How Robert Harper Got His Ferry

Lord Thomas Fairfax, a Scottish aristocrat who moved to Virginia in the 1730s held extenstive lands in what is now West Virginia. He made the most substantial portion of his income from enslaved labor on his plantation, but he also rented land to tenants. The fate of one parcel of his properties demonstrates some common features of land tenure in the eighteenth century British colonies.

When powerful landholders claimed such vast extents of land, they often could not realistically solidify their claims in practice. Renting land out was one avenue of generating income from it.  Holding the land in speculation of higher prices in the future was another. Demand for land, especially cleared land, grew rapidly in the eighteenth century. On the other hand people who could not afford to buy directly land sometimes chose to squat on it instead. Doing the work of clearing land--even land that a farmer did not own--a widely accepted way to obtain landownership over time for manageable payments. In a sense, if the farm increased the value of the land, then that person deserved some consideration.

At the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, Peter Stephens had squatted since 1733 on a point of land between the rivers that belonged to Lord Fairfax.  Given the labor and risk necessary to hold frontier land and prepare it for European-style farming, the common belief among settlers was that a person who successfully squatted on a vacant parcel of land had a stake or "squatter's rights" because that person had added value to the land. "Squatter's rights" did not actually confer ownership on the squatter, and legal owners almost alway won any legal challenges, but the idea was prevalent enough that some owners found it both judicious and profitable to sell the land parcel to the squatter on terms the squatter could manage.  

When Robert Harper saw the potential for a ferry business on "The Point," he valued the opportunity enough to essentially buy the land twice:  in 1747 when he bought out Stephens' squatting rights, and later in 1751 he paid Lord Fairfax for deed to the land. 

Ten years later, the Virginia General Assembly gave Harper the right to run a ferry and established the town of "Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper's Ferry."