Ossian Hall Cemetery

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

Ossian Hall Cemetery:
The Ossian Hall mansion was built on the large Ravensworth plantation granted to the Fitzhugh family in the late 1600's. Although tenant farmers lived on the property soon after the grant was confirmed in 1694, it was fourth generation William Fitzhugh, Jr., of Chatham who was the first family member to reside there. He built the Ravensworth mansion between 1795-1800.

Ossian Hall may have been an earlier house: certainly we know it existed by 1804, when Dr. David Stuart of Hope Park bought the property and moved there with his wife, Eleanor Calvert Curtis Stuart, and their family. The property passed through many hands after their death, until it was purchased in 1918 by Senator Joseph L. Bristow of Kansas. He lived there until his death in 1944. In 1959, the house, which had been vacant and vandalized for some years, was burned by the Annandale, Virginia Fire Department. When the Bristow subdivision was platted, the old Ossian Hall family burying ground was reserved and still exists as an undeveloped, grassy corner lot. No grave stones remain above ground and the recorder has been unable to find documentation concerning any burials there.