For 112 years Ravensworth ownership stayed exclusively within the Fitzhugh family. Then in September 1797, Henry Rose and Augustine Smith bought 3009 acres in a joint business venture, seeking quick profits by subdividing and reselling the land. In selling Parcel 1.1.1 and Parcel 1.1.7, Battaile Fitzhugh divested his inherited share of Ravensworth.

Six months earlier, Colonel William Payne had become the first non-Fitzhugh owner in buying 25-acres that included the Payne’s Mill lot, which his family had leased for three generations.

Some of the mystery clouding the fate of Richard Henry Fitzhugh’s marriage, after fleeing to Kentucky to avoid arrest for fraud, was resolved. New research discovered that his wife Mary Ann (Marbury) remarried in 1829 and died days after giving birth in 1831. Francis Scott Key eulogized her passing in a poem that is inscribed on her gravestone.