Page "Bailey's Crossroads, Virginia" Paragraph 14

Perhaps the first of the Northerners to settle permanently in Fairfax County to farm was Lewis Bailey, an upstate New Yorker and the son of Hachaliah Bailey.

In 1837, the elder Bailey, who needed a place on which to winter his circus animals, bought hundreds of acres of Fairfax land, much of it on the outskirts of present-day Arlington County in the area now known as Baileys Cross Roads.

Shortly afterward, Lewis Bailey bought of land from his father for ten dollars an acre.

Included in the purchase was " a good dwelling-house ," but there were " no other buildings of value, and little or no fence.

" The farm itself, he wrote later, consisted of " cultivated worn-out lands, too poor to produce a crop of grass, or pay for cultivation without manure.

" Some of Bailey's neighbors considered the farm the poorest in the vicinity.

When he built his first small barn, twenty-four by thirty-six feet, they asked him if he " ever expected to fill it.

" The question was scarcely a jest, for Bailey did not make enough hay the first year " to winter two horses.

" Nevertheless the purchase was a wise one.

Within a decade Bailey had a fine herd of dairy cattle and had become one of the more prosperous farmers in the area.