The first specific grant of land in the later Loudoun appears long before the treaty of 1722. Under date of the 2nd February, 1709, Captain Daniel McCarty "of the Parish of Cople in the County of Westmoreland, Esq." obtained title to 2,993 acres "above the falls of the Potowmack River, beginning on said River side at the lower end of the Sugar Land Island opposite to the upper part of the rocks in said River,"[16] apparently for speculation or investment rather than for immediate occupation; the number and character of the Indians still to be encountered thereabout made settlement on isolated plantations or farms far too risky to be inviting to rich or poor. This Daniel McCarty was the founder of another eminent family of the Northern Neck which intermarried in early days with many of the best known of the early Potomac gentry. He subsequently married, as her second husband, Ann, sister to Thomas Lee already mentioned, and widow of Colonel William Fitzhugh of Eagle's Nest in King George County. The joining together of the prominent families of the lower peninsula began very early and by the closing years of the eighteenth century had gone so far that almost all were in very truth "Virginia cousins" of various degrees and through numerous alliances. Indeed this became so general that the social status of any family, tracing back to that period and locality, can generally be determined merely by the test of its affinities. [16] Land Patents Book, III, 248. It is remarkable that the literature of romance has concerned itself so little with Daniel McCarty. His ancestry, his own life and that of his descendants unite in offering the richest material but, save in the traditions of Virginia, he is today all but unknown. He was the son of Donal, the son of Donough, Earl of Clancarty. Donal was an officer in the Irish Army that fought against King William and was ruined with its defeat. The Earl and his descendants were exiled and Daniel came to Virginia as a youth and settled in Westmoreland County. The Earls of Clancarty were the heads of a family descended from Cormac who was King of Munster in 483; and Burke, the great authority on the British peerage, declares that "few pedigrees in the British Empire, if any, can be traced to a more remote or more exalted source" than theirs; while another authority asseverates that "long before the founders of the oldest royal families of Europe, before Rudolph acquired the empire of Germany, or a Bourbon ascended the throne of France, Cormac McCarty ruled over Munster and the title of King was at least continued in name in his posterity down to the reign of Elizabeth."[17] Daniel's eldest son and heir, Colonel Dennis, married Sarah Ball, first cousin to Mary Ball, mother of General Washington; and Augustine Washington, the general's father, named him as one of the executors of his will. It was another descendant of Captain Daniel who was surviving principal in the