1

 A Half Century Before I

A Half Century Before

“Country practitioners in green sashes

(became acquainted) with hygiene and vaccination.”1

A long stretch of historical thread connects the story of a military hospital and the 

women’s reform movement, a thread thinly stretched across the century, for women are 

now so commonplace in public life as to be taken for granted. As a result men too often 

ignore the fact that by nature they are interested in trying new things, are by and large 

orderly planners as well as reformers. Moreover, women persevere, with more finesse 

than forthrightness, in behalf of their cause. If blocked, they eventually adjust their day 

dreaming to reality, and willy nilly progress is effected. But a hundred years ago most 

of the women were mainly concerned with home supremacy and serenely unaware that 

the hand that rocks only the cradle can’t be too sure of ruling the world.

In 1847, when medical officers of the Army were at last accorded actual2

 military 

rank, Elizabeth Blackwell, an intrepid young feminist of the day, was finally admitted 

to Geneva Medical College, New York. She had been refused by better schools, and 

she was accepted at Geneva as the result of a practical joke.3

 There she was graduated 

in 1849—America’s first woman physician.
2

I Borden’s Dream

An ambitious as well as an enterprising woman, Dr. Blackwell eventually became 

director of the New York Dispensary for Poor Women and Children, founded in 1855. 

Friend and admirer of the famous English nurse, Florence Nightingale, early in the Civil 

War she persuaded the lady managers of her infirmary that women listed as military 

nurses should qualify through a one-month training course in Bellevue Hospital, New 

York. Dr. Blackwell was ahead of her time, as Old Bellevue was not to have a recognized 

nurses’ training school until 1873; it is not surprising that her proposal produced few 

“trained” nurses for the Army. On the other hand, the lady managers were members of 

a small group of enthusiastic and public spirited women who met in New York, April 25, 

1861, to see what they could do to assist in winning the war. Unable to shoulder muskets 

and fight, they chose the only obvious course for a minority group, they organized and 

formed the Women’s Central Association of Relief, which, with other interested welfare 

groups, evolved into the United States Sanitary Commission.4

Women who encourage men with ideas are legion and for the most part they remain 

anonymous. Men who encourage women with ideas are rare, but some secure sturdy 

seats in the halls of fame for their foresight. Such was the case of Henry W. Bellows, 

D.D., pastor of All Souls’ Unitarian Church, New York. Undoubtedly well versed in 

the energetic ways of ladies’ missionary societies, he advised the Women’s Central 

Association not to duplicate any military relief activities which the Government could 

or would undertake for the soldiers.

History credits the Government with lack of interest in the relief movement. The 

President believed it a supernumerary organization; the War Department opposed it. 

The Medical Department was then a somnambulant and lethargic organization, probably 

as a result of the conservative influence of Thomas Lawson, Surgeon General since 1836, 

who died on May 15, 1861, the day before the welfare delegation arrived in Washington to 

plead its case. Historians differ on the reception accorded the committee. Some believed 

the “meddlesome civilians... (were received) with coldness, and discouraged... by evasion 

and delay.”5

 Others credit Surgeon Robert C. Hood, a senior medical officer then serving 

as acting Surgeon General6

 as willingly7 supporting the distinguished visitors in sanctioning “a commission of inquiry and advice in respect to the sanitary interests of the United 

States Forces.”8 The plan for a relief agency proposed on May 23, 1861, was approved by 

the President on June 13. Dr. Bellows became President of the Commission. Of the three 

Army representatives, Surgeon Wood represented the Medical Department, thus setting an 

organizational precedent for future relationships with the American National Red Cross.

