GREENWAY COURT (R), formerly the wilderness manor of Thomas Lord Fairfax, master of the 5,000,000-acre proprietary of the Northern Neck. Only the LAND OFFICE remains of the structures erected by Fairfax in 1748. This little house, two low stories of gray stone, stands close to the highway at the edge of stony fields. Here quit rents were collected and here George Washington, the youthful surveyor for Fairfax, is said to have kept his instruments. Lord Fairfax inherited the Northern Neck grant from his mother, a daughter of Thomas, Lord Culpeper. In 1669, Charles II had granted to several loyal friends all the land between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. In 1673 Lord Culpeper bought out the grantees and became sole proprietor.
Fairfax's life here was not happy. He had come to Virginia thoroughly embittered because his fiancee had married another man; he would invite no women to his lavish parties. Quit rents were not always willingly paid, and he was forever occupied with lawsuits over boundaries. Like many other landed Vuginians he was a Tory. When the news of Cornwallis's surrender came, the old man turned in his bed to remark that it was time for him to die. (PDF)
Federal Writers' Project, Virginia: A Guide to the Old Dominion, Tour 5A, 1952, p. 442.