Following are Excerpts from:

 History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia 
by:  James W. Head

 published by Park View Press in 1908.

Loudoun was originally a part of the six million acres which, in 1661, were granted by Charles II, King of England, to Lord Hopton, Earl of St. Albans, Lord Culpeper, Lord Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt, and Thomas Culpeper. All the territory lying between the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers to their sources was included in this grant, afterwards known as the 'Fairfax Patent," and still later as the "Northern Neck of Virginia."

The patentees, some years afterward, sold the grant to the second Lord Culpeper, to whom it was confirmed by letters patent of King James II, in 1688. From Culpeper the rights and privileges conferred by the original grant descended through his daughter, Catherine, to her son, Lord Thomas Fairfax, Baron of Cameron-a princely heritage for a young man of 20 years.

Loudoun County is preeminently a diversified region; its surface bearing many marked peculiarities, many grand distinctive features. The broken ranges of hills and mountains, abounding in Piedmont Virginia, here present themselves in softly rounded outline, gradually sinking down into the plains, giving great diversity and picturesqueness to the landscape. They are remarkable for their parallelism, regularity, rectilineal direction and evenness of outline, and constitute what is by far the most conspicuous feature in the topography of Loudoun. Neither snow-capped nor barren, they are clothed with vegetation from base to summit and afford fine range and pasturage for sheep and cattle.