"The angel of the battlefield."

The first Fairfax Station depot, built by Irish immigrants in 1852, was a stop on the Orangeand Alexandria Railroad from Alexandria to Gordonsville. Early in 1862, after Confederate forces withdrew, the railroad carried military suppliesand letters and packages from home to Union soldierscamped north of the Occoquan River and atnearby Fairfax Court House.

In Sept. 1862, wounded Union soldiers were transported here after the Second Battle ofManassas for evacuation to Alexandria and Washington, D.C., hospitals. Clara Barton, whoman army surgeon called"the true heroine ofthe age, the angel ofthe battlefield," and who founded the American Red Cross in 1881, nursed the soldiers here. She later wrote,"We were a little bandof almost empty-handed workers, literallyby ourselves, in the wild woods of Virginia, with3000 suffering dying men crowded upon the few acres within our reach."

Col. Herman Haupt, Chief of Construction and Transportation, ordered the depot burned after Barton and the last wounded soldiers were evacuated to Washington on Sept. 2, 1862. "Have fired it. Goodbye," Mr. McCrickett, a railroademployee, telegraphed Haupt. The Federals rebuilt the station just two months later. New York,Vermont, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Delaware regiments guarded it against surprise attacks byConfederate Gen. J.E.B. Stuart and Col. John S.Mosby until the end of the war.

New buildings completed in 1873, 1891,and 1903 served a growing Fairfax Station community. In the 1980s, the 1903 station was moved to this site. It houses the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, opened in 1988 to educate visitorsabout railroading, Civil War, and local history.

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Show me all markers in:  Fairfax Station, VA  |  Fairfax County  |  22039  |  Virginia  |  United States of America

Fairfax Station
Type C31 (Cupola) Caboose
Skirmish at St. Mary's
St. Mary's Catholic Church
In this Church of St. Mary's
Clara H. Barton
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Fairfax Nike Missile Site
David R. Pinn Community Center
The Huldah Coffer House

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