The Howard Family Cemetery was established about 1833. It is also known as the Howard/Townsend Family Cemetery. The following information is taken from "Tombstone Inscriptions of Alexandria, Virginia," volume 3, 1992, by Wesley E. Pippenger.

This family burial ground was formerly located near 4419 Seminary Road, in what is now the Townsend Estates development, on the northwest corner of Seminary Road and North Howard Street. The estate of James Townsend was taxed for 2 ½ acres in the Seminary District of eastern Fairfax County in 1915. By 1958, the estate of James Townsend contained about 2.45 acres and was shown on a 1958 tax assessment map as occupying the northwest corner of Seminary Road and North Howard Street.

Fairfax County land records reflect that Caroline E. Howard was an early property owner who in 1877, conveyed the parcel to her sister Catherine Ann Townsend and husband James Townsend. Howard stipulated that the graveyard shall be reserved forever and not sold. In her last will and testament, childless Caroline Howard stipulated that the graveyard parcel was preserved. Two of the last residents of the property were Mamie Cleveland, aged 96 years in 1982, and Marion Rector Bowles, age89 in 1992.

In January 1966, Mr. Windsor W. Demaine, Jr., undertaker in Alexandria, removed 24 graves to various locations, between: Bethel cemetery on Wilkes Street, the Presbyterian cemetery on Hamilton Lane, and All Saints Episcopal Church – Sharon Chapel on Franconia Road. A permit for movement may have been signed for by Mrs. Margaret B. Howard Erwin. Mr. Demaine testified for the Devoght v. Hutchison suit that the majority of the graves he moved to several cemeteries were marked, but that the markers were not transferred in all cases except one to Bethel and one to Sharon cemeteries. What a shame.

By conversations with Robert C. Howard, the author [Pippenger] learned that the small family cemetery was the resting place for Howard's grandparents, and that it was located directly behind an old farm house. Other than "Bobby" Howard, Mrs. Marion Rector Bowles is the eldest survivor of this clan. Mrs. Bowles, now aged 89, was a daughter of Vernon Rector and his wife Connie Cleveland, and granddaughter of Arthur Cleveland whose mother was Mary Jane Howard. Marion went to live with her Cleveland family grandparents after her mother died in 1906.

Mrs. Bowles recalls that the original house on what was lately the James Townsend estate was a log cabin built by William Howard, and in which all of his children were born. At least six Howard family homes were in the area, a chapel and a school – and known for a while as "Howardsville." After daughter Catherine married James Townsend…the tract became known as the Townsend property….They built a frame house with a front room and upstairs, and connected it to the log cabin which was thereafter used as a kitchen.

Some of the known burials come from records involved with a suit brought between property owners and heirs to vacate the cemetery. Text by Wesley E. Pippenger.