The land, the family, and the burial ground that came before the community — and became Parcel A.
Before it was a subdivision, this land was part of a farm known as “The Shelter,” in the historic community of Woolsey — the same place name that survives today in “Woolsey Associates, Inc.,” the neighboring landowner named in the Proffer Statement. Estimates of its construction date vary across the historical record, from about 1740 to about 1770, and a 1978–79 state architectural survey found the house had been built in at least two phases — an older, thick-walled stone-and-log section, with a substantially larger frame addition built around it in the 1840s.
The house was built as a summer home for Martin Cockburn, a Scottish-born vestryman of Truro Parish who acquired the surrounding 1,115-acre estate in 1789. Cockburn was a member of the Fairfax Safety Committee and an executor of George Mason’s will, and was close friends with Mason; he married Anne Bronaugh, a cousin of Mason’s. Cockburn and his wife had no children, and the estate passed to her family: her niece Rose Bronaugh, who married Dr. John Bronaugh II, and then to their daughter Mary Emily Bronaugh, who married William Bailey Tyler — bringing the property into the Tyler family, in whose hands it remained for well over a century. Around 1847, Robert Tyler enlarged the house, incorporating material salvaged from an old boy’s school building on nearby “Snow Hill.”
Burials at the family cemetery include members of the Tyler and Grayson families, along with Benjamin Tasker Chinn and Edmonia R. Chinn. Historical sources disagree on the Civil War connection: a 1938 WPA record states that The Shelter itself served as a hospital during the war; a 1986 newspaper account instead attributes that role to Ben Lomond, a separate home near the Manassas battlefields that Benjamin Chinn built in 1837. Robert H. Tyler, one of the family members who lived at The Shelter, served as a captain in the Confederate army.
The house stood through the 1940s and was documented in 1936 by the federal Historic American Buildings Survey, but by a 1978 state survey it had been vacant for years and was in an overgrown pasture, structurally unsound, with its interior woodwork — including a staircase once cited as a fine example of simple Federal joinery — stripped or vandalized. A 1986 newspaper account described it as being in danger of collapse from age.
Local legend, as recorded by a 1937 WPA researcher: tenants once nicknamed the “Rattlesnake Grahams” were said to have such trouble getting a team of horses to pull their matriarch’s coffin to the cemetery that oxen had to be used instead — and a spirit was long said to inhabit a large tree by the house, its presence blamed for ivy that would mysteriously die back each year until the tree itself finally fell.
In 1986, Resource Conservation Management, Inc. (RCMI) proposed using the 375-acre Shelter property — including the historic house and the family cemetery — as Prince William County’s first privately operated debris landfill. RCMI’s rezoning request drew organized opposition from a citizens’ group called Halt Dump, and the county’s Historical Commission raised concerns that advancing landfill operations would devastate the graveyard, which RCMI had not accounted for in its initial site plans. A county planner noted at the time that disturbing a gravesite in Virginia is a criminal offense subject to penalties.
Separately, Barbara Garcia of Annandale — a descendant of the Tyler family — wrote to RCMI’s principals offering to buy back The Shelter and its surrounding land to preserve her family’s history.
The land was never used as a landfill. Several years later it was developed instead as the Shelter Lakes residential community, with the family cemetery preserved as Parcel A.
Potomac News, “Hoping to save family history, woman wants to buy site in Evergreen landfill,” Gary Craig, July 9, 1986The family cemetery sits on a small rise in what is now the northeast corner of Parcel A, near the entrance gate and access easement. Site surveys have identified markers — upright headstones, footstones, and fieldstones — for the following individuals:
That’s a minimum of 11 burials; the actual number may be higher. Displaced fieldstones, several unreadable depressions, and a cluster of daffodils (a common historic grave planting) to the southeast of the marked burials all suggest there could be additional, unmarked graves that dense brush has made impossible to survey fully.
The cemetery’s legal status changed considerably over the 20th century. A 1981 survey by E.R. Conner III noted the cemetery had a “Tyler heir as absentee owner” and was “not legally reserved” — there was no fence, and the site showed evidence of cattle disturbance.
That changed when the property was developed. The Proffer Statement for the subdivision required the developer to preserve the existing graveyard as a separate, fenced parcel with pedestrian ingress and egress. When Shelter Lakes was platted in 1992, that commitment became Parcel “A” Cemetery — 27,164 square feet, with a 25-foot buffer and a 20-foot ingress/egress easement connecting to Shelter Manor Drive (Deed Book 1931, Page 700). The easement was revised in 1996 (Deed Book 173, Page 86).
Those recorded documents are the direct ancestor of the language in our own Declaration: Parcel A is defined as part of the Common Area, conveyed to the Association, with a specific restriction that no improvement or alteration may be made to Parcel A that is inconsistent with its use as a cemetery.
Proffer Statement; Declaration — Article I, Section 4; Article IV, Section 2(ii); Proffer Statement section • Article I section • Articles II–IV section| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| c. 1740–1770 | The Shelter is built as a summer home for Martin Cockburn, who acquires the surrounding 1,115-acre estate in 1789. |
| 1837 | Benjamin Tasker Chinn, later buried at the Tyler Cemetery, builds Ben Lomond near the Manassas battlefields; it later serves as a Civil War hospital. |
| c. 1847 | Robert Tyler enlarges The Shelter, incorporating material from an old boy’s school building on nearby “Snow Hill.” |
| 1909 | Photograph of The Shelter taken, showing the house and outbuildings intact (Prince William Public Library System, RELIC collection). |
| 1936 | The federal Historic American Buildings Survey photographs the house and its Federal-style staircase (HABS No. VA-285). |
| 1937 | Susan Rogers Morton records the house for the WPA Historical Inventory of Virginia, documenting the Cockburn–Bronaugh–Tyler chain of title and local oral history. |
| 1938 | Susan R. Morton records the cemetery for the WPA Historical Inventory of Virginia as the “Graveyard at The Shelter,” documenting 10 burials. |
| 1940s | Photograph of the barn at The Shelter (RELIC collection). |
| 1978–79 | A Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission / NVPDC architectural survey (File 76-27) documents the house as vacant, overgrown, and structurally unsound. |
| 1981 | E.R. Conner III includes it in 100 Old Cemeteries of Prince William County, Virginia. No fence; cattle disturbance noted; only 3 legible burials; site described as not legally reserved. |
| 1986 | RCMI proposes a debris landfill on the 375-acre Shelter property; opposition forms; Tyler descendant Barbara Garcia offers to buy the land to preserve it. |
| 1992 | Shelter Lakes subdivision plat creates Parcel “A” Cemetery with a 25′ buffer and 20′ ingress/egress easement (DB1931 P700). |
| 1996 | Cemetery access easement revised (DB173 P86). |
| 1997 | Ron Turner registers the site with the Prince William County Cemetery Registry as “Tyler Cemetery at the Shelter,” recording 7 burials and 3 fieldstones. |
| 2016 | County registry form updated with additional markers found during community site visits. |
| 2016–2017 | Volunteers (Bill Olson, Robert Moser, Ron Turner, David Cuff) document dense overgrowth and displaced stones. |
| 2024 | Historic Prince William, Inc. organizes volunteer brush-clearing at the cemetery. |
| 2025 | A county archaeological survey documents 24 grave markers and fieldstones, confirming previously known burials plus a previously undocumented one (John Yates). |