Mount Air Historic Site

Mount Air was built and long occupied by the McCarty family, an important Virginia family whose patriarch Dennis McCarty patented the land on Accotink Creek in 1727, served as sheriff, justice of the peace, vestryman from Truro Parish, and representative in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and married George Washington’s cousin Sarah Ball in 1724. By 1732 the property had a house and garden, and a public warehouse on the land stored produce for shipment to England. Generations of McCarty descendants lived there until the house was damaged by fire about 1850, rebuilt or repaired, and sold out of the family in 1860. That year Aristides Landstreet, his wife Mary, and their family moved in, but after the Civil War began Aristides joined the Confederate Army, his family remained for a time near shifting Confederate and Union lines, and when Union troops occupied the estate the family relocated for the duration of the war while the house and lands suffered greatly. After Aristides died in 1910, his daughters mortgaged and then sold the property in 1914 to George Shirley Kernan. In 1918 Mrs. Kernan made the grounds available as quarters for Army men constructing a railroad to Camp Humphreys, now Fort Belvoir, and lumber left from the encampment was used to panel a room in the main house and build a garage. In 1962 Mrs. Kernan left the estate to her daughter, Elisabeth Enochs, whose home remained at Mount Air despite extensive travel, and who in the 1960s began seeking ways to preserve it; in 1969 the main house was registered with the Fairfax County Historic Landmarks Survey. Several weeks after Elisabeth died in May 1992, the main house was completely destroyed by fire, and in 1997 the historic site was conveyed to the Fairfax County Park Authority.

Newington, Virginia · United States