Fairfax Station ~ "The Angel of The Battlefield" - Civil War Discovery Trail Sites on Waymarking.com

“The first Fairfax Station depot, built by Irish immigrants in 1852, was a stop on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad from Alexandria to Gordonsville. Early in 1862, after Confederate forces withdrew, the railroad carried military supplies and letters and packages from home to union solders camped north of the Occoquan River and at Nearby Fairfax Courthouse.
In Sept. 1862, wounded union soldiers were transported here after the Second Battle of manassas fro evacuation to Alexandria and Washington, DC hospitals. Clara Barton, whom an army surgeon called “the true heroine of the age, the angel of the battlefield,” and who founded the American Red Cross in 1881, nursed the soldiers here. She later wrote, “We were a little band of almost empty-handed workers, literally by ourselves, in the wild woods of Virginia, with 3000 suffering dying men crowded upon the few acres within 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 railroad employee, telegraphed Haupt. The Federals rebuilt the station just two months later. New York, Vermont, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Delaware regiments guarded it against surprise attack bu Confederate 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 moved to this site. It houses the Fairfax Station Railroad Museum, opened in 1988 to educate visitors about railroading, Civil War, and local history.”
Open most Sundays 1–4 pm. Includes Civil War history.

Type of site: Transportation Route or Facility Address: 11200 Fairfax Station Road, Fairfax, VA USA 22039 Phone Number: 703-425-9225 Admission Charged: No Charge Website: [Web Link] Driving Directions: Not listed

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Date Logged Log User Rating   08/29/2022 TheBeanTeam visited it 08/29/2022 TheBeanTeam wrote comment for it 04/30/2019 mcgmarauders visited it

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