Marshall Family Gravestone

The Marshall Family Cemetery is located in Colonel Silas Burke Park near the intersection of Old Burke Lake Road and Burke Road in Burke, Virginia. The home of John A. and Mary Marshall, which had stood nearby, was relocated and later burned in the 1970s. The Marshalls owned the general store in Burke and were prominent landowners in the mid to late 1800s. They donated land for the original Church of the Good Shepherd and for the Ashford School.

During the Civil War, a soldier shot in one of the skirmishes crawled to the Marshall House . Before the family could get his name, he died on their doorstep. He is buried in the Marshall family plot, referred to as Burke's Unknown Soldier. Whether he fought for the Union or the Confederacy is also unknown.

Photo by Gil Donahue

Copyrighted material, not to be reproduced without permission of owner, Gilbert Donahue

Jerusalem Baptist Church

The Jerusalem Baptist congregation of Fairfax Station formed on May 17, 1840. Charter members worshiped every third Sunday at the Upper Church (Payne's Church), an original colonial Anglican church, which was located south of the courthouse on Ox Road. During the Civil War, Confederates used the church building as a hospital. Later Union troops dismantled the church and used the bricks to build chimneys for their winter quarters. This white frame church opened on Ox Road in January 1867, and its membership of blacks and whites remained steady through the years. Baptisms were held in local streams or ponds. Currently, in 2007, the Evangelical Union Korean Church of Washington meets in the original white frame structure.

Photo by Gilbert Donahue

Copyrighted material, not to be reproduced without permission of owner, Gilbert Donahue

Fairfax Station in Civil War

Photographer Matthew Brady captured the devastation of the Civil War in Fairfax Station, Virginia. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, nursed the wounded there after the Second Battle of Manassas and the Battle of Chantilly, 1862.

Photograph from Fairfax County Public Library, Virginia Room, Photographic Archive

Burke United Methodist Church

The Burke United Methodist Church opened in a former Southern Railway train station in 1929. Former school teacher and neighborhood handyman, Willie Harlow, made the steeple and the cross, although he did not attend church services there. The congregation moved to a new location in 1979, and the former depot and church became a commercial building.

General J.E.B. Stuart had raided the old train station in 1862, and a historic marker denotes the event.

Photograph from Fairfax County Public Library, Virginia Room, Photographic Archive

Annandale United Methodist Church

The Annandale United Methodist Church was built in 1846. During the Civil War, the Union Army used the church as a hospital, then burned the building and the village of Annandale as it withdrew from the area. A new building with a small balcony for African American worshippers was finished in 1870. The first public school classes for Annandale children met in the basement of the church. The bell, added in 1908, served as Annandale's only fire alarm until 1923. The church stands on the corner of Columbia Pike and Gallows Road in Annandale, Virginia.

Photo by Gilbert Donahue

Copyrighted material, not to be reproduced without permission of owner, Gilbert Donahue