Old Lorton Valley School (Site)

This building is the first of the four Lorton schools, seeing use from 1870 to 1922. These coordinates mark the exact site of the building, but no visible remains exist.


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What’s in a Name?
Did you know that the name “Lorton” was given to this part of Fairfax County by Joseph Plaskett in the 1870s? Learn more about the history of the Lorton community in the following videos produced for the FCPS television channel, Red Apple 21.

The name "Lorton" was given to this part of Fairfax County by Joseph Plaskett in the 1870s. An immigrant from England, Plaskett was instrumental in the establishment of the community's first post office in 1875. The Lorton Valley Post Office, as it was known, was named by Plaskett in honor of his former home, the village of High Lorton in England. In the late 1870s, the community's first public school, called the Lorton Valley School, was constructed on land donated by John Plaskett, son of Joseph Plaskett.

In 1853, Joseph, along with his wife and children, emigrated from England to America. The family briefly settled in New Jersey, and then moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, where Plaskett took up farming. After the American Civil War, he opened a general store in the vicinity of the present-day intersection of Gunston Road and Route 1. In November 1875, Joseph Plaskett became the area’s first postmaster, as he had been instrumental in the establishment of a post office, which was given the name Lorton Valley. This map of Fairfax County, created in 1878, pinpoints the location of the Lorton Valley Post Office, which was located in Plaskett’s store. Joseph Plaskett had chosen the name Lorton Valley in honor of his former home – the village of High Lorton in England. In England, Lorton is the name of a parish in the county of Cumbria. The parish consists of two adjacent villages called Low Lorton and High Lorton. These villages are located in a valley called the Vale of Lorton, in the Lake District National Park in northwestern England. This historical marker, located at the entrance to the Lorton Station Town Center in Fairfax County, has at its base a cornerstone that was originally part of a wall of a farmhouse in Lorton Parish, England. The Town Center takes its name from the first train station serving Lorton, Virginia. Constructed in the early 1870s, the station stood where the Alexandria and Fredericksburg Railroad crossed the old Telegraph Road.
Today, that old Telegraph Road is known as Lorton Road. The train station originally went by the name Telegraph Road Station, and, in the 1890s, was renamed Lorton Station. It is visible on this 1937 aerial photograph of Fairfax County, on Gunston Cove Road. The two buildings pictured west of the station are Fairfax County public schools, namely the Lorton School, constructed in 1922, and the larger brick Lorton Elementary School constructed in 1934. These buildings replaced an earlier schoolhouse, called the Lorton Valley School, which had been built in the late 1870s, three-quarters of a mile to the south, on land donated by John Plaskett, son of Joseph Plaskett. Today, the community of Lorton is still served by railways, with two train stations: the Amtrak Autotrain Station on Lorton Road, and the new Lorton Station on Lorton Station Boulevard along the Virginia Railway Express commuter line. Lorton Station Elementary School honors this community’s history by combining the names of the community, founded by the Plaskett family over 150 years ago, with a reminder of how important railroads still are to the development and identity of our neighborhoods.


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It is already agreed by most people in the area that the name "Lorton" was given to a geographic area in southeastern Fairfax County by Joseph Plaskett. When he became postmaster in 1875 he named the post office Lorton Valley for the place in Cumberland County, England from which his family had immigrated. Before the post office was established in Plaskett's crossroads store, mail was received through the Accotink post office. The store was located near the intersection of Gunston Road and present day Route 1.

Joseph Plaskett left England with his family in 1853, sailing out of Liverpool, and after six weeks at sea, arrived in the port of Philadelphia. The family settled in New Jersey for about a year, but learning of a farm for sale in Virginia, Plaskett sent his oldest son John to look it over. The property was called Belmont and contained a brick home said to have been built in 1717. It possibly had been occupied by relatives of George Washington, but when John Plaskett arrived, the farm was in sad condition after having been neglected for many years. The Plasketts left New Jersey for Virginia, and with the help of their large family, were able to turn Belmont into a productive farm where the family lived until after the Civil War. In 1859 John, the oldest son, married into the Cranford family and received from his new father-in-law a gift of 18 acres and a cow. On the property John built a home and in 1861 moved his wife, Mary Jane, and new daughter, Emma, into the dwelling.

