Preston Gravesite

Cedar Crest Country Club, 16850 Sudley Rd., Centreville, Va.

The grave of a single Confederate soldier lies within an rail fence next to the 18th green on the golf course. The fence replaced an iron enclosure c. 1992. The fine marble headstone and footstone are in good condition and gravesite is clean and well maintained. Wm. Preston was the son of Col. John T. L. Preston, C.S.A., a professor of Languages and English Literature at Virginia Military Institute. Col. Preston's 2nd wife was Margaret Junkin Preston, the sister of Gen. Thomas J. Jackson's first wife, Ellie. William Preston reported to Jackson's headquarters just before the Battle of Cedar Mountain. Jackson later wrote to Preston's parents "I deeply sympathize with you all in the death of dear Willy. He was in my first Sabbath school class, where I became attached to him when he was a little boy. I had expected to have him one of my aides-de-camp, but God in his providence has ordered otherwise." (Allen, Elizabeth Preston The Life and Letters of Margaret Junkin Preston. Houghton Mifflin: Boston and New York, 1903, P. 147 as quoted in Robertson, James I. Jr. Stonewall Jackson, The Man , The Soldier, The Legend. MacMillan Publ., New York, 1997)