On the western shore of the Bay there are three peninsulas, or necks, carved out of Virginia's shoreline by the tidal rivers.
The third, and northernmost, of these peninsulas lies between the Rappahannock and the Potomac Rivers. It was probably referred to orally by the first white men who settled at Jamestown as "the northern neck." The name appeared in print certainly as early as 1677, when in an official document it was mentioned as "ye Northerne Neck."
This third peninsula north lies aloof, and long, between its broad rivers, as they flow into the Chesapeake Bay on the east.
From the Bay the narrow strip of land, only fifteen or twenty miles wide, runs inland between the rivers for almost a hundred miles, until it narrows near Fredericksburg so that the rivers almost join--not quite an island but more cut-off than the usual peninsula. In the old days when there were almost no roads, and no bridges, the Neck was to those living in the eastern portion more like an island than a peninsula. Only from the west could one travel in or out by land and that exit was rarely used.
Its geographical position made the Northern Neck for many years almost as inaccessible as an ancient stronghold surrounded by a moat.
The Northern Neck could be compared with ancient Mesopotamia--a land between two rivers where a new civilization started.
The early settlers came to the wilderness in satins and velvets, they surrounded themselves with the niceties of living, as near like those they had left in England as was possible. They shopped in London as they had before and traded with the world directly from their own habitations.
But the conditions of their new wilderness home changed and moulded them and made them into something different--a new breed of men.
By the time unusual men were needed to shape an unusual type of government, descendants from this stock were ready for the undertaking.
In the Northern Neck there are still so many reminders of these remarkable people that it is not hard to imagine them as they might have been in their habitat several centuries ago--John Mottrom sailing into the Coan in his brightly-colored shallop; the Mottrom children playing their medieval games in the shadow of the primeval woods; Ursula twirling the venison roast on its hempen string before the fire; Hanna Neale passing the witchcraft test; young Jack Lee dashing down the forest aisles on his spirited mount; George Mason pulling the arrows from the "poor people"; Moore Fauntleroy measuring off his thirty arm's lengths of rhoanoke for the waiting Accopatough; King Carter rumbling down his avenue in his coach and six; Mary Ball on her dapple gray; James Monroe and John Marshall walking down the Parson's Lane with school books and muskets; Nelly Madison singing to her new baby; young George Washington riding down to see "Miss Betsy" on a fruitless mission, and little Robert E. Lee saying good-bye to the cherubs in the nursery fireplace....