Burke Family Cemetery

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

BURKE FAMILY CEMETERY
10018 Burke Lake Road
Burke, Virginia USA

This half-acre cemetery is located on a tree-shaded slope of periwinkle in back of 6206 Kersey Court and in front of 6204 Kersey Court in a housing development in Burke. The developer of the subdivision arranged the housing lots to protect the burials.

The site is the final resting place for Silas and Hannah Coffer Burke, for whom this community is named. Burke was a successful landowner and businessman. Their family home which was built circa 1825 still stands at 9623 Burke Lake Road.

According to an article in the 6 August 1987 Burke-Braddock Connection, the ownership of the cemetery has at times been unclear. John W. Matthews, a homeowner in the area, filed a quit-claim deed with the county in 1973, to protect the site. He has since moved from the area, but evidently retains ownership of the property.

There are two broken gravestones and several fieldstones in the cemetery. When last surveyed in September 1994, the death date for Silas Burke could no longer be read, as the stone has been broken across that inscription. Researcher E. M. Sprouse reports that Volume XVI, page 125, of the Yearbook of the Historical Society of Fairfax County, Virginia, Inc. gives Silas Burke’s date of death as 14 September 1854; however, the date read on previous surveys is included here.

Name Birth Death
Silas Burke
“Our Grandfather” 1 Nov 1796 1 Oct 1854
Hannah Burke
née Coffer
“Our Grandmother”
(carver: Chauncey, Alex. Va.) 12 Dec 1800 4 Aug 1895