Revolutionary Arlington

In 1774, on the advice of his friend George Mason, Washington decided to purchase two adjacent tracts of land in Arlington County. The area was heavily wooded, primarily hickory and oak. The price was 892 pounds or about $7.00 per acre. As a certified land surveyor, Washington planned to run the lines of the tracts and mark the boundaries more visibly. But fate would have it otherwise.

During the American Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette volunteered from France to help America win its independence from England. He served as an aide to George Washington and was later promoted to general. In 1824, he began a 13-month tour of the 24 United States. At Arlington House, George Washington Parke Custis hosted the Marquis, then the last remaining Revolutionary War general and an advocate for human rights for the enslaved, for religious freedom, and for equality for women.

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.