of the Woods Association, Inc.