Marshall Family House

Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

The first section of this structure was erected by John Marshall between 1850 and 1852. Covered with clapboard, the frame building is two and one-half stories high, with dormer windows on the front and back of the main section of the house. There is an open two-story double porch on the front, and the interior end chimneys are flanked by pairs of small windows in the gable ends. The many different roof sections attest to the additions made through the years. Fireplaces were provided on the first and second floors. The interior walls are covered with plaster or narrow width, tongue-in-groove vertical wood strips.

According to Mrs. Robert Brown, a descendant of Marshall, many rooms were added about the time of World War I, because the family included many children. First a new porch would be added, then enclosed, and another porch would be added. Mrs. Brown states that her grandmother "went carpenter crazy. She added on everywhere and didn't know when to quit."

When the Orange and Alexandria Railroad built a line through the Burke area in the 1850's, Marshall donated land for the right-of-way. He was for a time postmaster of Burke.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

According to an article on page six of the 19 March 1988 Burke-Braddock Connection, John Marshall ran the Marshall General Store which was located about 100 feet west of the cemetery, and also worked as an agent at the Burke railroad depot and as a foreman for Silas Burke, for whom the community is named.

A 1969 survey of the cemetery locates the Marshall house in the vicinity of the intersection of Old Burke Lake Road and Burke Road, adjacent to the old railroad station building. Local residents state that the house was moved down Burke Road a few years ago and relocated next to the Burke Nursery and Garden Center. Later the house burned; there is a new house now on that site. According to local historian Mary Lipsey, the new house is in every respect identical to the old home as they used the original architectural plans to build it.


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Here follows an excerpt from local author and historian Mary B. Lipsey's "This Old House: Annandale, Springfield, Burke & Beyond" presentation:

The Marshall house was built in 1850 at the intersection of Old Burke Lake Road and Burke Road, adjacent to the old railroad station building. If you are at Burke Nursery and you're looking at Burke Nursery, look to the left. There is a white house with a porch. The people who bought the house decided to move the house and they had to move it across the Orange and Alexandria railroad tracks, which at that time ran along Burke Road. When they moved the house across the roadbed, the house hadn't settled in and burned. Fortunately though, architectural plans were kept and so it's an exact copy of what the original house looked like.

John Marshall was a general store owner, postmaster, and manager of the Silas Burke house. John and his wife Mary had no children of their own, but they left the house with 24 nieces and nephews and every time the house got crowded, they put on another room.