Fairfax County Courthouse

Fairfax County Courthouse, at an important crossroads, was occupied at different times by Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War, and each side’s flag flew from its cupola as the building suffered damage. The Fairfax Riflemen were organized there on April 25, 1861, and on May 23 local voters ratified the Ordinance of Secession by a vote of 151 to 8. Before dawn on June 1, Lt. Charles Tompkins led the 2nd New York Cavalry in an unsuccessful attack on three Confederate units there, during which Capt. John Quincy Marr of the Warrenton Rifles died as the first Confederate officer killed in the war. The courthouse changed hands that summer when Gen. Irvin McDowell raised the U.S. flag atop it on July 17, but the Confederate flag replaced the Stars and Stripes five days later during the Union retreat after the First Battle of Manassas. On October 3, after a conference of Confederate leaders in the courthouse, President Jefferson Davis reviewed 30,000 troops there. After the Confederates evacuated northern Virginia in March 1862, Union Gen. George B. McClellan launched his campaign to capture Richmond from nearby headquarters on March 14. In December, Lt. Col. Charles Cummings of the 16th Vermont Infantry took “peaceable possession” of the clerk’s office and the courthouse, then used for storage, and reported that its windows were broken and boarded, the inside ripped out, the walls defaced, and the green trampled and encamped upon. On March 9, 1863, Lt. John S. Mosby and his Rangers slipped into a nearby Union camp at night and kidnapped Gen. Edwin H. Stoughton in what was called the war’s most audacious act there. Fairfax County’s most prized document, George Washington’s will, was removed from the courthouse for safekeeping in June 1861, but Martha Washington’s will was left behind, taken by Lt. Col. David Thomson of the 82nd Ohio Infantry, later sold to J.P. Morgan, and not returned until 1920. After the war, county officials quickly voted to restore the courthouse for holding court, and in the 1960s its exterior was restored to the original 1800 architectural design; Fairfax County’s oldest public building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

Virginia · United States