authorities gave him permission to operate the store, which he basically did alone, since John was sent to Wheeling, Virginia. Job Hawxhurst continued to forsake the weapons others had advised him to carry for protection, and ran a general store there. He often traveled through Confederate lines and on roads notoriously infested by robbers and guerillas, and attributed his survival to this policy, as well as Divine Power and good luck. By 1865, Union forces occupied the entire county, and Job had also become the postmaster, a position he would fulfill for more than three decades (except during two Democratic administrations. In 1869, after Fairfax County voters overwhelmingly approved the new state Constitution that his brother John had helped draft, they elected Job Hawxhurst as a Conservative or True Republican to represent them as their (part-time) delegate in the Virginia General Assembly. He won over a more radical nominee, with local Democrats appreciating his vocal opposition to the Confederate-disenfranching clauses in the new state constitution (which was overwhelmingly approved, although those clauses failed). Like most other members of that particular legislative session, that was his first and only term of legislative service. He also providentially survived the April, 1870 Virginia capitol collapse disaster (due to overcrowding at an important Court of Appeals case concerning the Richmond mayoral election) because he was running an errand in the state auditor's office. Hawxhurst remained politically active, winning election as Clerk of the Circuit Court of Fairfax County, member of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, and mayor of Fairfax City. Hawxhurst also drafted the first local option law in 1879, which the Virginia General Assembly passed and which permitted Fairfax County to adopt a temperance ordinance. He was also a charter member on June 18, 1867 of the Providence Lodge No. 3 at Fairfax Court House and the first grand chief templar of the Grand Lodge of Good Templars. Death Job Hawxhurst suffered a stroke in 1902, and the resulting paralysis caused him to resign his postmastership, as well as led to a more general decline in his health. His wife died in 1904, and he moved to the home of his son George Hawxhurst, the mayor of Falls Church, Virginia. There Job Hawxhurst died on March 7, 1906, survived by three daughters and three sons. He is buried in the Fairfax City Cemetery. The Fairfax City Regional Library has copies of typed