St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church

St. Mary of Sorrows Catholic Church in Fairfax Station was built in 1860 and became the first Catholic Church in Fairfax County.

During the construction of the Orange and Alexandria Railroad through Fairfax County, many Irish Catholic immigrants came to the area to work on the construction crew. A priest from a parish in Alexandria offered mass in train boxcars.

During the Civil War, the Union Army used the church and after the Second Battle of Manassas, Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, ministered to the wounded in the churchyard. Church pews were used for firewood.

Later President Ulysses S. Grant ordered new pews to be made for the church and they are still in use today. Today's congregation meets in a new edifice on Sideburn Road, and the original church is used for special occasions.

Photo by Gilbert Donahue

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

Ossian Hall

Nicholas Fitzhugh, a nephew of William of Chatham, built Ossian Hall in 1780, one of three large homes erected on Ravensworth plantation. Dr. David Stuart purchased Ossian Hall and 831 acres of land in 1804. Dr. Stuart's wife, Eleanor Calvert Custis, was the widow of Martha Washington's son, John, and the Stuarts frequently visited Mount Vernon. Washington appointed Stuart as a commissioner of Washington, D.C., when the city was established in 1791.

In 1918, Joseph L. Bristow, former U.S. Senator from Kansas (1909-1915), purchased Ossian Hall and several hundred acres and lived there until his death in 1944. Ossian Hall was abandoned, although various proposals floated to make the area and home into a state park or to create residential developments.

In 1959, upon the request of developers, the Annandale Fire Department burned the mansion in a controlled training exercise.

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

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