4301
West Braddock Road

Fort Ward was constructed starting in September 1861 under the supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers as one of sixty-eight enclosed forts encircling Washington — the fifth-largest of the ring. Sited on high ground in what was then the northwest of Alexandria County, the fort was originally laid out with a 540-yard perimeter and platforms for 24 guns (a 100-pounder Parrott rifle was added later); in 1863 the perimeter was expanded to 818 yards with capacity for 36 guns commanding the Leesburg Turnpike and the approaches to the city ^[1] Source 1 NARA Civil War records Government record ^[2] Source 2 Richard Wright, "From Days Gone By" Facebook post on Fort Ward Oral history . Construction and the flow of men and materials south of Four Mile Run were supervised by General John Newton. Self-emancipated and recently freed Black workers — called “contrabands” in wartime usage — supplied much of the labor that built the ring of forts around Washington, including Fort Ward. The fort was named for Commander James H. Ward, the first Union naval officer killed in the war.

The 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery

The 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Regiment was organized from the former 4th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry on January 2, 1862, in Washington, DC. A typical regiment was divided into ten companies of roughly one hundred soldiers apiece, trained in the use of artillery. The 1st Connecticut helped defend the Union capital until April 1862, when it joined General McClellan’s Army of the Potomac for the Peninsula Campaign. The regiment was involved in siege operations around Yorktown from April 12 to May 4, and then in what became known as the Seven Days Battles against Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia — the “Heavies,” as Bruce Catton called the Heavy Artillery regiments in A Stillness at Appomattox, fought at Gaines’ Mill on June 27 and Malvern Hill on July 1. After McClellan’s retreat from the peninsula, the Heavies returned to the defenses of Washington. Companies C, E, and L of the 1st Battalion were stationed at Fort Ward in 1863 ^[3] Source 3 Wikipedia, "1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery Regiment" Website ^[4] Source 4 Bruce Catton, "A Stillness at Appomattox" (1953) Book ^[2] Source 2 Richard Wright, "From Days Gone By" Facebook post on Fort Ward Oral history .

Postwar: dismantlement and the freedmen community

The fort was dismantled in November 1865, and the land passed into private hands — though, remarkably, more than 90 percent of the original earthen works are still intact today. Beginning in the late 1860s, a community of formerly enslaved people and their descendants settled on and around the former fort grounds, drawn by the availability of inexpensive land. The community, which residents called simply “The Fort” or “Fort Ward,” included a church, a school, and a burying ground, and persisted as an identifiable neighborhood well into the 1960s, when midcentury urban renewal and the expansion of the adjacent cemetery displaced most of the remaining residents ^[5] Source 5 Alexandria Library Special Collections Manuscript . Ongoing archaeological work on the site has documented dwellings, wells, and burial features associated with the Fort Ward community.

The City of Alexandria acquired the site in 1961, partially reconstructed the earthworks for the Civil War centennial, and opened Fort Ward Park and Museum. The museum’s exhibits address both the military history of the fort and the African American community that followed it; the freedmen’s community is represented by the collective entity Freedmen of the Contrabands Camp Family Freedmen of the Contrabands Camp founded 1861 Collective entity representing the several thousand formerly enslaved people who fled to Union-occupied Alexandria during the Civil War, settling in camps at Shuter's Hill, around … ^[6] Source 6 LOC Prints & Photographs Photograph .