Stafford County, which had been set off from Westmoreland in 1664, was provided with a courthouse within a year of its establishment. Ralph Happel in _Stafford and King George Courthouses and the Fate of Marlborough, Port of Entry_, has given us a detailed chronicle of the Stafford courthouses, showing that the first structure was situated south of Potomac Creek until 1690, when it presumably burned.[22] The court, in any event, began to meet in a private house on November 12, 1690, while on November 14 one Sampson Darrell was appointed chief undertaker and Ambrose Bayley builder of a new courthouse. A contract was signed between them and the justices of the court to finish the building by June 10, 1692, at a cost of 40,000 pounds of tobacco and cash, half to be paid in 1691 and the remainder upon completion.[23]
With William Fitzhugh the presiding magistrate of the Stafford County court as well as cosponsor of the Act for Ports, it was foreordained that the new courthouse should be tied in with plans for the port town. The Act for Ports, however, was still in the making, and it was not possible to begin the courthouse until after its passage in the spring. On June 10, 1691, it was "Ordered by this Court that Capt. George Mason and Mr. Blande the Surveyor shall immediately goe and run over the ground where the Town is to Stand and that they shall then advise and direct M^r Samson Darrell the Cheife undertaker of the Court house for this County where he shall Erect and build the same."[24]
The court's order was followed by a hectic sequence that reflects, in general, the irresponsibilities, the lack of respect for law and order, and the frontier weaknesses which made it necessary to strengthen authority. It begins with Sampson Darrell himself, whose moral shortcomings seem to have been legion (hog-stealing, cheating a widow, and refusing to give indentured servants their freedom after they had earned it, to name a few). Darrell undoubtedly had the fastidious Fitzhugh's confidence, for certainly without that he would not have been appointed undertaker at all. In his position in the court, Fitzhugh would have been instrumental in selecting both architect and architecture for the courthouse, and Darrell seems to have met his requirements. Fitzhugh, in fact, had sufficient confidence in Darrell to entrust him with personal business in London in 1688.[25]