Gunston White School

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

Decades prior to the opening of Gunston Elementary School in 1955, two early Fairfax County public schools were also named after Gunston Hall. During the era of one-room schoolhouses and racially segregated public education, there were two small schools located near the Gunston Hall estate – one for white children and one for Black children. The Gunston school for white children opened around 1878 and closed before the turn of the 20th century. In 1900, the building was sold and converted into a house of worship which still stands today.


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Here follows the inscription written on a nearby roadside historical marker:

Shiloh Baptist Church
According to tradition, African Americans from the Mason Neck area and others who had recently moved to Virginia from Maryland formed a religious congregation in 1869. They built a log church on the north side of Gunston Road in 1878 where their cemetery remains. In 1900 the congregation purchased the "Gunston White School," built about 1883, located on the south side of Gunston Road. That building has been incorporated into an expanded church structure. The church continues to be a center of community life on Mason Neck.

Erected 2011 by The Fairfax County History Commission.


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Here follows an excerpt from "The Dixie Pig" blog written by Senator Scott Surovell in 2013:

 Gunston. 10704 Gunston Road. Jophn Haislip, a member of a prominent Mason Neck family, gave an acre of land in 1878 for the construction of a log schoolhouse. The school was not operating in 1900 when Shiloh Baptist Church bought the schoolhouse for use as their chapel. The church still uses the original structure; it is the white framed section on the north side. The current Gunston School opened a few miles north in 1955.