As a designated national historic place, Sully Historic Site’s backstory likely doesn’t qualify as obscure, but it may be incomplete, the Fairfax County Park Authority says.
The agency hopes to fill in some of those gaps with a new “Reimagining Sully” project expected to kick off this spring. The initiative will aim to tell “more complete and accurate and authentic stories” about the former plantation, according to FCPA Resource Management and Interpretation Division Director Laura Grape.
“[There’s] difficult history we need to be brave enough to address,” Grape said at the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce’s State of Centreville forum on Feb. 7.
Located at 3650 Historic Sully Way in Chantilly, Sully Historic Site centers on and takes its name from the plantation established in 1794 by Richard Bland Lee, who was elected in 1789 as Northern Virginia’s representative to the first-ever U.S. Congress.
Lee inherited the 3,111 acres of land from his father, who also passed on livestock and “ownership” of 29 enslaved people. Four servants also lived on the property, providing skills necessary to run the farm, according to the park authority’s website.
Since the park authority acquired the site in 1959, staff have uncovered an inventory, letters and other records of the enslaved people and servants who lived at Sully, but the interpretive materials presented to visitors both in person and online have traditionally focused on Lee and his family, FCPA spokesperson Benjamin Boxer says.
The park authority began discussing the need to update and expand its approach to the site’s history after Fairfax County’s Redistricting Advisory Committee proposed reevaluating the names of the Lee and Sully magisterial districts in 2021.
Primarily tasked with redrawing voting district boundaries based on new population data from the 2020 Census, the committee’s 20 members volunteered to stick together for a few extra months to review whether the districts should be renamed due to their associations with the Confederacy and slavery. In a report released in February 2022, the committee ultimately recommended changing both names.
While Lee District was officially renamed the Franconia District that December, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors agreed to retain Sully District’s name and instead focus on providing more thorough education about the area’s history.
When it comes to Sully Historic Site, that effort will commence this spring with the convening of an advisory team charged with “developing a new vision for interpreting [the landmark] that encompasses its entire history and all the people who lived there,” according to Boxer.
Members of the team will include representatives from the county government, the park authority, local stakeholder organizations, and descendants of people with historical ties to the site.
In addition to documenting the enslaved individuals and free servants who lived on Richard Bland Lee’s plantation, future materials could highlight the site’s Indigenous history and the Quakers who succeeded the Lee family as residents during the Civil War period. Subsequent inhabitants also included dairy farmers and diplomats Walter Thurston and Frederick E. Nolting, Jr., who represented the U.S. as ambassadors to Latin America and Vietnam, respectively.
“Today, the Park Authority is committed to engaging in and collaborating with the community to find creative ways of interpreting and presenting that history,” Boxer said. “This advisory team is just the first step to define ways in which that could be accomplished.”
Sully District playground analysis underway
Reimagining Sully isn’t the only project that the park authority has cooking in Sully District.
As part of the county’s ongoing work to update its comprehensive plan for Centreville, the FCPA has been conducting an analysis of playgrounds across the district to identify potential locations for new facilities and existing ones that need to be updated or replaced.
“Playgrounds just in general are oftentimes an introduction point into parks,” Grape told FFXnow at last month’s State of Centreville meeting. “They’re great places where kids of all abilities, kids of all backgrounds get together and play, but they’re just a really intrinsic part of the community fabric here in Centreville and beyond as well.”
According to Boxer, staff anticipate finishing the analysis this month. They will then share recommendations with county leaders to determine “potential next steps.”
The FCPA is also gearing up to revise its master plan for Elklick Run, a 226-acre nature preserve along the Loudoun County border. Completed in 2015, the existing master plan designates an assortment of protection areas for forests and meadows that staff now believe should be consolidated into a single resource protection zone.
“We are looking at ways of being able to restore those spaces,” Grape said.
According to Boxer, the park authority is “in the initial stages” of planning the amendment, so a timeline for completion hasn’t been determined.
