On This Date in Nativity History
15 September 1971
On this date, 15 September 1971, our mother parish, Saint Mary of Sorrows, published the first map that contains a reference to what would become Nativity Parish. In the early 1970s, St. Mary’s leaders faced a challenging mission. Despite the efforts of anti-growth leaders in Fairfax County, a few new suburban developments had managed to establish themselves in a part of the county that was supposedly closed to such development. The problem for St. Mary’s: how to reach the parishioners in the few distant neighborhoods that had somehow managed to be developed in the restricted part of Fairfax County and now dotted the parish area. This map of the parish tells the story. A total of 569 families were then registered in St. Mary’s; about one-quarter (131) were identified as “rural”. The remaining parishioners were divided into three neighborhoods south and west of Braddock Road and Pohick Creek. On the map, these neighborhoods were designated II, III and IV, and these were to be treated as somewhat autonomous communities, with their own Masses (in rented buildings) and religious education programs. (Area I, the rural region, would continue to be served by the parish’s Historic Church.)
At some point between 1971 and 1973, someone (probably the co-pastor of St. Mary’s at the time, Father Don Lavelle) outlined in red pencil what is denoted only as the “New Proposed Southeast Parish.” There were two clusters of homes within this boundary: Rolling Valley and Orange Hunt, together housing about 200 families then registered at St. Mary’s. These two clusters are just to the right of the “IV” on the map. Everything else in the proposed parish was either farmland or unused land that had been bought by speculators in anticipation of the expected growth of the county population. This “New Proposed Southeast Parish” became Nativity.