There was neither preparation, organization nor precedent for such an activity, for 

even the British experiences in the Crimea were so recent that Dunant had not had 

time to arouse general interest in military relief work.9 Thus amidst the chaos and 

disorderliness of the Civil War, the haphazard medical service and the poor state of 

medicine itself,10 the planned orderliness of the Sanitary Commission stands out as 

a shining example of welfare work accomplished in spite of, not because of, federal 

responsibility for the wounded. Its early sponsors are largely forgotten, and the record 
3

 A Half Century Before I

accomplishments of the Commission overshadow Dr. Bellows. Individual women, 

however, such as Dorothea Dix, who became the Government’s first superintendent 

of nurses, and Clara Barton, one of the few and certainly unknown “government girls” 

of her day, rose to spectacular fame. They earned immortality as humanitarians, nurses 

and relief workers, but Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., having set nurse training as a goal 

for the military hospital service, was promptly forgotten. Nevertheless, in her small 

way she had begun a professional revolution, for the women who went to war in those 

days were dissatisfied with the conditions they found in the federal hospitals. And 

because they suffered vicariously with their friends and relations, they eventually set 

the house in order and took control of the situation. Of more immediate importance, 

the female-sponsored Sanitary Commission became politically powerful, and partially 

through its influence a long-standing policy of the Medical Department was set aside 

when a young man rather than an oldster was made Surgeon General.

Forecast For the Future

The unexpected death of Surgeon General Lawson established Surgeon Wood, a man 

of bureaucratic experience and inclination, of good family and allegedly notable political 

connections, as a candidate for the Surgeon Generalcy. When the President adhered to 

the custom of appointing the senior medical officer in the Corps to this position and 

named Clement L. Finley, Surgeon Wood continued to serve agreeably as the principal 

assistant. From the Surgeon General’s office at Fifteenth Street and F Street, in Washington City,11 medical service affairs were managed very much as usual. The appointment of military surgeons then was largely an activity of the state militia rather than of 

the Federal Government. The Surgeon General, a Colonel, fifty Surgeons, eighty-three 

assistant Surgeons and an indefinite number of stewards comprised the department. Two 

officers and five clerks comprised the staff of the Surgeon General’s Office.12

The Medical Department, whose first regulations dealing with the duties of medical 

officers were published in 1814, as part of Army Regulations13 was, in 1861, essentially 

“one of the coordinate branches of the general staff of the Army.... Its members were 

not permanently attached to any regiment or command, but their services were utilized 

wherever required.”14 Nor was there any distinction in the duties of surgeons and physicians, the term military surgeon, in the Army, connoting any licensed commissioned 

doctor. Regimental hospitals served the field troops, and the regimental surgeons were 

remarkably independent. The Surgeons were assigned regulated quantities of supplies, 

but many of the items were not only too bulky and cumbersome for use under combat 

conditions, but because of slow transportation they were often far in the rear of the 

supply train when needed.

From the standpoint of organization there was no sanitary service; hospital stewards 

were authorized under the Act of 16 August 1856 (11 Stat. 51), with an extra monetary 

allowance for duty performed as nurses. The uniform, during the Civil War period, was 

a variety of colors, and there are some who believe that its gay appearance depreciated 
4

I Borden’s Dream

the abilities of the wearers. General hospitals of sorts had been used in other American 

wars,15 primarily as a place to accumulate the non-transportable wounded than as an 

effort to classify the sick, but no Army general hospital existed at the outbreak of the 

Civil War.16 On August 3, 1861, the Congress authorized an increase in the number of 

medical officers and provided for the employment of medical cadets and female nurses.17

The former were mainly students recruited to serve as dressers and assistants to the 

surgeons, and female nurses, in spite of Dr. Blackwell’s foresight, were untrained.

The vicissitudes of war brought frequent changes in the military command, some of 

which inevitably affected Medical Department policies. In the summer of 1861, George 

B. McClellan succeeded McDowell as commander of all the troops in Washington City, 

and almost immediately he set about organizing and equipping the Army of the Potomac. 

An ambitious, autocratic and controversial figure, McClellan succeeded in undermining the 

waning official confidence in the military abilities of the aged Winfield Scott and supplanted 

him as general-in-chief, although Scott favored Henry W. Halleck as his successor.18

In spite of personal differences in temperament and politics, the President respected 

Edwin B. Stanton, a shrewd capital city lawyer, and appointed him to succeed Simon 

Cameron as War Secretary. Stanton, ruthless, irascible and domineering, initiated 

The Wounded come to Washington
5

 A Half Century Before I

bureaucratic economies and set out to remodel the government services to his own 

specifications. Moreover, he attempted actively to direct the progress of the war. As his 

prestige and independence increased and McClellan’s military procrastination brought 

a decrease in his popularity, the personal relationships of these two dynamic characters 

became strained to the breaking point.

