[3] In September 1861, Union troops took possession of a property owned by a free black family, Elizabeth Proctor Thomas and her siblings, at the Seventh Street Turnpike, seeing it as "an ideal and necessary location for a fort.

"[3] The soldiers ultimately destroyed her home, barn, orchard, and garden to build what was then named Fort Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Thomas would later often repeat the story that she was, with a baby in her arms weeping, watching Union soldiers destroy her house when "a tall, slender man dressed in black approached her and said, 'It is hard, but you shall reap a great reward.

[5] In response, Major General George Thomas ordered the District of Columbia Militia into the service of the Union army.

[6] The Confederate Army used the house of a nearby resident, Francis Preston Blair, as a headquarters[7] and a makeshift hospital for their wounded.

[6] According to many accounts, President Abraham Lincoln rode out to the fort on both days to observe the attack, and was briefly under enemy fire by sharpshooters.

[4] A story has grown up, probably apocryphal, that future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then an aide-de-camp to Wright, yelled at Lincoln, "Get down, you fool!

The remains of 41 Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Fort Stevens are buried on the grounds of nearby Battleground National Cemetery.

Further up Georgia Ave, a monument to seventeen unknown Confederate Soldiers was erected in Grace Episcopal Church Cemetery, in Silver Spring, MD.