The original
Fairfax County Courthouse, built near the present Tysons Corner, likely marked
the first European settlement in the Vienna area. Street names such as Old
Courthouse Road and Lawyers Road still reflect that origin.
Perhaps the first settler within the present town limits was Colonel
Charles Broadwater, a prominent colonial soldier and public servant, who
owned much of the land in the region and built his home here in 1754.
In the 1760´s John Hunter, a native of Ayr County in Scotland,
married Col. Broadwater's daughter. Partly by marriage and partly by purchase,
he succeeded Col. Broadwater as the area's principal landowner. It was John
Hunter who built the first house of record within the town in 1767 and called
it Ayr Hill after his native land. As the village grew, it assumed the name
Ayr Hill, by which it was known for a hundred years.
Large estates were gradually lessened by sale or gifts. However, few
houses were built in the village, and for a hundred years after the building
of Ayr Hill there were scarcely more than eight houses in the town itself.
Prior to the 1850´s, Moses Cummins, a prosperous northerner, brought
to Ayr Hill a plow factory. These plows were the first iron-beamed plows
made in the U.S. and were shipped far and wide before the Civil War.
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