During the Civil War, Pohick Church’s prominent hilltop location made it a target for occupation and vandalism, but it also served as an aeronautical center. On November 12, 1861, Union Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman’s 2nd Michigan Volunteers raided the church, and Lt. Charles B. Haydon denounced the soldiers’ looting and destruction of artifacts from George Washington’s church. Within two months, the church became a balloon outpost for Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, and the building served as quarters for the garrison stationed there. Graffiti left by the men remains visible on the church walls, doorposts, and quoins, and bullet holes remain in the exterior brick. From this location, Lowe repeatedly launched his balloon Intrepid to track Confederate troop movements along the Occoquan River. On March 2, 1862, he observed the Confederates evacuating the Occoquan area, the first indication that they were withdrawing from northern Virginia to a more defensible position along the Rappahannock River. Later and elsewhere, Lowe’s aeronauts located Confederate forces, reported on force strength, and directed artillery fire. Lowe’s earliest successes for the short-lived Federal Balloon Corps, which disbanded a year-and-a-half later, occurred at Pohick Church. Completed in 1774, this colonial church replaced a wooden building located two miles south. The congregation had been founded by 1732, when the Virginia House of Burgesses created the geographical district of Truro Parish north of the Occoquan River, and for this reason Pohick Church is often called the Mother Church of Northern Virginia. Vestry members George Washington and George Mason, among other patriots, met there in 1774 for early discussions of the Fairfax Resolves, a step on the road to independence. Because of Washington’s membership there, the British reportedly raided the church during the War of 1812 and disfigured a memorial to the nation’s first president.
