Stith Family Cemetery

Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Genealogical Society website:

STITH FAMILY CEMETERY
May lie on the grounds of the Mount Vernon Unitarian Church at 1909 Windmill Lane
South Alexandria, Virginia USA

Original Information from Volume 5 of the Gravestone Books

A Stith Family Cemetery may lie on the grounds of the Mount Vernon Unitarian Church at 1909 Windmill Lane in the Hollin Hills area. Fragments of Stith family gravestones were found in the mid twentieth century when the Thorpe family dug up some old stumps at their Hollin Hall estate (q.v.). Hollin Hall was originally the home of Thomson Mason, son of George Mason IV of Gunston Hall.

Buckner Stith is said to have lived in the Mount Hybla area in the late eighteenth century, according to “Hollin Hall: A Twentieth Century Colonial Estate,” a paper prepared by Lisa Falk for a Social History class at Oberlin College in 1979, and on file in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax City Regional Library. In the correspondence of George Washington, reports Becky Toner in “Mason to Wilson to Thorpe to the MVUC” published in the January 1959 issue of the Hollin Hills Bulletin, is a letter from Buckner Stith, written after visiting Thomson Mason at Hollin Hall. Stith wrote: “I would like to be buried a stone’s throw from the spinning house at Hollin Hall.”

The gravestone fragments were still on the property when Mount Vernon Unitarian Church purchased Hollin Hall in 1959. The church, which built a modern sanctuary next to the mansion house, has preserved the fragments.

The Stith fragments were unearthed near three maple trees, according to the Falk paper. Brian Conley, Information Specialist in the Virginia Room of the Fairfax City Regional Library, visited the site in 1994. He thinks that the cemetery may lie “near a large maple tree on the eastern edge of the current [church] property.” It is possible that the Stith family members were buried in a Mason Family Cemetery at Hollin Hall (q.v.). Mr. Conley read the gravestone fragments as follows:

Sacred...the memory of...r. Buckner Stith...Died......
(one piece of a sandstone gravestone)

Sacred to the me......Mrs. Ann......who D...Oct......
(fifteen sandstone gravestone fragments)

Footstone: S. J. S.
(marble footstone)


No Updates from Volume 6 of the Gravestone Books