Fairview – Caught in History's Crossfire

In the early 19th century, these 10 acres were part of Burgundy Plantation. In the 1850s, John A. Fairfax established a 150 acre plantation named Fairview on the property and improved the existing dwelling originally constructed between 1800 and 1830. The property changed hands several times until 1847, when Bushrod Frobel purchased the land; within a year Frobel sold it, and in 1854 it was sold to Fairfax. In 1921, the Sisters of the Holy Cross from St. Mary's Academy in Alexandria purchased the property, and since 1936 it has been the site of a private residence. During the Civil War, Union officers occupied the house and troops camped on the grounds adjacent to Fort Lyons, one of the Union forts erected in defense of Washington City. According to neighbor Anne Frobel's diary, John S. Mosby and his partisan rangers visited the Fairfax house twice, including sometime in the summer of 1864, when Mrs. Margaret Fairfax told Anne Frobel that Mosby had visited her house. On the second visit, Mrs. Frobel's young girl, Milly, found horse tracks and reported them to the nearby fort, and Union cavalry searched the surrounding area all day without finding the Gray Ghost. Anne Frobel's diary also recorded that on Monday January 26, 1863, she learned at Mrs. Fairfax's how narrowly Margaret Fairfax had escaped being killed the previous Thursday, when after Fairfax had finished dressing and left her room, a ball tore through the walls into the room, shattered the looking glass frame, splintered her bed stand, and dropped near the fireplace where two or three of her little children were standing; Fairfax said that if she had been in bed she would have been killed, and after searching all about and through the bushes she could see no one.

Rose Hill, Virginia · United States