Silas Burke Mill (Site)

These coordinates mark the estimated location where the mill once stood. No visible remains exist. (EDITOR'S NOTE: I selected this as the likeliest spot since the mill building itself would commonly sit on the pond’s outlet or along the race where water met the wheel — so the mill structure was probably within about 100 to 200 feet of the pond’s outlet, but the pond and mill race channels have been heavily modified or destroyed over the years.)

Silas Burke (1796–1854), a prominent local entrepreneur for whom the area is named, owned grist and lumber mills as part of his businesses, which also included a store, blacksmith shop, and brick yard. A grist mill specifically named Burke’s Mill appears on an 1862 Civil War-era map created by Union engineers under General Irwin McDowell, depicting it near Burke’s Station (a rail stop on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad).

The map shows Burke’s Mill as a merchant grist mill (represented as a circle with spokes) that processed corn and wheat into meal and flour, alongside another nearby mill called Holsapple’s Mill. The map also notes Silas Burke’s residence (known as Woodbury) and mentions his brick yard and lumber mill, though those are not visually depicted. Burke donated land for the railroad in the mid-19th century, which helped establish the station and contributed to the area's development.


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Here follows an excerpt from the American Battlefields Trust website about Burke's Station:

During the Civil War, African American laborers chopped wood and conveyed it to Burke’s Station, a major Federal timber transportation station located here on the Orange & Alexandria Railroad. To supply the Union army and engineers with timber for railroad ties, bridge trusses, stockades, and firewood, wood choppers cut down thousands of acres of woodland along the railroad in Fairfax County. The wood was then transported by rail to Alexandria.

In 1863, the U.S. Military Railroad Construction Corps built an additional siding here to facilitate the loading of wood onto railroad cars. Wood choppers removed up to 1,000 cords of lumber a month in the Burke area alone. Army teamsters hauled the wood here in mule-drawn wagons. There were as many as 100 wagons in the wagon master’s brigade at Burke’s Station. Many of the wood choppers and teamsters were escaped slaves called “contrabands” who had fled to Alexandria. Because they risked capture and reenslavement by working here outside Union lines, Federal cavalry and infantry camped nearby to protect both the contrabands and the wood stockpiles.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Burke Historical Society webpage about Hatch Lake:

Hatch Lake is now located within Burke Station Park on Hatch’s Run, a tributary of Pohick Creek. Not coincidentally, it’s also adjacent Hatches Court off Shiplett Boulevard. The lake was originally created as the mill pond for Silas Burke’s saw and grist mill. The house depicted was built in 1925 by Paul Marshall; in the late 1930s, the property—known as Millstone Farm—passed to C. Douglas and Ruth Streeter Hatch, who made several additions to the house. The farm’s spring was reputed to have curative properties, and the Hatch family would sometimes observe neighbors carrying off water from it during the middle of the night.

Douglas Hatch practiced law in Washington with Cravath, de Gersdorf, & Wood (now Cravath, Swaine, & Moore LLP), one of the country’s oldest law firms. Ruth Hatch taught in Fairfax County Public Schools, became a co-founder and first secretary of the Fairfax County Library Board, was a member of the National Association of Science Writers, and invented a boardgame called “Lobby” that dramatized the legislative process. Guests of the Hatches’ parties included the likes of ambassadors and senators.

The Hatch family also operated the Millstone Farm Summer Day Camp and Riding School, teaching equestrianism to many Burke-area children and giving them a chance to shine in periodic horse shows open to the community. (A small stable is also depicted in the painting.) The painting was made by Charlene Zoehler for her neighbor, Janice C. Brinckman, depicting the view from the Brinckmans’ back window on Andromeda Drive; they were the second family to move into the new community of Rolling Valley West in 1972.

In July 2022, Brinckman siblings Laura, Edward, and Donna donated the painting to the Burke Historical Society. In their words: “When Mrs. Brinckman moved to Burke the lake stretched from what is now Erman Court nearly to Shiplett Blvd. It was home to a pair of otters, several year-round resident ducks, large turtles, bull frogs, largemouth bass, several species of pan fish, and all types of water loving birds.”

Suburban development led to increased sedimentation in the lake, such that local children would sometimes become stuck in the deep clay soil around the banks and require rescue. This danger prompted the descision to divert Hatch’s Run around the spillway and allow the lake to slowly empty. Again in the words of the Brinckman siblings, “Today (2022) all that remains of the lake is a shallow marshy area on its northeastern end. Due to its low-lying topography, it remains undeveloped and is subject to occasional flooding during sustained heavy rains. As of this day, July 3, 2022, the painting is being donated to the Burke Historical Society by Mrs. Brinckman’s surviving children, Laura, Edward and Donna to help preserve the memory of the rural nature of what Burke once was.”