The President, discouraged by his fractious and quarrelsome advisers, and the determined 

civilian management of the war, belatedly accepted Scott’s recommendation of Halleck, who 

during the summer of 1862, came to the Capital as special military adviser and general-in-chief. 

Unknowingly, however, the President had supplanted one autocrat with another. Halleck 

was not a good field soldier in his own right, and in view of his many military shortcomings 

it was doubtless unavoidable that he gave no thought to improving the regimental medical 

service. Had he been either brilliant or a great leader, conditions might have improved, but 

as an arm chair strategist, a man “who marshaled files of paper and commanded ranks of 

facts”19, he doubtless believed the two ambulances nominally assigned to a regiment during 

combat were sufficient, ignoring the fact that the Quartermaster had jurisdiction of vehicles 

and that when an Army lost its equipment and supplies there was no transportation for the 

wounded.20 Halleck may have disliked McClellan, the young interloper, for any number of 

personal and official reasons, and he apparently translated his dislike into a veto of McClellan-sponsored men and policies. At any rate he was a negativistic man, and like the powerful 

Stanton, an unreasonable obstructionist. 

Carver U.S. General Hospital; Background Smoke from Battle of Fort Stevens
6

I Borden’s Dream

On April 7, 1862, a War Department order placed general hospitals under the Surgeon 

General’s supervision, although clarification of the command responsibilities of medical officers, within their own sphere, was not obtained until after Presidential approval of the act 

establishing an organized ambulance service.21

General Finley, already sixty-four years old at the time of his appointment, found the 

combination of Stanton’s irascibilities and the interference of the Sanitary Commission too 

much to bear, and applied for retirement on April 14, 1862. Again Surgeon Wood maneuvered to obtain appointment as Surgeon General. Again he was unsuccessful, for as a result 

of McClellan’s patronage and the influence of some members of the Sanitary Commission, 

William Alexander Hammond, a young and energetic assistant surgeon, was appointed. Wood 

continued for a time in his position as principal assistant, but like many other older officers, 

he was embittered at having the traditional appointment of seniority ignored. The Capital 

was as usual a city of political intrigue and uncertain rumors, and Hammond, apparently 

believing Wood an obstructionist to any medical service reforms, had him reassigned.22 In 

so doing he incurred Stanton’s active dislike.23 No doubt the fact that Hammond was the 

ill-fated McClellan’s personal choice did nothing to encourage popularity with the equally 

dilatory and pompous Halleck.

Insofar as military hospitals were concerned, Washington City was unimportant until 

that spring of 1862 when Hammond was appointed. The Surgeon General’s authority was 

confused by complicated organizational relationships with other Army Departments, and 

the new War Department order providing Medical Department supervision of the general 

hospitals was a mixed blessing, for it did not entail control of two of the basic services to 

patients – transportation of the wounded and food service. This oversight, plus the independence of the untrained regimental surgeons, created confusion in the hospitals. There was 

much absenteeism in the volunteer Army as a whole, composed largely of state militia, and 

Dr. Charles Tripler, McClellan’s first Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, believed 

that general hospitals were a general nuisance24 to be endured rather than encouraged. In 

Washington, convenient haven for the federal wounded, hospitals, hotels and other public 

buildings were crowded with the casualties, and temporary hospitals were built as rapidly as 

possible. In location and operation some showed that the planners had little or no knowledge 

of public health and sanitation, and insofar as clinical medicine was concerned, asepsis and 

the microbiology of disease were unexplored fields. Volunteer surgeons and nurses arrived 

with the hordes of sightseers, office seekers and female camp followers, some of questionable 

repute. Many, failing to receive reimbursement for their expenses, returned home.25

The first field ambulances had been poor affairs, little more than crude carts, but when in 

need of transportation for supplies, Army commanders unhesitatingly appropriated them. In 

spite of the organization and devotion of the Sanitary Commission and other relief agencies 

to the welfare cause, many supplies and comforts destined for the regimental wounded were 

appropriated by the conveyors or delayed by poor transportation until spoiled. Men nurses 

had no hesitation in imbibing the “medicinal” liquors and, like the beverage, frequently failed 

to reach their destination.
7

 A Half Century Before I

As one of his first official acts, the new 

Surgeon General replaced Dr. Tripler with 

Dr. Jonathan Letterman, thus providing 

McClellan, his patron, with an energetic 

young physician who recognized the factual needs of field medical organization.26 

