In which a skirmish occurs near Burke
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A quick programming note: the internet has been almost unusable at home (it's Comcastic!) and work has kept me from having much time to write anyway, so we've missed several events in the area. Most importantly, in the "now" of 150 years ago, Congress was back in session. Disunion turned to Ted Widmore to not embarrass itself too badly and cover the event.
As November turned to December, the agitated calm that had characterized the relationship between the two armies continued unabated. On December 2 and December 4 two more skirmishes broke out in the no-man's land between the two armies, an arc of territory that ran from Dranesville on the Potomac, down to Vienna, on to Burke's Station, then Springfield Station, and finally followed the course of Pohick Creek back to the Potomac [the mouth of which is today at Ft. Belvoir].
For approximately five miles on either side of that line, cavalry patrols roamed. After that, the pickets of both armies were stationed, ready to run or ride back to the main armies if a sizable force appeared. Both sides' leaders assumed that any day a massive army would drive them in for a major attack, and both sides' leaders knew they wouldn't be ready for an attack until the spring. So the fighting was confined to cavalry patrols riding until they found the enemy's pickets, charging, then returning to their lines with prisoners to try to collect intelligence.
Central to this campaign of pickets and patrols were the fields of old Ravensworth. In 1650, Virginia's colonial governor (Sir William Berkeley) had made a land grant to Colonel William Fitzhugh, a wealthy Englishman, of a massive internal tract of land in the little settled tributaries of the Potomac. Today, this area is North Springfield, Annandale, Burke, and the surrounding area. Fitzhugh called this estate Ravensworth, after his family estate in England, but it would be another twenty years before he ever saw it. Even then, Fitzhugh preferred to live in King George County, though with the money he was making cultivating tobacco at Ravensworth, he was able to become one of the richest and most influential men in America. The road his property managers built to roll his tobacco hogsheads down to Accotink Creek is a link to this history. Today it is Rolling Road, evolved from the Ravensworth Rolling Road.
