Under the ownership of Michael Straight, from 1942 to the present (1969), Green Spring Farm came under assault from new economic forces which drastically affected farming in Northern Virginia and ultimately brought an end to the agricultural era there. Unlike the changing times of earlier centuries, there was no compromise with the forces of expanding urbanization; and, eventually, even stock farming was ended. Yet, in the twentieth century, as in the eighteenth and nineteenth, the farm continued to represent values which were social as well as economic. The alert eye of a Russian writer catches some of this value in "A Visit from Mr. Polevoy," reproduced in the appendix, just as the inventories of the estates of earlier owners of the farm suggest the social values which were held in their times. Green Spring Farm therefore offers insight into the lives of Virginia gentlemen of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Its owners were men of learning according to their times, and men of affairs. The history of the farm records many references to occasions when it was a gathering place for colorful and talented people whose names were notable in the arts, literature, sciences, and politics of their day. Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, its owners were sought for public service and held positions of trust and responsibility in county, state, and national governments. The architectural history of Green Spring Farm parallels its chain of title. Both the structure and interior design of its buildings have undergone numerous alterations and remodelings. None of these changes, however, has destroyed the simple dignity of the house, and it stands today as a symbol of the traditional strength of spirit of the Virginia freeholder-farmer in an area which is undergoing the transition of America's urban revolution. HISTORICAL NOTES I. GENTLEMAN FREEHOLDERS: THE MOSS FAMILY (1770-1835) When Green Spring Farm came into being in the middle years of the eighteenth century, it represented the second generation of Virginia's agriculture. By 1750, the great plantations of the proprietor and his grantees, laid out on land cleared from the virgin forest and planted with as much tobacco as the owner's supplies of manpower and London credit would allow, were disappearing. In the evolution of farming, another generation of farms and farmers was taking over the Tidewater. Smaller in size than the great tobacco plantations, these farms utilized a larger proportion of their acreage for crops and cultivated a greater diversity of crops than before. For these second-generation farms, wheat and corn for export to England and the West Indies became the principal income crops.