Half a mile west stood the terminus of the Centreville Military Railroad, the first railroad in the world constructed exclusively for military purposes. Built by the Confederate army late in 1861 because of impassable roads, it supplied soldiers in their winter camps at Centreville. Trains from Manassas Junction ran there until March 1862, when Confederate forces withdrew southward. Nearby on 9 Dec. 1862, Privates Michael O’Brien and Dennis Corcoran of Maj. Chatham R. Wheat’s “Louisiana Tigers” were court-martialed for mutiny, executed by a firing squad from their own company, and buried. In 1979, their remains were reinterred at St. John’s Episcopal Church cemetery in Centreville.