Selecman Family Cemetery

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

UNNAMED CEMETERY - OCCOQUAN REGIONAL PARK
9751 Ox Road, near the concession complex in Occoquan Regional Park
Lorton, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books

An attractive low brick wall with a wrought iron gate encloses a small gravesite near the concession complex in Occoquan Regional Park, 9751 Ox Road. The area is clean, well maintained and planted with small shrubs in each corner of the plot. The area inside the wall is well mulched, but there is no gravestone or sign to mark the spot.

The site overlooks the Occoquan River which divides Fairfax and Prince William Counties at this point. According to Cpl. James Rhinehart, a Lorton Reformatory employee, the park was once a part of the prison and served as a point of disembarkation for inmates arriving from the District of Columbia by boat. This was the site of the prison’s brickyard and a large brick beehive kiln and chimney still stand across the park road from the gravesite.

This plot may be a remnant of the Selecman Family Cemetery. According to information from Jacob B. Garrott of Woodbridge, Virginia in 1980, on file in the Virginia Room, Fairfax City Regional Library, this land was once held by the Selecman family. When it was conveyed to a man named Holt, “one acre, including a family burial lot was reserved and not included in the transfer unless satisfactory arrangements were made for the removal of the bodies of two men and one woman buried therein.” When Holt conveyed the property to the Federal Government in about 1910, there was no mention of the cemetery in the conveyance. Mr. Garrott suggests that this may have been an oversight, or perhaps removals were carried out before the land was transferred into Federal hands.

This site has also been known as the “Indian Gravesite,” and is described in History and Occoquan Regional Park by Elizabeth S. Hartwell. Writing in 1987, Hartwell reports that the brick wall was built by prison inmates and restored by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority which also put a concrete walk around the gravesite.

Hartwell speculates that the grave may be that of an Indian hero revered by Native Americans in the late 1700s and early 1800s. She quotes John Davis, an Englishman who lived in Occoquan at the turn of the eighteenth century and who wrote about his four and a half years in this country. Davis described a gravesite marked by a pile of stones on the north bank of the Occoquan River. Many Native Americans detoured from their travels to visit this site and to pay their respects to a man considered to be a great warrior. Davis recounts a service attended by an elderly chief, twelve younger men and two women during which the chief gave a moving eulogy and the group honored the dead man with a war dance.

No Updates from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books