American Legion Post 1799 was planning to expand its efforts beyond Stonewall Memory Gardens Cemetery in Manassas when an opportunity presented itself to honor soldiers in Haymarket proper – at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Cemetery on Fayette Street.
St. Paul’s was built in 1803 and is on the national historic registry. The building served as a District Courthouse for Prince William, Fairfax, Loudoun and Fauquier counties and as a make-shift field hospital for Confederate and Union soldiers during the two battles of Manassas.
In the 1960s, the federal government moved about 460 bodies of Union soldiers buried there to Arlington National Cemetery or their respective Union state cemeteries. The bodies of 80 unnamed Confederate soldiers remain…