18th century and founding The settlement which would grow into the town of Warrenton began as a crossroads at the junction of the Falmouth-Winchester and Alexandria-Culpeper roads, where a
trading post called the Red Store was located. In the 1790s, a courthouse was built in the area, and the location was known as "Fauquier Courthouse".
19th century and the American Civil War The Town of Warrenton was incorporated on January 5, 1810, and named for General
Joseph Warren, a
Revolutionary War hero.
Richard Henry Lee donated the land for the county seat.
John S. Horner,
Secretary of Wisconsin Territory and Acting Governor of
Michigan Territory, was born in Warrenton.
John Marshall, the fourth
Chief Justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court, was from
Germantown, modern-day
Midland, south of Warrenton. Warrenton was connected to the
Orange and Alexandria Railroad in 1853 via a
branch line. Warrenton's connection to the line had previously been proposed, but construction hasn't begun until 1852. Given the rail line's strategic usage during the American Civil War, the Warrenton Branch was a target for attack twice. Because of this, the railroad was left largely abandoned and unusable by 1863.
Southern Railway resumed passenger service to the town from 1909 to 1944 with commercial service continuing through the 1980s.
Norfolk Southern ended service entirely in 1989 with the removal of tracks. of the railroad depot in the Town of Warrenton taken by
Timothy H. O'Sullivan.|220x220px .
Confederate Colonel
John S. Mosby made
raids in the town during the
American Civil War and later made his home and practiced law in Warrenton. The Warren Green Hotel building hosted many famous people, including the
Marquis de Lafayette,
James Monroe,
Andrew Jackson,
Henry Clay, President
Theodore Roosevelt, and divorcée
Wallis Simpson.
Union General
George B. McClellan bade farewell to his officers November 11, 1862, from the steps of the hotel.|273x273px
Arthur Jordan, a black American man, was
lynched by a mob of approximately 60–75 men in white hoods in the early hours of January 19, 1880. Jordan had been accused of
miscegenation and
bigamy for eloping with Elvira (Lucille) Corder, the daughter of his white employer, Nathan Corder, a landowner and farmer in the upper part of the county along the
Rappahannock River. A group of local men hunted the pair down near
Williamsport, Maryland, captured Mr. Jordan and returned him to Fauquier, whereupon he was delivered to the town jail. Later that night, the masked lynch mob gained access to the jail and dragged Jordan to the nearby town cemetery, where he was hanged from a small locust tree. Ms. Corder remained in Maryland, estranged from her family, until her death a few years later. News of the lynching was reported in papers across the nation. Even some foreign newspapers, such as Australia's
Sydney Morning Herald, reprinted accounts of the event.
20th century In 1909, a fire destroyed almost half the structures in the town and was halted with the use of dynamite to create a firebreak to stop the flames from spreading. Cassini was treated for burns at the Fauquier County Hospital in the early morning, with the three individuals being arrested and placed on probation. A bypass route around the town was built in the early 1960s, which attracted restaurants, gas stations, and shopping centers, but also drew businesses away from the center of town. In 1998, Warrenton's "Black Horse" chapter of the
United Daughters of the Confederacy erected and dedicated a monument in the Warrenton Cemetery to 520 Confederate soldiers buried there, many of whom died during the
First and
Second Battles of Bull Run. The then-mayor's wife spearheaded fundraising for the monument from private organizations and the United Daughters of the Confederacy itself, of which she was a member. This monument still remains. ==Geography==