NOTE: This hide has changed container types and moved so many times I've archived the original listing and created a new one so that previous finders can have another go.
The marker reads:
On this site stood the
HANGMAN'S TREE
According to legend, an old oak
used by Col. Mosby to hang Union
spies after the Battle of
the Peach Orchard during the Civil War.
Regarding spies, the Victorian Society at Falls Church's book Victorian Falls Church has this to offer:
Spies, male and female, military and civilian, black and white, abounded as Falls Church became a floating no-man's land between the armies of the Blue and the Gray. Forts were built, signal flags waved their wigwag, and makeshift hospitals nurtured the sick and wounded. Here Prof. Thaddeus Lowe launched his famous reconnaissance balloons in and about the village of Falls Church. The famous "Gray Ghost" of the Confederacy, Col. John Singleton Mosby, led many a raid in and around Falls Church. These raids created consternation but had little effect on the final outcome.
Regarding the Battle of the Peach Orchard, the Falls Church Village Preservation and Improvement Society site concludes:
Falls Church may thus have a distinction which hitherto has gone unrecognized, namely, of being the scene of the longest battle of the Civil War with the fewest casualties. The Battle of the Peach Orchard appears to have started early one morning in August 1861 and to have been renewed with increased cunning and unabated zeal almost each morning thereafter until October-or, until the last peach in the orchard had been picked and eaten.
The Hangman's Tree reportedly was damaged by construction work and replaced by the marker in 1968, but a 1940's-era photo was published in Victorian Falls Church and can be found in this Falls Church Times Online article.
-- Congrats to M&R for the FTF of the original Hangman's Tree, in the dark, no less! --
-- Congrats to mikeandrandall for the FTF for Hangman's Tree II! --