Dr. Patrick Mullins had been teaching history at Marymount University for three years when he heard there was an abandoned cemetery on the northeastern edge of the suburban campus in Arlington.<\/p>\n
\u0093Turns out it\u0092s always been something of a campus enigma,\u0094 Mullins said. \u0093No one was really sure who was there, why it was there or who even owned the land.\u0094<\/p>\n
After the school\u0092s president issued a call for student research on the overgrown site, Mullins and Dr. Robert Meden, a longtime professor of interior design, thought it would make a good topic for a seminar they taught introducing freshmen to Marymount and a different type of learning.<\/p>\n
\u0093Instead of a class with professors lecturing, this was an opportunity to really run with the idea of students learning through inquiry,\u0094 Meden said. \u0093It also enabled us to combine our interests in public memory and historic preservation.\u0094<\/p>\n
President Matthew D. Shank had heard various stories about the cemetery when he arrived on campus in 2011 and wanted to learn more.<\/p>\n
\u0093I thought it would be a wonderful service project for students to find out the history of the spot and share it,\u0094 Shank said.<\/p>\n
After grounds crews cleared the overgrowth last semester, 16 students did field research on the gravestones, and Meden used his background as an architect to lead a site survey. Students also conducted archival research with original historical documents and even took a walking tour through Old Town Alexandria to get a sense of what the Arlington area would have been like during the 18th century.<\/p>\n
They learned that the death dates for those interred in the Birch-Campbell Cemetery ranged from 1841 to 1959. All but one was buried before Marymount became a college in 1950. Most were middle class farmers and landowners.<\/p>\n
\u0093But they weren\u0092t wealthy Southern aristocrats, which was true of the majority of people who lived in Arlington during the Civil War \u0096 the notable exception being the family of Robert E. Lee,\u0094 Mullins said. \u0093Most people here opposed succession. They were fairly humble agricultural people who, bit by bit, sold off their land.\u0094<\/p>\n
\u0093It\u0092s sad that the site had been forgotten,\u0094 Meden added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nursing student Jen Carter of Denver, Colorado, said her first few trips to the cemetery \u0096 with the wind rustling fallen leaves \u0096 was a little nerve-wracking.<\/p>\n
\u0093The more time we spent there, we realized it was just like any other cemetery,\u0094 she said. \u0093It just needed a little more love.\u0094<\/p>\n
Many headstones were engraved with the phrase, \u0093Gone But Not Forgotten.\u0094<\/p>\n
\u0093That was pretty ironic because the people there had been pretty much forgotten,\u0094 Carter said. \u0093It was very special for us to bring the memory of this family back to the forefront of the university mind.\u0094<\/p>\n
The course also exposed students to some unexpected historical surprises, said Emily Findley of Williamsburg. While it\u0092s common knowledge that Marymount\u0092s Main House once belonged to Admiral Presley Rixey, personal friend and physician to President Theodore Roosevelt, Findley said he lost a good deal of his land in a bad hand of poker.<\/p>\n
\u0093That land is where the Washington Golf and Country Club is now,\u0094 she said.<\/p>\n
And the land where Rixey Mansion stands?<\/p>\n
It once belonged to Mary Ann Hall, who ran an upscale brothel near the U.S. Capitol. On the same site where Marymount’s Main House stands today, she built a farmhouse called Maple Grove on land bought from the Birch family. Mary Hall was the sister-in-law of Frances Harrison Hall, whose father, sister, uncle, and brother-in-law were buried in the Birch-Campbell Cemetery. Mary Hall retired to Maple Grove. After her death in 1886, she was buried in Congressional Cemetery.<\/p>\n
The class also included small groups of students taking trips to the memorials for presidents Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Garfield and Franklin Roosevelt.<\/p>\n
\u0093Some of the big questions we discussed \u0096 and we need to ask as a society \u0096 is who do we remember and what do we preserve?\u0094 Mullins said. \u0093We learned a great deal about the site and how it ties into local and regional history. We didn\u0092t answer all the questions we were trying to answer, but it\u0092s an ongoing project. We\u0092re not even positive who actually owns that plot of land. That\u0092s part of the research that we\u0092d like to complete.\u0094<\/p>\n
\nPhoto Cutlines:<\/strong><\/p>\n Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Photo 5 Dr. Patrick Mullins had been teaching history at Marymount University for three years when he heard there was an abandoned cemetery on the northeastern edge of the suburban campus in Arlington. \u0093Turns out it\u0092s always been something of a campus enigma,\u0094 Mullins said. \u0093No one was really sure who was there, why it was there […]<\/p>\n
\nMarymount University student Rebecca Rizy proudly displays her rubbing of the gravestone of Arlington landowner Robert Harrison. It was part of a class project to research the Birch-Campbell Cemetery.<\/p>\n
\nDr. Patrick Mullins and student Emily Bielen carefully lift a fallen headstone, hoping to find an inscription for identification of the grave.<\/p>\n
\nStudents Isaiah Grigsby and Kastlee Ashton try to put back in place the fallen headstone of Frederick E. Campbell, buried in 1959, the last person interred at the Birch-Campbell Cemetery.<\/p>\n
\nStudent Morgane Murawiec (foreground) and the class peer mentor Kristen Eyler measure distances between headstones for a survey of the cemetery site.<\/p>\n
\nMarymount University\u0092s Discover 101 class visited the U.S. Capitol and analyzed a presidential memorial. From left, to Tharathip Souphakheth, Emilee Rucinski, Emily Findley, Samantha Vailes, Jennifer Carter, Kastlee Ashton, Morgane Murawiec, Isaiah Grigsby, Cara Bernardo, Juan Bordas, Rebecca Rizy, Angela Hernandez, Isabel Alcoba-Flores, peer mentor Kristen Eyler, Briana Fuller and Emily Bielen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"