Peter Collinson, F.R.S., wrote to the Pennsylvania gardener and botanist John Bartram, proposing to send him some, and remarked that John Custis of Virginia had a fine "collection", which Ann Leighton interpreted as signifying common and Persian lilacs, in both purple and white, "the entire range of lilacs possible" at the time.
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It is known for being the ancestral home of John Custis II, who emigrated to the Colony of Virginia and named his palatial four-story brick mansion (built in 1675) in Northumberland County, Virginia, "Arlington" after this town.
John Custis died in September 1781, and in 1799 his son, George Washington Parke Custis ("G.W.P.")—step-grandson of George Washington—inherited the site.