Introductory.

Falls Church, while a Virginia village, is thoroughly cosmopolitan. According to a recent census only about fifty per cent. of its inhabitants are natives of Virginia, the rest coming from the various States of the Union or from foreign countries.

Falls Church might properly be called a national village, since its citizens are chiefly employees of the government, and the interests of its eleven hundred people naturally center at the National Capitol.

Every geographical section of the United States has here a representative type of citizen who has chosen this quiet village for a home. For this and other reasons Falls Church is probably the most thoroughly American community in the country. This distinction, if admitted, must come as a natural sequence from its situation as a suburb of the Nation's capital, from the cosmopolitan character of its society, and from the fact that so many of its residents are connected with the Executive Departments as a part of the machinery of representative government.

The village is situated in a county of the Old Dominion rich in events of historic interest. In Colonial days, in the times of the Revolution, as in the days of the civil strife, Fairfax County furnished her quota of illustrious sons. At Gunston Hall on the Potomac dwelt George Mason, author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, pronounced the most remarkable paper of the epoch, and the foundation of the great American assertion of independence as afterward draughted by Jefferson. In Fairfax County lived and died the immortal Washington, and his ashes repose in its soil at his beloved Mount Vernon. During the late civil war every part of its territory was a battle ground and breast-works thrown up by contending armies over a generation ago may still be seen here and there within its borders. At the beginning of our war with Spain twenty-five thousand volunteer soldiers from a dozen States pitched their tents on a favored spot in this ancient county, where they were schooled to proficiency in the art of modern warfare.

The old Episcopal church, from which Falls Church takes its name, still stands as a monument linking colonial days with the present. Around it cluster memories of great events in American history, for past its substantial walls have marched soldiers of all our leading wars since the day Washington guided the lordly Braddock over the road hard by down to the time of our recent war with Spain. The old church has passed through many vicissitudes since Washington worshipped there. It served as a recruiting station for patriots of the Revolution, then abandoned as a house of worship for a long period of years; subsequently it was reopened and throughout the civil war used alternately as a hospital and a stable by the Union Army. To complete the chain of events in this connection soldiers enlisted for the Spanish-American war were encamped near by and pickets of the camp stood guard under the shadow of its walls.

Falls Church thirty years ago was a mere hamlet of, perhaps, a dozen houses. It is to-day the largest town in the county of Fairfax and its population is steadily increasing. Forces are now at work which may eventually make it the largest town in Northern Virginia, with the possible exception of Alexandria. Upon the completion of the new bridges now in course of construction across the Potomac and the improved facilities for reaching Washington by means of steam roads and trolley lines, the tide of suburban home-seekers from the capital city must turn this way, whereby this Virginia village is destined to become a Virginia city which may bind the old mother commonwealth closer than ever before to the Federal City and the National government.