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Oldest Catholic Church In Fairfax, A National Landmark, Was Built By Irish Railroad WorkersBy Marian Betancourt
The church itself is a white clapboard structure with a high steeple. It is also a national landmark and a stop along Virginia’s Civil War Trail because of its role as a battle site and field hospital for Clara Barton.
Less than a year after its completion the Civil War came to the church. The battles of Manassas, Bull Run Creek, and Chantilly (Ox Hill) were fought in the area and St. Mary of Sorrows soon became a field hospital. During the course of one battle, an estimated 8,000 wounded were treated on the church grounds. Because it was adjacent to the Fairfax Station depot (now a museum), wounded soldiers were laid out on the slope between the church and the train station. The depot siding became a transfer point between sightseers coming to view the war and the wounded being returned from battle, according to Devaney. Among the sightseers one day was Clara Barton, then a clerk at the United States Patent Office, who soon gathered a group of volunteers to tend to the wounded and dying. Although 20,000 confederate troops were nearing Fairfax Station during the battle of Cedar Mountain, Barton, the doctors, and volunteers, remained until the last wounded were evacuated from the church. Barton watched from the window of the last train to pull out as Confederate soldiers set fire to the depot. (Four more depots would be built and destroyed before the war was over.) Barton’s experiences at Fairfax Station prompted her to establish a civilian society, which became the American Red Cross. There is a plaque on the church grounds honoring her heroism. “This was not the end of the war for the church,” said Devaney. On August 8, 1864, a skirmish took place between two New York cavalry detachments and the infamous confederate known as the Gray Ghost, Colonel John Mosby and his Raiders. According to Robert Hickey, Jr., AOH historian and current president, the Union Cavalry Captains Joseph Fleming and John McMenamin were both Irish immigrants themselves. Nobody knows exactly how the skirmish on the church grounds began (there was a later court of inquiry) but when it was over Mosby had killed or captured most of the Union troops as well as their horses. “Control of the church routinely changed hands, but was most often held by the Union Army,” Devaney said. St. Mary of Sorrows has changed very little in physical appearance since 1860. The old bell is still in use, but the pews that were burned for fire wood during the Civil War were later replaced by President Grant, who often traveled by train to a nearby resort. In the 1870s parishioners began an annual picnic, first as a Fourth of July celebration, then, after 1894, it transferred to Labor Day. It is the oldest outdoor social function in Fairfax County, attended by over 10,000 people. The Hibernians—both the Father Corby Division and the Alice Hamill women’s division--set up booths with educational materials about the Irish and historical background of St. Mary of Sorrows, which is a thriving parish of more than 3,600 families, many of them Irish. For the 2004 event, Clara Barton returned to the church for the first time since 1862 in the person of professional re-enactor Carrie Bauer, an attorney from Laurel, MD. Devaney said that John Hamill, who died in 1996, was the last of the original family. He and his brother George were both members of the Hibernians at St. Mary of Sorrows. Devaney had many conversations with Hamill before he died. “He told me the parish records were all removed by one of the Dutch priests and have never been recovered and that the rectory at one time was a sporting club. I wish I could remember the exact story as John told it to me, but late hours, beer and old age do muddle things up a bit.” In 1979 a new and larger parish center was built a mile away. Once the new center was built, parishioners began restoring the historic church, which was placed on the National Register in 1976. Jack Devaney, who goes to daily mass in the church with his wife Eileen, supervised the engineering. If You Go: St. Mary of Sorrow’s Information: St. Mary of Sorrows Parish Center The Fairfax Station Railroad Museum |
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When
you walk among the headstones of the hilltop graveyard of St. Mary of Sorrows,
the first Catholic Church built in Fairfax Station,Virginia, you can’t help but
notice all the Irish names along with the counties in Ireland where the deceased
were born. There’s John Cashion (d. 1882) from County Clare and Patrick Crowell
(d. 1891) of County Roscommon. Each Memorial Day, during a Patriotic Mass and
Blessing of the Graves, the parish Hibernians place Irish and American flags on
these graves.
In
1838 two Irish farm families, the Hamills and the Cunninghams, donated some of
their land. They hoped to have a church built, but the cemetery was needed
immediately. For mass and other services, the families relied on a circuit
priest who came once a month by horse or railroad to the adjacent Fairfax
Station depot. Then, in the late 1850s the Orange and Alexandria Railroad
advertised for Irish immigrants to lay track in the area. According to Jack
Devaney, 70, an engineer and co-founder of the parish’s Ancient Order of
Hibernians, railroad work in that era was a dangerous and labor-intensive work
with long hours. These same laborers then pitched in to build the church. They
became the nucleus for the new church and their names are on the tombstones
today. Parishioners pooled their money purchase a steeple bell, the only luxury
for this simple country church.