VA, USA
Fairfax Independent Company Mustered
April 1, 1775
The Fairfax Independent Company, organized by Washington and George Mason, mustered at Market Square in the weeks following Lexington and Concord. Washington had helped organize and equip the company in the years before the war. Following April 1775 news from Massachusetts, the company drilled regularly at Market Square and prepared for deployment — the conversion of a civic militia into a wartime unit that demonstrated Alexandria's early military mobilization.
People Involved
Virginia planter and Continental Army commander-in-chief who owned and managed Mount Vernon's enslaved workforce. Absent from his estate for most of the war, he directed Lund Washington's management by correspondence and returned to find the plantation's human community shaped by eight years of wartime disruption.
Fairfax County planter and constitutional thinker who authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) and the Virginia Constitution. Closely associated with Alexandria's Patriot networks and a regular presence at Carlyle House and town meetings. Refused to sign the federal Constitution over the absence of a bill of rights.