 The land on which Rappahannock County is sited was owned in the early 1700s by Thomas Fairfax 6th Lord Fairfax.It was part of the Northern Neck Proprietary, which consisted of 5.3 million acres of land located between the Rappahannock River and the Potomac River, from their headwaters in the Blue Ridge mountains to the Chesapeake Bay.In 1649 King Charles II of England, then in exile in France after the execution of his father, Charles I, had given this unmapped and unsettled region to seven loyal supporters.