[Footnote 7: Suggar Land was named for the sugar maple trees that at that time grew in the region of what was later Fairfax and Loudoun counties.]
Thomas Barton, of Stafford County, asked a neighbor to stay with his children while he and his wife went away for a day. The obliging neighbor, his wife and three children, came to the Barton plantation on a Sunday, June 16, 1700.
There were three children in the Barton family, and an orphan boy. On that peaceful June day all must have been drowsy contentment at the wilderness plantation--six children at play in the house, and the neighbor and his wife trying perhaps to take a nap. Only the orphan boy was outside, playing alone.
Suddenly the peaceful Sunday afternoon was turned into a nightmare. A party of Indian warriors swooped down in a sudden attack on the Barton place. All was over in a few minutes no doubt. Only the orphan boy escaped and ran to a neighboring plantation.
Meanwhile Barton was on the way home. His wife had probably decided to stay overnight wherever they had visited for he was alone. He stopped by a mill where he had left some corn to be ground and picked up his bag of meal. When he was almost home about twenty Indians started up from the woods and closed in about him in a "half-moon." They were naked and unarmed.
Barton had a good mount but the meal was heavy. He finally got the bag loose and threw it off, and then at full speed he "broke through the woods and got safe to a neighbor's house."
Colonel George Mason II, who was probably at the head of the Stafford militia, was notified of the outrage. When he and a "small parcel of men" arrived at the Barton place they found plenty of work to do. They "pulled out of the people and a mare, sixty-nine arrows." They also found five "ugly wooden tomahawks." Mason and the men buried the "poor people." Arrows had made holes in the roof of the house as "big as swan shot."
From the tracks about the house Mason judged that there had been at least forty Indians in the party. He was of the opinion that most of them had gone back to Maryland.
After Mason returned to his home he wrote a long letter to the governor in which he described the murders as the "horriblest that ever was in Stafford." These two plantations would be deserted for the year, he wrote, and he was afraid that all the people would leave their plantations. "I am afraid," wrote Colonel Mason, "that we shall have a bad summer, but ... if I can keep them upon their plantations, it will be some discouragement to the enemy ... but God knows what I shall do now, for this has almost frighted our people out of their lives."