Fairfax County Gravestones Books
In the mid-1980s, the Fairfax Genealogical Society undertook a project to transcribe the gravestones found in cemeteries throughout Fairfax County. This effort resulted in the publication of a 6 volume set of books in the 1990s. The project also resulted in the discovery of more than 350 burial sites in the county.
These gravestone publications resulted from an effort to build on the individual work carried out in the early 1970s by Jane Kirkpatrick Wall, one of the founding members of the Fairfax Genealogical Society. She recognized the need to record gravestone inscriptions before they disappeared. She surveyed many of the county’s cemeteries, extracted information from the existing gravestones, and then donated her work to the Virginia Room of the Fairfax City Regional Library.
In addition to Jane Wall’s work, the effort benefited from other surveys, especially those by Carrie White Avery in the early 1920s; Aurelia M. Jewell in the late 1940s and early 1950s; Verna Brockhurst and Agnes Kirby, who organized surveyors from the Freedom Hill Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution in the 1970s; and more recent research by Brian Conley, then an Information Specialist in the Virginia Room, Fairfax City Regional Library, who expended much effort to pinpoint the locations of the more than 350 burial locations in the county.
The Society’s efforts included updating the work by Jane Wall and surveying other graveyards and cemeteries not included in her original work. The Fairfax County Public Library administration granted the Society permission to use Jane Wall’s documents in our publications. Her work is the nucleus and inspiration of this project.
Many people volunteered on this project, and we are very grateful to them. Click here to see the list of those who volunteered.
There are many abbreviations used throughout the books. Click here to see the list of abbreviations.
Click here to see the Bibliography for the Gravestone books.
Click here to see a list of the Funeral Homes and Monument/Memorial Dealers in Northern Virginia as of 1999.
Uploading all the information included in the six volumes of the books is a large project and will take some time. In the meantime, click on the links below to see which cemeteries are included in each volume. Then you can click on Cemetery Records to see if the information has been uploaded yet. If it has been uploaded, you can click on the eyeball next to a person’s name to see more information from that tombstone. If you would like to help with uploading the information to this website, please contact the Webmaster.