Thompson Family Cemetery
Two surviving gravestones stand watch over innumerable remains, protecting hallowed ground from an encroaching Safeway.
Observant drivers passing the crossroads of Lee Highway and Route 243 in Fairfax, Virginia, may be surprised to see two lonely gravestones on a hill overlooking the vista of the Pan Am Shopping Center. Although only four names are engraved on the stones, at least nine bodies lie in repose in the tranquility and convenience of a Wells Fargo, Citgo, and Safeway parking lot.
Amana Abigail Tobin (1878-1904) is buried with her parents John Compton Tobin (1825-1916) and Laura Virginia Thompson Tobin (1841-1915) with the simple inscription, “Tho lost to sight to memory dear” on a stone dedicated to all three. But it is the second stone that has yielded more insight into why the graves remain in such a peculiar place.
Armistead T. Thompson (1837-1864) was a former teacher and Confederate soldier, captured at the Battle of Gettysburg and eventually transferred to a prison at Point Lookout, MD, where he died of typhoid after 17 months of imprisonment. At some point in the 1880s, Armistead’s father retrieved his remains and had them reinterred at the Thompson family cemetery.
Over time, as Fairfax grew, the descendants of Armistead fought many efforts to relocate the graves by commercial developers as well as the VDOT which sought to widen Lee Highway. In 1979, unwilling to disturb the remains of a fallen soldier and revered ancestor, Alfred Thompson (himself a veteran of W.W.II) was arrested for sitting in front of a bulldozer to prevent the cemetery’s destruction proclaiming that he would one day be buried in the family plot. So much confusion swirled around the legality of moving the graves that all efforts were eventually abandoned.
Although only two stones remain, many other graves are believed to be nearby, their stones probably having been removed by vandals. The last official burial on the site was in 1918. The intractable Alfred eventually changed his mind, however, and was buried next to his wife in the Fairfax City Cemetery in 2016, when he died aged 100.
Armistead’s stone is showing signs of wear, but the inscription can still be read which includes the epitaph: “Mouldering though thy body be / Yet in our dreams thy form we see / Our tears in torrents daily fall / O! thee we would but can’t recall. / Thou art gone to Christ thy God / He who bought thee with His blood / Enabled thee to run thy race / Raised thee now to see His face.”
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