At the start of European colonization of America, many different Algonquian-speaking tribes lived along the Potomac River including in the vicinity of present-day Dumfries. People migrated in and out of the area during the centuries before and after the arrival of the English in Virginia. Sociopolitical conditions were dynamic with changing allegiances and conflict amongst indigenous peoples and colonists. In 1608, Captain John Smith recorded the names and locations of villages while mapping the Potomac River. Smith documented the location of the Taux, a branch of the Doeg, above Aquia Creek as well as a Doeg village named Pamacocack (meaning “by the long stream”; anglicized into Quantico) and a Patawomeck village near Quantico Creek.
Indigenous Person in Canoe
White settlement on Quantico Creek began in the 17th century. The earliest known structure was a Chapel of Ease (a satellite church) built around 1667. It was called Quantico Church and was located in what is now Dumfries Cemetery. Around 1690, Richard Gibson built a mill at the mouth of Quantico Creek. Attracted by Quantico Creek’s natural harbor, Scottish merchants settled in the area, then known as Quantico, and established a flourishing tobacco trade in the 1700s, heavily dependent upon the enslaved population.
The Tidewater and Piedmont regions of Virginia were characterized by swaths of large plantations and smaller tenant farms interspersed with settlements that served as economic, political, and social centers. A tobacco monoculture dominated the Virginian economy for most of the 17th and 18th centuries. Tobacco agriculture required lots of land and labor as well as a means of transportation. This high demand for labor led to a growing enslaved population. In 1755, there were roughly equal numbers (about 1,500) of white males over 18 and enslaved people in Prince William County.
Tobacco Ship
Waterways were the primary mode of transportation. Landowners and tenant farmers used rolling roads to transport their crops to warehouses located on waterways. Dumfries merchants exported tobacco to England and imported manufactured goods and provisions. In 1730, the Virginia Assembly passed an act requiring the inspecting and grading of tobacco at public warehouses prior to exportation thereby centralizing the tobacco trade. Shortly after, a public tobacco warehouse was established on Quantico Creek. Previously, trading vessels would stop at multiple private wharves along Quantico Creek to pick up tobacco. Now the ships would dock near the public warehouses and conduct business at the town’s port. Throughout the mid-17th century, the port on Quantico Creek was very busy in terms of its shipping trade. While less substantial than the tobacco trade, there was also a considerable iron production industry near Quantico.
Tobacco Inspector’s Quarters
In 1731, Prince William County was established from the northern portion of Stafford County in response to population growth. Prince William County was further divided when in 1742 Fairfax County was formed out of its northern portion and in 1759 Fauquier County was formed out of its western portion. On May 11, 1749, an act of the Virginia Assembly established the Town of Dumfries on 60 acres of land located on Quantico Creek near the public warehouses that were donated by John Graham. Dumfries was a small but important settlement surrounded by plantations and tenant farms. At the center of town were the public warehouses and the county courthouse, which was moved to Dumfries in 1759 in response to the town’s growing social, political, and economic importance. Also located in Dumfries were taverns and ordinaries, schools, a theater/opera house, grist mills, a bakery, a granary, a shipyard, race track, and a ferry to Maryland. Tobacco notes (promissory notes calculated by the quantity and quality of the tobacco) were the main form of currency – they were used to purchase goods, pay off debts, and pay taxes.
William’s Ordinary
On June 6 1774, Prince William County freeholders authored a resolve at the Dumfries Courthouse protesting taxation without representation. Many local men served in the Prince William County militia under Colonel Henry Lee during the Revolutionary War. During the war, Hessian officers were held as prisoners in Dumfries and Continental troops were inoculated for smallpox at Quantico Church.
Tobacco agriculture and local trade dwindled in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Revolutionary War disrupted trade in Dumfries. Further worsening the situation, siltation was threatening Dumfries’ harbor and increasingly putting the town at a disadvantage to other nearby ports. Local businessmen tried to build a canal and to establish new ports further downstream. However, their attempts failed and many local merchants left. In addition to losing the deep-water harbor, the land surrounding Quantico Creek had become depleted of nutrients from overfarming.
Dumfries Courthouse, Speculation
In 1822, the county seat was moved to Brentsville, indicating the rapid decline of Dumfries as an important town. In 1837, Dumfries was described as “one of the oldest towns in the United States, and once could boast of much commerce, but owing to a variety of circumstances, like many old settlements, is now in a great measure abandoned, and many of its excellent dwellings are in a state of rapid decay.”
Dumfries experienced a temporary swell in population during the first years of the Civil War when Confederate troops were stationed in Dumfries. The troops manned several Confederate batteries located nearby on the Potomac River. They successfully forced the Union Navy to redirect its ships to Baltimore. Many sites in Dumfries were used as Civil War camps, hospitals, and cemeteries during the Potomac Blockade.
Farm, North Dumfries
Cabin Branch Mine, a pyrite mine, brought a rebirth of industry to the area when it opened in 1889. The mine employed 200-300 men until its closure in 1920. Some of the workers lived in a nearby free black community established before the Civil War called Batestown. The Batestown community had a school, church, and store as well as many family homesteads. The mine and nearby settlements were located on land that was to become the Prince William Forest National Park in the 1930s.
A narrow gauge railroad transported ore from the mine to wharves at the mouth of Quantico Creek at Possum Point where there was also small-scale lumber and fish processing industries. After the mines closed, many local residents cleared and transported lumber, cut railroad ties, and sold moonshine to bring in income. Development related to the establishment of the United States Marine Corps Base at Quantico in 1917 also produced employment opportunities for locals. However, after the mines closed another period of economic depression set upon Dumfries until development from the growing D.C. metropolitan area reached the town in the late 20th century.
Narrow Gauge Railroad, Dumfries Pyrite Mine
All illustrations by Lee Lansing, 1973-1986. Please seek HDV’s permission before using any images on this website.