Before the Civil War, John and Mary Marshall, early prominent citizens of the Burke area, bought this land and built a family dwelling on fifty acres purchased in 1852. They donated land to the Church of the Good Shepherd and to the Ashford School, one of the community's first schools. Railroad cars on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad would have carried goods and produce for the Marshalls' general merchandise store in Burke Station, and John Marshall served as Burke Station's postmaster from 1852 to 1854. He also managed the affairs of the widowed neighbor Mrs. Silas (Hannah) Burke. Although they had no children, the Marshalls had a large extended family and, upon their deaths, divided their property among twenty-four nieces and nephews. Their land also contains a surviving portion of the original 1851 Orange and Alexandria railroad bed, bordering Burke Road just south of this site. Chartered in 1848 to connect Orange County, Virginia, with Alexandria, the line had extended to Lynchburg, Virginia, by 1860. During the Civil War it carried goods and Federal troops and was frequently attacked by Confederate forces, and the Marshalls would have witnessed significant wartime activity in the area. In 1903, new tracks were laid several hundred feet north, and the Orange and Alexandria eventually became the Norfolk Southern railroad.