In later years, descendants of the family claimed that on the day of the battle of Bull Run,
the guns could be heard booming all day. Members of both the Plaskett and Cranford families were suspected of being spies during the war and were arrested. John Cranford and Matthew Plaskett were prisoners of war in the Old Capitol Prison. After having refused to sign a parole in February 1862,
Mathew remained a prisoner until he was exchanged in October of 1862 and duly enlisted as a private in the Georgia Infantry. He died of wounds received in the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1863. Mary was detained overnight after it was claimed that a Confederate soldier who had fired on and killed a Union soldier had been hiding in her cart as she traveled home from Alexandria. It was later determined that the soldier had fired from roadside bushes.

Having survived the war, some of which they spent in Alexandria, the Plaskett family returned home. By 1870 a railroad had been constructed connecting to the RF&P tracks from Quantico to Washington replacing the boat that had been previously used. The new station called Telegraph Road was just a mile from the Lorton Valley post office, and John Plaskett's sons were dispatched to deliver outgoing mail and pick up incoming mail at the new station.

John and Mary Plaskett's oldest daughter Emma married Joseph Springmann who opened a general store near the new station and became the first station agent. Later he became postmaster of Springmann, the name given for a while to both the post office and station. Later both were changed to Lorton. When Joseph Plaskett died in 1893, the store and post office continued to be manned by members of the Plaskett family until the Lorton Valley post office was discontinued in 1911. The store operated until 1915 when it burned. Another was erected on the original site and was operated by John Plaskett until his retirement.

The Plaskett family of Lorton had a long association with Lewis Chapel and then Cranford Church. Many members of the family are buried in the cemetery there. John and Mary Plaskett produced ten children, eight of whom survived into adulthood. A history of this remarkable family is chronicled in a book titled Memories of a Plain Family; 1836-1936 by their youngest child, Susan Annie Plaskett, which was published in 1936 and republished in 2009. Today the many descendants of the Plaskett family can arguably claim that they are members of one of the first families of Lorton.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax County Public Library's Virginia Room website:

Ernest Leviticus Plaskett was born on October 13, 1873 to John and Mary Plaskett. He was the seventh of the family’s ten children. John Plaskett’s father, Joseph Plaskett, had emigrated from England with his family in 1853, and eventually settled down in what is today Lorton, Virginia.

Three generations of Plasketts served the Lorton Valley Post Office for its entire thirty-six year existence. Located in Joseph Plaskett’s crossroads country store, he named the new post office “Lorton Valley” after his old home in Cumberland, England. The United States Post Office Department appointed Joseph Plaskett postmaster of Lorton Valley on November 11, 1875, followed by his grandson James Plaskett on November 6, 1893. One month later, on December 6, 1893, the Post Office Department appointed 20-year old Ernest L. Plaskett as postmaster. His sister, Susan Annie Plaskett speculated that he was the youngest person to ever be appointed postmaster at that time. Ernest was replaced as postmaster in 1901 by his father, John Plaskett, who held that position until the post office was discontinued in 1911.

The Lorton Valley Post Office was located one mile from the Telegraph Road Railroad Station on the RF&P Railroad. The Plasketts would take the mail down to the station when a train passed through and pick up the incoming mail. As rail service grew, mail service increased from three times a week, to daily, and then twice daily.

In the early 1880s, Ernest Plasket’s sister Emma’s husband, Joseph M. Springman, opened a general store next to the Telegraph Road Railroad Station. Springman became the station’s first agent and first post master when the Springman Post Office was established there in 1884. In the 1890s, the railroad station changed its name to “Lorton Station” while the post office continued to be called Springman. It officially changed its name to Lorton Post Office on July 6, 1910. The nearby Lorton Valley Post Office, always located one mile away, closed on June 2, 1911. The country store it was located in burned in May 1915, but the Plasketts later erected a new store on the site.

Ernest Plaskett continued to serve as a railway postal clerk for three more decades. On December 30, 1896, Ernest married Margaret E. Trice in Washington D.C. The couple had three daughters and a son. During World War I, he worked at the YMCA in Camp A.A. Humphreys, the future site of Fort Belvoir. He died on July 9, 1943 and was buried in the Cranford United Methodist Church cemetery.

The Ernest L. Plaskett Certificate of Appointment as Lorton Valley, Virginia Postmaster is a certificate signed by Frank H. Jones, acting Postmaster General, on December 15, 1893 appointing Ernest L. Plaskett as Postmaster of the Lorton Valley Post Office on December 6th of that year.