New Baltimore, a small village just north of the county seat of Warrenton, is located on what was the main road from Alexandria to Warrenton. It is a well-preserved crossroads settlement with resources dating from the early 19th century to the early decades of the 20th century. The roots of the village are closely related to the Huntons, a prominent and well-known Fauquier County family. New Baltimore was also the site of a well-documented visit by the Marquis de LaFayette in 1825 who was revered by Americans for his assistance during the American Revolution.
In 1827 a prestigious boy’s academy, the New Baltimore Academy, was established in the town in a building that has long since disappeared. Like many tiny settlements throughout Virginia, New Baltimore thrived because of its location on a major thoroughfare as well as because of the commercial, milling, and educational institutions that once were active there.
The construction of US Route 29 in the 1920s bypassed this portion of New Baltimore and preserved much of its rural character as a 19th –century crossroads community along the Old Alexandria Turnpike.
New Baltimore was first known as Ball’s Mill or Ball’s Store. William Ball was the owner of a both a mill and a store and also served as an agent for the Niles Register, a Baltimore, Maryland Newspaper. It is speculated that the name of the village derived from Ball’s association with the Maryland city newspaper.
Much of the land on which New Baltimore is located, along with a number of substantial surrounding tracts, were owned by William Hunton and his family who came to Fauquier from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in the mid-18th century.
In the town’s heyday in 1835, it boasted 17 dwelling houses, 2 mercantile stores, a tan yard, wheelwright, blacksmith, boot and shoe factory, and two wheat fan factories. The town’s fortunes must have declined by the 1850s since the Virginia General Assembly repealed the act establishing the town of New Baltimore in its 1855-56 session.