"For generations the mystery of its disappearance has been a subject of speculation and many believed that it had been withdrawn from the public records into private lands, and there held or possibly lost. In November 1928, the bundle containing the papers in the above suit was opened by Charles F. Cochran, and the old plat brought to light, just 130 years after it had been placed there. The paper was worn through at many of the creases, being completely in two through the middle, many minute bits were turned under or hanging only by a shred, and in places there has been shrinkage. Through the courtesy of Dr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, and Col. Lawrence Martin, Chief of the Division of Maps, and in return for permission to file a photostat of the plat in the Library of Congress, the plat was mounted by Mr. William F. Norbeck, the Library's expert in the restoration of old maps. It was due to Mr. Henry B. Rust of Rockland, near Leesburg that the extended search of the Loudoun County records was made, in which the plat was brought to light, and he has had it framed."[80]
[80] I owe both the copy of the map and its history to Mr. Thomas M. Fendall of Morrisworth and Leesburg.
This framed map of 1759 was presented to the county, by delivery to Mr. B. W. Franklin, then county clerk of Loudoun, on the 30th December, 1928, by Mr. E. Marshall Rust, the brother of Henry B. Rust.
Upon the organization of the county, the matter of location and establishment of a county seat had to be determined. It was not, however, until the 15th June, 1758, that the Council of the Colony, by deciding to locate the courthouse of Loudoun on the lands of Nicholas Minor on the old Carolina Road near the crossing of the Alexandria-Keys Gap Highway, fixed the importance of what was to be known as Leesburg. The order of the Council reads:
"The Council having this day taken under Consideration the most proper Place for establishing the Court House of Loudoun County, it appearing to them that the plantation of Captain Nicholas Minor was the most convenient place and agreeable to the Generality of the People in that County, it was their opinion, and accordingly Ordered, That the Court House for the said County be fixed on the land of the said Minor."