About

No visit to Fairfax City is complete without a visit to Historic Blenheim and the Civil War Interpretive Center. The site is famous for its Federal soldier signatures, pictographs, and thoughts preserved on the attic and house walls of this Greek-Revival-style brick house. Built c. 1859 by Albert and Mary Willcoxon, the house was home to four generations of their descendants until the city purchased the house and surrounding 12 acres in 1999 as a public historic site.

This "diary on the walls" left by Federal soldiers in 1862-1863 provides historians and visitors insight into the lives of common soldiers and extends to the effect of this war on local residents, such as the Willcoxon family, and free and enslaved people of African descent.