Vaucluse (plantation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vaucluse was a plantation in Fairfax County, Virginia, three miles (5 km) from Alexandria and 10 miles (16 km) from Washington, D.C., that was owned by the Fairfax family, the first being Thomas Fairfax.
He was Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who relinquished his English estates to his brother, Robert Fairfax, 7th Lord Fairfax of Cameron, and emigrated to America, where he settled on a plantation of more than a million acres (4,000 km²) in the northern section of what would become Virginia, which he inherited from his mother, Catherine Colepeper.
Thomas Fairfax was the first person to employ the young surveyor George Washington, who is said to have set out the lines of Vaucluse. The mansion was destroyed during the Confederate War to make place for a fort in the defense of the city of Washington.
