Vaucluse (plantation)
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Vaucluse was a villa in Fairfax County, Virginia. Located three miles (5 km) from Alexandria and 10 miles (16 km) from Washington, D.C., on a hill near the Virginia Theological Seminary. It was owned first by Dr. James Craik,[1] and later by the Fairfax family, the first being Thomas Fairfax, 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron.
Dr. Craik, surgeon in the Virginia Regiment, and the Continental Army, was persuaded by Washington after the Revolutionary War, to move his practice to Alexandria, Virginia. Dr. Craik settled at Vaucluse, where he died on February 6, 1814.[2]
Thomas Fairfax
Thomas Fairfax was the son of Bryan Fairfax. He oversaw his land holdings of forty thousand acres, and established his family at Vaucluse, where he died, on April 21, 1846. His grandsons were born at Vaucluse: Charles S. Fairfax, was born on March 8, 1829, and John C. Fairfax was born on September 30, 1830.[3] Thomas Fairfax left a life interest in Vaucluse to his widow, who lived there until her death in 1858, with her two widowed daughters, Mrs. Hyde, and Mrs. Cary.[4]
Thomas Fairfax was a descendant of Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who emigrated to America, and settled at the Belvoir plantation, and later Greenway Court, Virginia, where he actively managed his Northern Neck Proprietary, a land grant of more than a million acres (4,000 km2) in the northern neck of Virginia, which he inherited from his mother, Catherine Colepeper.
