The land has always had a special value to Virginians. Land was the
first form of wealth which the colonists knew; and it was through
cultivation of the land that Virginians first enjoyed the heady
feeling of prosperity that came with the rise of their tobacco
empire. Ownership and cultivation of the land were the goals of
those who indentured themselves to come to the New World, and they
were the foundations on which Jefferson placed his reliance for the
perpetuation of political freedom and economic strength for the
infant republic which emerged from the Revolution. For more than
three centuries, Virginians have associated the land with values
which are both physical and spiritual.
Against this background, the history of Green Spring Farm serves not
only as a chronicle of the lives of three families who resided there
but also as a reflection of the history of agriculture in Northern
Virginia. Green Spring Farm was not one of the great estates of
Tidewater Virginia. By the mid-eighteenth century, most of the
original Northern Neck proprietary grants had been broken up and
replaced by a pattern of smaller farms whose owners owed no allegiance
to the tobacco empire and were willing to experiment with diversified
crops. Green Spring Farm illustrated this emerging pattern of
agriculture; and its first owners, John Moss and his heirs, who
assembled the acreage in the 1770's and occupied it until 1839, were
typical of the freeholder classes who took pride in their land and in
regarding themselves as farmers. Their farming raised Virginia to its
position of preeminance among the colonies and in the new nation after
the Revolution.
Farming remained the foundation of Virginia's economy through the
nineteenth century, although changes in the methods of husbandry and
transportation, together with the opening of farmlands in the Ohio
Valley and the prairie states, had important consequences in Virginia.
These impacts were followed by the devastating years of war from 1861
to 1865. Agriculture in Northern Virginia reached its low point in the
1870's.
The period of rebuilding in Northern Virginia--the "Energetic
Eighties," as one historian has called these years--brought a revival
of agriculture. Farmers who could no longer compete in one agriculture
market shifted to another where they enjoyed natural advantages. Thus,
Green Spring Farm, under the ownership of Fountain Beattie from 1878
to 1917, became chiefly an orchard and dairy farm.
Under the ownership of Michael Straight, from 1942 to the present
(1969), Green Spring Farm came under assault from new economic forces
which drastically affected farming in Northern Virginia and ultimately
brought an end to the agricultural era there. Unlike the changing
times of earlier centuries, there was no compromise with the forces of
expanding urbanization; and, eventually, even stock farming was ended.
Yet, in the twentieth century, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth,
the farm continued to represent values which were social as well as
economic. The alert eye of a Russian writer catches some of this value
in "A Visit from Mr. Polevoy," reproduced in the appendix, just as the
inventories of the estates of earlier owners of the farm suggest the
social values which were held in their times.
Green Spring Farm therefore offers insight into the lives of Virginia
gentlemen of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its
owners were men of learning according to their times, and men of
affairs. The history of the farm records many references to occasions
when it was a gathering place for colorful and talented people whose
names were notable in the arts, literature, sciences, and politics of
their day. Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth
centuries, its owners were sought for public service and held
positions of trust and responsibility in county, state, and national
governments.
The architectural history of Green Spring Farm parallels its chain of
title. Both the structure and interior design of its buildings have
undergone numerous alterations and remodelings. None of these changes,
however, has destroyed the simple dignity of the house, and it stands
today as a symbol of the traditional strength of spirit of the
Virginia freeholder-farmer in an area which is undergoing the
transition of America's urban revolution.