Land. Among his other talents, Washington was a surveyor, and he got involved in the end of a land dispute. In 1719 Thomas the 6th Lord Fairfax came into complete control of a very large piece of family property in what's now northern VA and WV, called now the Fairfax Grant. He would take quit rents for settlers there, but would not often sell. By 1730 Virginia Governor Gooch had become impatient with Lord Fairfax's refusal to sell land to settlers. In that year brothers John and Isaac Van Metre petitioned Gooch for a grant of land on the Potomac. John may have seen the land as an Indian trader, or he and Isaac may have seen it after they moved to Maryland, from New York. In any case, they asked for a great deal: thirty thousand acres of land above the Shenandoah, bounded in the west by the Opequon and the north by the Potomac. Gooch and the Virginia legislature granted it, if the Van Metres could bring in twenty families to settle the area within two years. Without being limited by a real survey of the territory, the Van Metres were able to scatter their thirty thousand acres, claiming rich bottomland but ignoring the barren uplands, and effectively locking up 40,000 acres. They then sold much of this this on to Jost Hite, who was likely a relative. Jost Hite sold most of this to other German families. This precipitated a long legal battle with Lord Fairfax, which lasted 53 years, until settled by the Virginia courts in the Hites’ favor in 1786.

By 1747 surveys had established most of the Fairfax Grant boundaries, but to more precisely map within it, Fairfax hired Washington . In doing so, Washington had to deal with the Van Metres. He also acquired a liking for the area. He later would try to develop it: not only building Mt Vernon, his home, but pushing for an armory to be built at Harper's Ferry, forming a company to make the Potomac River navigable down to Georgetown, and helping his brother Charles establish himself in a town named for him; Charles Town, now in WV. He also became friends with Fairfax.