Before the American Revolution, most of our region was the property of Lord Fairfax. As the story goes, in 1747, Lord Fairfax ordered a survey of the frontier land beyond his property in order to incorporate it into his Manor of Leeds. The resulting 1748 survey by Thomas Greene referred to this new territory as Gooney Run Manor, giving homage to Lord Fairfax’s favorite hunting dog, Gooney, who had died on a hunting trip several years earlier. As of that survey, the property line of the new Manor, or the “Manor Line,” was essentially the new boundary between civilization and the “wild west” – and our farm still sits right on that line.
