Time marches onward at its relentless pace, and it soon will be thirty-seven years since that wonderfully momentous April 8, 1962, when God smiled down on the formal organization of Heritage United Presbyterian Church and bathed it in His infinite grace and beauty. Much has occurred in those years that has taken its place in our own personal time capsule, but it should not fade into the shadows of the past. Rather, it should stand in the foreground for what it means for today and as a beacon for the future. YEA, WE HAVE A GOODLY HERITAGE, and the recounting of it in tribute to God for His wondrous guidance and blessings and, also, in tribute to those very first hard-working souls dedicated to the establishment and nourishment of Heritage in its Christian mission is the objective of this series of articles.

Our heritage is particularly unique, given our relationships to the life of George Washington, the Nation's capital, and to those who preceded Washington's acquisition of his some eight thousand acres, including River Farm on which our church is located. We walk the land not harking back to the Dogue Indians -- Native Americans -- who left many moccasin prints in trekking across our land in their movements between their chief village on the north bank of the Occoquan River and the several other villages along the Potomac River as far north as Roosevelt Island. Their travels took them inland to the "Potomac Path," an Indian trail that pretty much followed the present Route 1 and to another trail along what is now King's Highway.

Nor do we look even farther back to their predecessors, the Stone Age Indians who produced some of the finest stone implements ever discovered. Did you know that the climate of our area then was pretty brutal because the southern terminus of the last Wisconsin glacial maximum was only 500 miles north of here. The ice there was one mile thick. By the time Capt. John Smith made his first voyage up the Potomac in 1608 looking for grain sources, the Dogues had been principally in agriculture for some 2000 years. Given European diseases and English efforts to be rid of them, the Dogues were gone from what is now known as Fairfax County by 1681. The Native Americans had gone, but their heritage remained to be forever a part of our heritage.

Our land ultimately came to be owned by a one William Clifton. His residence, built in 1740, was in what we now know as Wellington, and his principal occupation concerned operation of a ferry between the Maryland and Virginia shores. This was used primarily by the militia of the day. What is now Fort Hunt Road was then known as "Clifton's Neck Road." It was on Clifton's death in 1767 that our property came into the hands of the Washington family as George, after purchasing Mount Vernon in 1752, expanded his vast holdings.

Such were the very beginnings of our heritage. There's much more. For example, consider that in 1906 one and three-quarter million people crossed the very spot of our sanctuary on one of the 32 trains per day (neither of these statistics are typos!) running between Alexandria and Mount Vernon. Does that pique your interest? Stay tuned.

Note: Information for this, and the articles to follow, is drawn from the Internet, writings of the Rev. Larry Glassco, Pastor Emeritus, Heritage Church, church files, and personal files. Furthermore, there are seven of us still around who were involved from the very beginning -- three as Charter Members, four as Elders elected at the first-ever Annual Meeting -- and all are welcome to contribute as appropriate to this series.