Sangster Family Cemetery

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

SANGSTER FAMILY CEMETERY
11200 Chapel Road
Fairfax Station, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 2 of the Gravestone Books

The three gravestones which are the only remnants of the Sangster Family Cemetery were found in September 1994 in a stand of twisted trees in the middle of a horse pasture just west of Butt's Corner at 11200 Chapel Road, Fairfax Station. One stone still stands within the undergrowth with a tree twisted around it. The other two gravestones are broken and propped up against another tree.

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

In the fall of 1996, local historian Mitchell Amos cleared the Sangster Family Cemetery and cleaned up the site. At that time, Mr. Amos uncovered three pieces of a gravestone for Mary E. Sangster, daughter of Edward & Mary K. Sangster, who was born in 1835. He was also able to read an inscription on the gravestone for Maj’r James Sangster which identified him as an “affectionate husband and an indulgent parent.”

Mr. Amos also gathered other information about the Sangster Family Cemetery. He learned that when the property was sold by A. B. Williams in 1852, he reserved a family cemetery, 50 by 100 feet, marked with four gravestones.

At the Lloyd House, Alexandria Public Library, Mr. Amos found “Some Family Side Lights,” historical notes written by Rose Rebecca Harris in about 1922. Rose Harris was born about 1847, and died 9 April 1944, the daughter of Ann Barry Sangster and John C. Harris. Her grandparents were James and Priscilla Sangster of “Fairview.” The Sangster Family Cemetery was connected to that estate.

According to her notes, Miss Harris saw Fairview and the family cemetery just once when, as a small child, she attended the funeral of her great uncle, Captain Thomas Sangster. She remembers that one of her cousin James Sangster’s children was also buried there. She recalls Fairview as a

frame structure, two stories high, with a long, high front porch and with very ample grounds. . . The graves of James and Priscilla were enclosed by separate brick walls, on which laid slabs of marble suitably inscribed, these slabs were taken away by Northern troops, and used as hearth stones in their winter huts, at a camp not far distant. A man of the neighborhood, where my mother was then living (at the old “Windsor House” near Fairfax Station), told her that he saw them in these huts.