{"id":3926,"date":"2020-09-05T00:53:23","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T00:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/?p=3926"},"modified":"2020-09-05T02:16:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T02:16:25","slug":"whose-folly-or-whos-fawley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/whose-folly-or-whos-fawley\/","title":{"rendered":"Whose Folly, or Who\u2019s Fawley?"},"content":{"rendered":"

During colonial times, it was common for land tracts to be given colorful names, such as \u201cTasker\u2019s Chance,\u201d \u201cArnold\u2019s Delight,\u201d \u201cMortality,\u201d or \u201cMill\u2019s Folly\u201d — all of which were in nearby Frederick County, Maryland. \u201cFolly\u201d was often used in land tract names; other Maryland examples include \u201cBrowne\u2019s Folly,\u201d Allbreck\u2019s Folly,\u201d and Rhinehart\u2019s Folly.\u201d
\nSo one could be forgiven for thinking that \u201cFolly Lane\u201d was named after someone\u2019s folly. But it\u2019s origin is much more interesting, having been derived from the Fawley family which settled there long ago. And as we\u2019ll see, \u201cFawley\u201d is but the modern spelling of the old German name which had many variations of \u201cPfahl\u00ff.\u201d
\nIn 1989, Loudoun County undertook to rename its roads, because of confusion caused by the numbering system that had been instituted in the 1920s. Local mapmaker Eugene Scheel was invited to sit on the road-naming committee, because he had included old road names on his well-known 1972 map of Loudoun County. In a 2004 Washington Post article, Scheel described how Folly Lane got its modern name:
\n\u201cFolly Lane, northwest of Taylorstown, gained its name by accident. I recommended to the committee that it be called Wash Fawley Lane, the traditional name. Fawley’s nickname — his real first and middle names were George Washington — was always included in the lane’s name to distinguish him from others of his clan.<\/em>
\n\u201cBut the lane’s residents, all of whom had moved there since 1980, thought \u2018Wash\u2019 a hillbilly name. They agreed to Fawley Lane, but a few didn’t like that either. Someone remarked \u2018about the folly of it all,\u2019 and one homeowner chimed in, \u2018That’s it.\u2019”<\/em>
\n\"Folly<\/a><\/p>\n

In Scheel\u2019s \u201cLoudoun Discovered\u201d book series, he discusses the roads that take off from the hub at Lindsey\u2019s Corner: \u201cAlso leading to the river is Fawley\u2019s Lane, named for farmer \u2018Wash\u2019 Fawley\u2019s two farms at its end near the drains of the Quarter Branch. George Washington Fawley was said to have the loudest cattle call in Loudoun. When he yelled for his stock, they said you could hear him in Brunswick, more than a mile away.\u201d<\/em>
\nOn the famous Yardley Taylor map of 1853, an \u201cH. Fawley\u201d is shown in the Taylorstown-Hoysville area.
\nOld German church records from this area show many variations of the original Fawley name, and give an idea of how long the family has been here.
\nIn the records of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Frederick (which recorded pastoral acts in Loudoun County prior to 1784-85), we find baptisms for Phale children as early as 1771, and confirmations of three Phale boys in 1783 \u201cin Loudoun County on the Short Hill\u201d \u2013 which is how the New Jerusalem congregation was known in the late 18th century.
\nFrom the original register at New Jerusalem Lutheran Church, which began as a separate register from its mother church in Frederick around 1784, we find the following variations of the name: Pfal\u00ff, Pfahle, Pfahly, Pfahl\u00ff, Phale, Phaley, Phala\u00ff, Phaly, Phal\u00ff, Fahle, Fahl\u00ff, Fally, <\/em>and finally, Fawley.
\nNow, isn\u2019t it easier to call it \u201cFolly Lane,\u201d than \u201cPfahl\u00ff Lane\u201d?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During colonial times, it was common for land tracts to be given colorful names, such as \u201cTasker\u2019s Chance,\u201d \u201cArnold\u2019s Delight,\u201d \u201cMortality,\u201d or \u201cMill\u2019s Folly\u201d — all of which were in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3928,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3926"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3953,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926\/revisions\/3953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}