November 12, 1738

Virginia creates Frederick and Augusta counties across its western frontier

Virginia divided the vast territory west of the Blue Ridge previously attached to Orange County into Frederick and Augusta counties. Their boundary ran from the head spring of the Hedgman River to the head spring of the Potomac, but uncertain geography and open-ended western claims made jurisdiction beyond the settled frontier indistinct. Land that eventually formed present-day Preston County passed through this shifting Frederick–Augusta borderland—and later Hampshire and West Augusta—before Monongalia County was created in 1776.