McCarty Family Cemetery at Mount Air

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

McCARTY FAMILY CEMETERY at MOUNT AIR (Removed)
300 feet north of the ruins of the house which was located at 8600 Accotink Road
Lorton, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books

The McCarty Family Cemetery at Mount Air is located in a grove of trees about 300 feet north of the ruins of the house which was located at 8600 Accotink Road. When the site was visited in the fall of 1997, new housing was being constructed between Mount Air and Accotink Road. The area around the old house is posted with signs of the Fairfax County Park Authority, Resource Protection Area. A hand-lettered sign announces:

Future 16 acre heritage and natural resource park.
All buildings, structures, remains, gardens
to be preserved.
Thank you for protecting the site.
Please resist “shopping.”
Watch for grand opening.


Mount Air was the home of Dennis McCarty, originally of Cedar Grove (q.v.). According to tradition, Dennis McCarty was buried at Mount Air when he died in 1742. Edith M. Sprouse notes in her account of Mount Air that there were gravestones in the family cemetery at Mount Air in the nineteenth century which were removed to Cedar Grove. Three gravestones were recorded at Cedar Grove in 1922 which have since been removed to the cemetery at Pohick Church (q.v.). It is not known if the burials were moved with the gravestones during either of these removals.

The estate was still beautiful when Edith Sprouse described it in the introduction to Mount Air, Fairfax County, Virginia in 1970:

The setting of Mount Air, with its gardens and terraces, proximity to Accotink Creek, and its relative isolation, represents a rather remarkable survival of a colonial gentleman’s country “seat” in southeastern Fairfax County, Virginia. Located some nine miles south of Alexandria . . . the estate is bounded by Telegraph and Accotink Roads, a tributary of Accotink Creek, and the military railroad connecting Fort Belvoir with the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Potomac Railroad. . . . Situated as it is in a pocket partially encircled by the military reservation, Mount Air is somewhat remote geographically. . . .

The driveway entrance winds in a semicircle around a meadow. Nearly a quarter of a mile away, framed by tremendous ash trees, the pedimented white columns of the mansion can be seen. . . .

Pleasant country vistas may be seen on every side at Mount Air. The white frame house faces north. . . . Constant breezes suggest the origin of the plantation’s name. From the verandah one looks across the meadow toward a clump of trees. In this vicinity was buried the man who patented the 522-acre tract in 1727, Major Dennis McCarty. . . .


Today, a few outbuildings still stand near the house ruins. Many old trees shade the area. Large, old boxwoods mark the location of the garden. When the site was visited in 1994, the surveyor noted that the cemetery was overgrown with poison ivy. In 1997, surveyors found vinca growing over the family graveyard.

Dennis McCarty’s gravestone now stands in the courtyard at Pohick Church.

In
memory of
Major
Denis (sic) McCarty
who died March 25th
AD 1742
in the 38th Year of his age.


No Updates from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books