Fairfax

On June 1, 1861, the first major skirmish of the Civil War occurred on the main street of Fairfax Court House when 50 men of Co. B, Second U.S. Cavalry, led by Lt. Charles H. Tomkins, rode into town before dawn firing their weapons. As Capt. John Quincy Marr, commander of the Warrenton Rifles, rallied his men against the Union attack, he was killed by a stray bullet, becoming the first Confederate officer to die in the war. On March 9, 1863, Confederate Col. John S. Mosby and 29 of his rangers entered Fairfax and captured Union Gen. Edwin Stoughton while he slept at the Gunnell house, also taking two captains, 30 privates, and 58 horses. After learning of Stoughton's capture, President Abraham Lincoln remarked that he did not care so much about the loss of the general because he could make another with the stroke of a pen, but he sure hated to lose those horses. During the early years of the war, Fairfax resident Antonia Ford charmed soldiers from North and South with her beauty and conversation, and Confederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, impressed with her ability to recall details from those conversations, presented her with a written commission as his honorary aide-de-camp. During a search of the Ford home after Mosby's 1863 raid, Union officials discovered the commission and incarcerated her as a Confederate spy in Old Capital Prison in Washington, D.C.; while in prison, she won the heart of Union Maj. Joseph C. Willard, who arranged her release, and they later married.

Fairfax, Virginia · United States