Presbyterian Cemetery Honors Civil War History

Physically maintaining historic graves is relatively simple. Hugh Van Horn of Alexandria’s has succeeded in a far more formidable challenge -- keeping alive the history of men whose names grace the weathered tombstones.

While the church’s adjacent graveyard and Presbyterian Cemetery, founded in 1809 on Hamilton Lane, are known for the 43 graves of Revolutionary War veterans, the cemetery also includes the graves of 62 Confederate soldiers and a few from the Union. The graves became a point of minor contention last year after the organization receiving state-allocated money to maintain them, the Old Dominion Rifles Confederate Memorial Association, gave up the job.

Church member Robert Dunn, an attorney, said meeting-house members stepped up to the plate and succeeded in modifying state law to redirect funding for grave maintenance -- $5 per grave annually -- to the meeting house through a bill sponsored by Del. David Englin (D-45th). The bill has passed both houses and awaits the governor’s signature.

Van Horn, a member of church’s cemetery board and chairman of the church’s history and archives committee, knows the cemetery like the proverbial back of his hand and has written a book on the church’s graves. It’s a calling that came to him later in life, he said.

“I was trained as an astrophysicist,” Van Horn said. “My grandmother used to try to get me interested in history and biography, and I had no interest in either one. If it didn’t have equations in it, forget it.

“But since I’ve got older, I’ve become much more interested in biography and history, and when we moved to Alexandria and got involved in the meeting house, I couldn’t escape it. That was an itch I had to scratch.”

History Comes to Life

Van Horn has researched the following soldiers and their stories:

The cemetery is home to two brothers who fought for the Confederacy, Charles Henry McKnight (1840-1916) and William Presley McKnight (1838-1927). Charles, wounded and captured at the Battle of Williamsburg in 1862, had his right arm amputated. In 1865 a female admirer, Isabel Emerson, wrote, “I just adore that empty sleeve; he wears it bravely, knowing he lost his arm in defense of Southern rights and Southern honor.”

William was captured at Fraser’s Farm, exchanged in 1962 and wounded again at Sharpsburg the same year. He was cited for bravery at Antietam, where he was severely wounded. He was captured again in 1963 but escaped. Also buried at Presbyterian Cemetery is Confederate soldier Francis Lee Smith Jr. (1845-1916), who fought in New Market in 1864, where he was wounded in the jaw and shoulder. After the war, he joined his father’s law office and became a respected attorney, known to the locals as “Colonel Smith.”

Confederate solider Richard Carson Triplett (1841-1908), buried in the cemetery, was captured in 1864 in Fauquier County and sent to the Old Capital Prison in Washington. After the war, he returned to farming and became active in politics. He was elected to the state House of Delegates in 1891 and served as Fairfax County magistrate for 25 years.

George Wise (1840-1923), who enlisted in 1861 as a corporal in the Old Dominion Rifles, is known for keeping a diary from 1861 to 1863, which is now at the library at Duke University. After the war, he worked for the Orange and Alexandria Railroad and authored two books about the war.

One Union soldier buried in Presbyterian Cemetery is Willard Purdy Graves (1838-1922). Graves was one of the earliest men to enlist after President Lincoln’s call for 75,000 Union troops at the start of the war. He was present at the siege of Vicksburg and accompanied his regiment when it was ordered to Alexandria. After the war, he served on the Church Committee of the meeting house and operated a grocery store for 54 years.

Van Horn, who calls himself “stuck on cemeteries,” doesn’t have a favorite story among all he’s researched.

“I’m just so fascinated with all the different stories you find here,” he said.

The Old Presbyterian Meeting House itself has a colorful history. The congregation was founded in 1772, and construction of the meeting house began three years later. In 1835, the steeple was struck by lightning and the church burned down. The congregation built another church, finished in 1837, on the same lot.

In 1817, the church split into two separate factions based on political loyalties. One group, with sympathies toward Southern causes, formed Second Presbyterian Church, Van Horn said. The original church, with loyalty to the north, foundered by the end of the 19th century and would sit empty for 50 years. It was later restored and used again by the congregation in 1949.

Olivia Michener, president of the church’s cemetery board, is well aware of how the past is connected to the present.

“It’s connecting us in our busy, harried, current life with all these people who came before us and the heritage that we have and need to preserve and recognize,” she said. “We forget about these people who were instrumental in shaping our current life by the actions they took.”