According to historian C.B. Rose, people living in what is now Arlington would have been able to vote after early settlements were incorporated around 1645. Voting likely increased when the land of present-day Arlington was established as Fairfax County and received its own Court House in the town of Alexandria in 1752. At this point in time, all voting had to take place at a Court House, which limited eligible voters who lived far away from these buildings.

Moses Ball (1717-1792), the ancestor of generations of prominent Arlingtonians, received a 91-acre grant on this land from Lord Fairfax in 1748. The property remained in the Ball Family until 1818. It is thought that Ball built his home on a rise north of the existing spring about 200 yards east of this marker. George Washington, who owned an adjacent tract of land south of Four Mile Run, surveyed his tract on April 22, 1785, in company with Moses Ball.