Accotink United Methodist Church is located at 9043 Backlick Road (Route 617), one block north of Richmond Highway (Route 1), in the Accotink area of the county. The congregation built the small, white frame church in 1880, and celebrated its centennial in October 1980. An article in the 1 October 1980 "Alexandria Gazette" entitled, "Country Church Turns 100," described Accotink as a "tiny town," just four blocks long, now completely surrounded by Fort Belvoir. The article quoted the members as saying it is "still a personal country church." According to the Gazette, the church bell, which can still be seen in the belfry, once called children to the school that stood next door. One of the members remembers her father's stories of the church which was the "social center" of the once­ rural community of Accotink. Unfortunately, none of the early records have survived. One of the church founders, the Gazette reports, was S. Samuel Mason, who is buried with his wife in the church graveyard.



The cemetery covers part of a slope on the north side of the church. It was surveyed in 1922, 1988, 1997, 1998 and 2006. Another survey which is undated, on file in the Virginia Room, Fairfax City Regional Library, seems to indicate surnames associated with unmarked burials. Some graves are marked with fieldstones. Several rusted funeral home markers can be found throughout the cemetery; these can no longer be read. The 1998 surveyor noted a row of six rusted funeral home markers in the far northeast corner of the cemetery, behind the large Stout gravestone, and in line with a Troth gravestone. The cemetery is well maintained and shows little evidence of the vandalism reported in recent years. Several old cedars stand in the cemetery which is bordered on the east by a public path running through the woods.