By the middle of the eighteenth century, the city of Alexandria, Virginia, had established itself as one of the major ports of the region for coastal and oceangoing ships, and in the year 1752, the courthouse for the Fairfax County court system moved there.

The petition requested the courthouse be placed in the center of Fairfax County, a more convenient location for citizens of the area, in order to promote trade and commerce.

Shortly after, the court ordered that the sheriff collect thirty-five cents for each taxable person in Fairfax County to pay for the construction of the new courthouse.

[8] Attorneys generally rented rooms in the Willcoxon hotel near the courthouse and used them as their offices, advertising their services in the Alexandria Gazette.

By December 1802 local officials deemed it necessary to create legislation to forbid sellers of liquors to set up booths on the public lot.

Gallows were erected at "Race Field" on the east side of the house occupied by Patrick McCarty on land owned by Richard Ratcliffe.

For example, John Hugely appeared before the court with two witnesses who testified that the upper part of his left ear had been bitten off in a fight.

[10] In 1800, the Reverend Jeremiah Moore, no longer confined to jail, was granted permission to preach in the courthouse; in 1801 blacks were forbidden to play fives or other games within the enclosure.

[11] As construction of turnpike roads linking Alexandria and Washington to the Shenandoah Valley took place, activity that centered in Fairfax County's courthouse square increased.

In the nineteenth century, much of the social and economic life of rural Virginia grew up around the monthly or quarterly "court days".

[3] Approximately 300 citizens lived in the vicinity of Fairfax Court House when the American Civil War began in April 1861.

[12] In May of that year, a small number of Confederates, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Richard Ewell, occupied Fairfax Court House.

[14] Company B of the Second United States Cavalry, numbering around eighty men, were scouting the area around Fairfax Court House on the evening of the thirty-first.

[15] The courthouse first came under the control of Northern troops a month later as Union General Irvin McDowell began moving his 37,000 man army west toward Manassas on July 18, 1861.

Other descriptions indicate that the courthouse was ransacked, its furnishings removed, and the interior generally gutted so that only the walls and roof remained.

For all practical purposes, the courthouse and its related buildings were, in the years 1863 and 1864, a military outpost and minor headquarters in the Union army's system to protect its supply and communications lines from the irregular troops who kept hostilities constantly smoldering in Northern Virginia.

Many important documents related to the legal proceedings of Fairfax County that were held in the courthouse were destroyed during the war years.

According to some recollections, a Union lieutenant grew curious about some of the papers in the building, and upon examination, realized some included the will of Martha Washington, so he took it with him.

[17] During the later years of the Civil War, when Northern Troops occupied the courthouse, the jail adjacent to the building was used as a storehouse and a holding cell for military prisoners.