FAIRFAX MONUMENT at BELVOIR MANSION
Within the confines of Fort Belvoir Army Base
Fort Belvoir, Virginia USA
Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books
A monument to the memory of the William Fairfax family stands near the ruins of “Belvoir Mansion” within the confines of Fort Belvoir, a U.S. Army Reservation. The site may be accessed from Forney Loop at Marshall Road on the military base. A sign near the intersection adjacent to a small parking area reads:
Belvoir Mansion
Historic Area
Home of Colonel William Fairfax
Established 1741
Behind the sign, a narrow gravel road (closed to vehicular traffic) leads through the woods to a beautiful, large, grassy, open area surrounded by trees. Remains of the foundations of Belvoir Mansion and its outbuildings have been marked with concrete pavers. Several signs with descriptive and historic information stand around the site. The signs describe the mansion, which stood overlooking the Potomac River northeast of Gunston Cove, as “luxuriously and elegantly furnished” in a “commanding” setting, and renowned for “princely hospitality.” The site is registered with the National Registry of Historic Places and was placed on the Virginia Landmarks Register in December 1969.
According to information at the site and from a 1971 Historic American Buildings Survey of Belvoir, the mansion was built about 1741 by William Fairfax who was a cousin of and agent for Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, the Proprietor of the Northern Neck of Virginia. When Lord Fairfax came to the colonies in 1746, he stayed with his cousin at Belvoir for an extended time while his home “Greenway Court” in the Shenandoah Valley was surveyed and built.
George Washington was a friend and neighbor of the Fairfax family while he lived nearby at Mount Vernon as a young man, according to Rider with Destiny by Lonnelle Aikman. His brother Lawrence married William Fairfax’s daughter Ann and the Washington brothers then became “part of the gilded circle of planters’ aristocracy . . . achieved by propinquity and marri-age.” George Washington’s friendship with William Fairfax’s eldest son George William and his wife Sarah (“Sally”) Cary has intrigued historians and romantics over the years. And it was Lord Fairfax who included the young George Washington in the March 1748 excursion to survey tenant farms on the Proprietor’s “vast Shenandoah Valley holdings,” according to Aikman.
Belvoir was inherited by George William Fairfax in 1757, according to information at the site. The younger Fairfax, described as “a moderate royalist” in an article about Belvoir in the 17 February 1919 issue of The New York Times, returned to England in 1773. The buildings survey reports that the following year, “a notice offering the 2,000-acre Belvoir estate for rent appeared in the Philadelphia Gazette.” Belvoir, the notice stated, was a two-story brick building “with four convenient rooms and a wide hall on the lower floor, five rooms and a wide passage on the second floor, with spacious cellars and convenient offices, kitchens, quarters for servants, coacherie, stables and all other outbuildings needed on a great estate” which included a large garden, orchard and fisheries. A fire destroyed Belvoir in 1783, according to the survey, and the British shelled the remains in 1814, after attacking Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.
The buildings survey mentions Fairfax family graves “in the vicinity of the mansion site.” A sign on the grounds of the ruins states that the small family cemetery was north of the larger garden, about five hundred feet from the mansion.
In the spring of 1894, writer W. H. Snowden visited the Belvoir ruins and family cemetery and described the site in Some Old Historic Landmarks of Virginia and Maryland: A Handbook for the Tourist over the Washington, Alexandria and Mount Vernon Railway (Third edition, 1902):
In the wood near adjoining, rows of sunken mounds indicated the family-burial place. A score of graves may still be counted, without stone or vestige of enclosure. The marble slabs which had marked the last resting-places of William Fairfax and Deborah, his wife, the first master and mistress, and which had remained intact until a few years before the war, had been sacrilegiously broken up and carried away.
The inscription read as follows:
“HERE REST THE REMAINS OF DEBORAH CLARKE FAIRFAX,
WHO DEPARTED THIS TROUBLESOME LIFE
ON THE FOURTEENTH DAY OF --- 1747* IN THE SIXTY-SEVENTH YEAR OF HER AGE.
SHE WAS THE WIDOW OF FRANCIS CLARKE OF NEW SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS COLONY,
AND THE LATE WIFE OF WILLIAM FAIRFAX, ESQ., COLLECTOR OF HIS MAJESTY’S CUSTOMS
ON THE SOUTH POTOMAC, AND ONE OF THE KINGS’ HONORABLE COUNCIL OF VIRGINIA.
IN EVERY STATION OF LIFE SHE WAS WORTHY OF IMITATION.
A FAITHFUL AND LOVING WIFE.
THE BEST OF MOTHERS.
A SINCERE AND AMIABLE FRIEND.
IN ALL RELIGIOUS DUTIES WELL INSTRUCTED AND OBSERVANT,
AND HAS GONE WHERE ONLY SUCH VIRTUES CAN BE REWARDED.”
* Note: Obelisk at site gives Deborah Clarke Fairfax’s death year as 1746.
The tablet over the grave of the proprietor and master of the homestead who died in 1757 disappeared long before that of the mistress. Some portions of the old enclosure were still lying around the burial place and with these the writer improvised a rude cross over the remains of the two . . . and gathering some wild flowers blooming near by, strewed them about with kindly regard to light up for the hour at least, the utter loneliness of the spot.
According to the buildings survey, Belvoir was part of the 1,500 acres purchased by the Corps of Engineers in 1910. The area was originally called Camp Humphreys, and the name of the base was changed to Fort Belvoir in 1935. The Times article reports that soldiers uncovered the brick foundations of Belvoir and the graves of Colonel William and Deborah Fairfax in 1919 while making excavations for new barracks. A 1920 photograph of the site published in The Alexandria Gazette in December 1986, shows the cemetery marked by a large wooden cross and enclosed by a log fence.
A brick-edged path leads from the ruins northwest to a large obelisk set in a small clearing. The monument, erected by descendant Fairfax Harrison, is surrounded by a brick walkway and wrought iron fence. The site was surveyed in the early 1970s, 1987, 1988, and 1997. In the fall of 1997, the surveyor noted flowers planted around the base of the twelve-foot memorial. The inscription reads as follows:
Here lies
William Fairfax, Esq.
1691-1757
of Belvoir
Born at Towlston
in Yorkshire.
Died President of
the Virginia Council.
Here lies
Deborah Clarke
1708-1746
Born at Salem
at Massachusetts.
Died wife of
William Fairfax, Esq.
In memory of
the youngest son of
William Fairfax, Esq.
William Henry Fairfax
1739-1759
Subaltern in Bragg’s
(28th) Regiment.
Died of Wounds rec’d
with Wolfe before Quebec.
In memory of
the second son of
William Fairfax, Esq.
Thomas Fairfax
1726-1746
Midshipman killed in
action against a
French squadron on
the Coromandel coast.
Signs at the site read “Fairfax Grave Monument” and “Off Limits Sunset to Sunrise.”
No Updates from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books