DC Heritage Trails: Battleground to Community: Brightwood Heritage Trail:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- TRB2C_161203_01.JPG: Battleground to Community
Brightwood Heritage Trail
Welcome to Brightwood, one of Washington, DC's early communities and the site of the only Civil War battle to take place within the District of Columbia. Along with nearby Battleground National Cemetery, Fort Stevens is a daily reminder that the Civil War greatly affected the citizens of Washington. This crossroads community developed from the Seventh Street Turnpike, today's Georgia Avenue, and Military Road. Its earliest days included a pre-Civil War settlement of free African Americans (one of whom, Elizabeth Proctor Thomas, appears on each Heritage Trail sign). Eventually Brightwood boasted a popular race track, country estates, and sturdy suburban housing. In 1861 the area was known as Brighton, but once it was large enough to merit a U.S. Post Office, the name was changed to Brightwood to distinguish it from Brighton, Maryland. With a stock of solid, attractive houses and apartments, the recreational attractions of nearby Rock Creek Park, and longstanding houses of worship, Brightwood has welcomed generations of families whose aspirations have shaped its life and character.
Follow the 18 signs of Battleground to Community: Brightwood Heritage Trail to discover the personalities and forces that created this remarkable community.
Battleground to Community: Brightwood Heritage Trail, a free booklet capturing the trail's highlights, is available in both English and Spanish language editions at local businesses along the way. To learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRB2C_161203_04.JPG: "Aunt Betty" Thomas posed in 1911 with William Van Zandt Cox, to her right, and Civil War veterans who funded the Lincoln Memorial boulder, the first marker commemorating the events at Fort Stevens.
- TRB2C_161203_10.JPG: Battleground to Community
Brightwood Heritage Trail
Aunt Betty's Story
Elizabeth Proctor Thomas (1821-1917), a free Black woman whose image appears on each Brightwood Heritage Trail sign, once owned 11 acres in this area. Known, respectfully in her old age as "Aunt Betty," Thomas and her husband James farmed and kept cows here. When the Civil War came in 1861, her hilltop attracted Union soldiers defending Washington.
As Thomas later told a reporter, one day soldiers "began taking out my furniture and tearing down our house" to build Fort Stevens. Then a surprising visitor arrived. "I was sitting under that sycamore tree . . . with what furniture I had left around me. I was crying, as was my six months-old child, . . . when a tall, slender man dressed in black came up and said to me, 'It is hard, but you shall reap a great reward.' It was President Lincoln."
For years afterward, even though her land was returned, Thomas unsuccessfully pressed the federal government to pay for her destroyed house. "[H]ad [Lincoln] lived, I know the claim for my losses would have been paid," she often said. Thomas died at age 96 after a lifetime of community leadership and activism.
After the war, Fort Stevens fell into neglect. Brightwood civic leader William Van Zandt Cox (1852-1923) decided to rescue it from being used as a dump. In 1900 he personally bought a portion of the land and lobbied the War Department to restore it, but died before the government finally purchased the site. In 1938 the Roosevelt Administration's Civilian Conservation Corps rebuilt the portion of earthworks you see today.
The Church of the Nativity, to your left, has served the Brightwood community for more than 100 years. The building replaces a series of smaller churches built near the corner of Peabody Street and Georgia Avenue, which are still used by the congregation.
- TRB2C_161203_16.JPG: Church of the Nativity's original 1901 building still stands on Georgia Avenue and Peabody Street. First Pastor Rev. Charles O. Rosensteel is seen at left.
- TRB2C_161203_20.JPG: Late in life, the celebrated "Aunt Betty" pictured at her property, appeared on a postcard.
- TRB2C_161203_21.JPG: Church of the Nativity's original 1901 building still stands on Georgia Avenue and Peabody Street.
- TRB2C_161203_23.JPG: Battleground to Community
Brightwood Heritage Trail
Welcome to Brightwood, one of Washington, DC's early communities and the site of the only Civil War battle to take place within the District of Columbia. Along with nearby Battleground National Cemetery, Fort Stevens is a daily reminder that the Civil War greatly affected the citizens of Washington. This crossroads community developed from the Seventh Street Turnpike, today's Georgia Avenue, and Military Road. Its earliest days included a pre-Civil War settlement of free African Americans (one of whom, Elizabeth Proctor Thomas, appears on each Heritage Trail sign). Eventually Brightwood boasted a popular race track, country estates, and sturdy suburban housing. In 1861 the area was known as Brighton, but once it was large enough to merit a U.S. Post Office, the name was changed to Brightwood to distinguish it from Brighton, Maryland. With a stock of solid, attractive houses and apartments, the recreational attractions of nearby Rock Creek Park, and longstanding houses of worship, Brightwood has welcomed generations of families whose aspirations have shaped its life and character.
Follow the 18 signs of Battleground to Community: Brightwood Heritage Trail to discover the personalities and forces that created this remarkable community.
Battleground to Community: Brightwood Heritage Trail, a free booklet capturing the trail's highlights, is available in both English and Spanish language editions at local businesses along the way. To learn about other DC neighborhoods, please visit www.CulturalTourismDC.org.
- TRB2C_161203_26.JPG: Defenders of Fort Stevens in 1865, shortly after the war ended. The forts name honors Brigadier General Isaac Ingalls Stevens, who died at the Battle of Chantilly.
- TRB2C_161203_32.JPG: Battleground to Community
Brightwood Heritage Trail
"Get Down You Fool"
Hearing those words, President Abraham Lincoln ducked down from the Fort Stevens parapet during the Civil War battle that stopped the Confederates from taking Washington.
On July 9, 1864, some 15,000 Rebels led by General Jubal A. Early defeated Union forces at the Battle of Monocacy near Frederick, Maryland. Early's troops, suffering from the battle and the summer heat, then turned south to march on the lightly defended capital city. But the Monocacy encounter and skirmishes along the Rockville Turnpike gave the Union time to regroup. On the 12th, the Union's fresh troops challenged the Rebels in a fierce but brief fight. Early's forces retreated to Virginia. The only Civil War battle fought in the District of Columbia was over.
President and Mrs. Lincoln both witnessed the afternoon battle. Eyewitness Captain Elijah Hunt Rhodes of Rhode Island recorded the scene: "....[O]n the parapet I saw President Lincoln standing looking at the troops. Mrs. Lincoln and other ladies were sitting in a carriage behind the earthworks. We marched...into a peach orchard in front of Fort Stevens and here the fight began. For a short time it was a warm work, but as the President and many ladies were looking at us, every man tried to do his best....the rebels broke and fled.... A surgeon standing on the fort beside President Lincoln was wounded."
"Early should have attacked early in the morning."
Abraham Lincoln is the only serving U.S. president to have come under enemy fire.
- TRB2C_161203_34.JPG: This engraving made from an eyewitness sketch shows how close the combatants were. The casualty count for both sides was around 900.
- TRB2C_161203_44.JPG: A nearby house sustained major damage from the battle
- TRB2C_161203_46.JPG: A century later, members of the Sons of Veterans re-enacted the warning during Lincoln's visit to the 1864 battle.
- TRB2C_161203_48.JPG: Shortly after the Battle of Fort Stevens, U.S. Army Topographic Engineer Robert K. Sneden drew this somewhat inaccurate map of the field of action, which stretched from Fort DeRussey to Fort Slocum.
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