Mount Vernon Unitarian Church Columbarium

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

MOUNT VERNON UNITARIAN CHURCH MEMORIAL WALK
1909 Windmill Lane on Mason Hill
South Alexandria, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books

Mount Vernon Unitarian Church, a beautiful modern brick edifice, stands near the twentieth-century mansion Hollin Hall at 1909 Windmill Lane on Mason Hill, just south of the Hollin Hills community.

The original Hollin Hall was built by George IV of Gunston Hall for his son Thomson Mason, according to “Mason to Wilson to Thorpe to the MVUC” by Becky Toner in the January 1959 issue of the Hollin Hills Bulletin published by the Hollin Hills Community Association. George Mason IV named the estate “Hollin Hall” after his mother’s family home in England. His mother was Ann Thomson, wife of George Mason III (1690-1735; also known as George Mason the Colonel).*

After Thomson Mason’s death in 1820, his son George William Mason (1786-1839) lived at Hollin Hall until the house burned to the ground in the mid 1820s, according to A History of a Name and a Place: The Story of Hollin Hall and the Mount Vernon Unitarian Church by Lucy Walsh Phinney. After the fire, George William Mason and his family moved to Davis County, Kentucky, Phinney reports.

Hollin Hall then became the home of George Mason (1797-1870; known as George Mason “of Hollin Hall”), son of William Mason and Ann Stuart. George Mason of Hollin Hall was George William Mason’s first cousin; their fathers were brothers. George Mason and his family moved into the Spinning House at Hollin Hall, which they enlarged and refurbished. Their home eventually became known as “Little Hollin Hall.”

The land was sold in 1852 to Edward Curtis Gibbs who received a letter from George Mason of Hollin Hall three years later requesting permission to bury his mother in the family burying ground at Hollin Hall. The site of this Mason Family Cemetery is not known. When he died in 1870, George Mason of Hollin Hall was buried at Gunston Hall (q.v.).

The twentieth-century Hollin Hall was built by Harley Wilson in 1919, according to Brian A. Conley in Cemeteries of Fairfax County, Virginia. The Mount Vernon Unitarian Church, which was organized in March 1955 by a group of Hollin Hills residents, bought the mansion and ten acres of the Merle Thorpe estate in 1959, according to the Bulletin.

Today the church and grounds are beautifully situated in the midst of residential Mason Hill and Hollin Hills. Part of the lovely walled garden behind the church was dedicated in 1994 as a memorial garden. Two bronze plaques mounted on the garden wall list the names and dates for those whose cremains have been interred in the garden. It appears that a blank space between two names on the plaques represents a space reserved for a family member. We have skipped a space below where a space appeared on the memorial plaques.

Update/Corrections/Additions from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books

MOUNT VERNON UNITARIAN CHURCH MEMORIAL WALKS – CORRECTION
Society member Patricia Maddox who is also a member of Mount Vernon Unitarian Church provided the following information.

The plaque on the brick wall along the church’s memorial walks reported in Volume V is a memorial plaque which lists the names of people whose ashes may have been inurned nearby or perhaps scattered on sea or land. Mrs. Maddox reports the following additions to the plaque reported in Volume V. (An asterisk indicates that the person was a member of Mount Vernon Unitarian Church. Other people listed were connected to the church in other ways.)

Robert Alexander Marshall* 1916 1994
Virginia Spang Horning 1920 1998
Val Montanari* 1912 1998
Lee Booth 1942 1999

Mrs. Maddox reports that there is also a small, low columbarium a few yards down the brick wall from the memorial plaque. Each urn has a small plaque with the name and dates of the person whose ashes are inurned there.

William Agnew McClelland* 1918 1979
Marion Bathea Slye 1913 1993
Ralph Politte* 1918 1993
Betty Politte* 1919 1997
Ada K. Churchill* 1921 1994
Allen Jay Vander Staay* 1929 1994
Mary T. Sanders* 1912 1995
George T. Sanders* 1909 1997
Alene Yamarik* 1944 1991
Robert Alexander Marshall* 1916 1994
Alice M. Lage* 1925 1996
Naomi S. Kaitz* 1920 1992
Hyman B. Kaitz* 1916 1996
Leroy (Lee) V. Goodman 1914 1994
Eleanor Perry Grahl* 1910 1994
Charles R. Lauthers* 1926 1995
Thomas E. Burns, Jr. 1911 1996
Rebecca Brown Toner* 1921 1997
Jerry H. Booth* 1941 1995
Lee Booth 1942 1999
Virginia Spang Horning 1920 1998

* Mason family birth and death dates, as well as family relationships, from a family tree published by The Board of Regents of Gunston Hall in 1970.