The appointment, however, did not please 

War Secretary Stanton.27 Dr. Letterman 

had already organized an ambulance corps 

and modified the field medical service 

extensively by August 2, 1862, when on August 21, Surgeon General Hammond presented independently, to the Secretary of War, 

a comprehensive plan for an organized hospital corps and ambulance company under 

Medical Department control. General Halleck, accustomed to the status quo as well as 

the tactical supremacy of line commanders, disapproved of granting Corps control to a 

technical service. The Surgeon General appealed the decision on September 7, but again 

the military commander disapproved.28Authorized by the drill-minded and orderly 

McClellan, it was fortunate that the Letterman plan was already in operation and would 

soon be adopted by other Commanders. Like many other meritorious plans, it survived, 

though not without a struggle.

Politics or Progress

Small and apparently inconsequential changes affect men’s careers, and were the 

fabric of history unraveled, their personal ambitions, their successes and defeats would 

provide the warp and woof for the pattern. On May 2, 1862, Surgeon Joseph K. Barnes 

was ordered from the Department of Kansas to report to the Surgeon General in Washington and assigned as visiting physician to the military population of the city. In the 

following year he not only made the acquaintance but won the friendship and approval of 

the temperamental and vindictive Stanton, already at odds with the Surgeon General.

Medical inspectors were at a premium during this period, and by February 9, 1863, 

Barnes had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and occupied such a position; on 

August 10, 1863, he was advanced to the rank of Colonel and made a Medical Inspector General.29 Stanton was especially interested in preventing waste of material as well 

as abuse of government contracts. Although of different temperaments the two men 

apparently had congenial interests. On the other hand, Barnes, a less dynamic figure 

than Hammond, may have been more pliable.

In late August 1863, much to his own surprise, Surgeon General Hammond was 

ordered to the Department of the South to inspect sanitary conditions; on September 

3, Joseph K. Barnes was placed in charge of his office. General Hammond demanded 

restoration of his office or trial by court-martial. In view of Secretary Stanton’s known 

dislike of him, the answer to his demands was predictable. He was court-martialed and 

Civil War Ambulance (Brady Collection)
8

I Borden’s Dream

dismissed, his honor remaining uncleared until 1878. On August 22, 1864, Barnes became Surgeon General in name as well as in fact, and during the remaining three years 

of Stanton’s term, the medical service seemingly had his complete approval.30

The friction and controversy surrounding the Hammond administration make his 

short term appear extraordinarily successful, for many of the Medical Department’s 

most outstanding and permanent achievements can be traced to his foresight and planning. The Act of Congress of June 30, 1834 (4 Stat 714) confirmed earlier provisions for 

the examination of medical officer candidates by a board of three officers, but General 

Hammond reorganized the boards and raised the standards. He introduced a new and 

more complete system of hospital reports; increased the number of items on the supply table; made provision for hospital clothing for patients, urged Medical Department 

autonomy in the construction of hospitals and transportation of supplies. Further, and 

of far-reaching consequence in the care of patients, he urged formation of a permanent 

hospital corps. He encouraged expansion of the Surgeon General’s meager collection of 

professional books, begun in 1836, into a full-scale medical library. On May 21, 1862, he 

authorized the Army Medical Museum, for the preservation of pathological specimens 

collected during the war, and the Stanton-disapproved course in military medicine, 

scheduled for 1863-1864, undoubtedly had his sanction.

General Hammond was familiar with all aspects of the medical service during this 

period, and he recognized the importance of continuing a well supplied permanent or 

fixed general hospital as part of the peacetime medical service and planned to locate 

the institution in Washington. For, regardless of the fact that there were no clinical 

thermometers, none of the heart stimulants now in common usage, no general use of 

microscopes, no sterilization of instruments and dressings, and that unclean surgical 

practices increased the infection of wounds,31 patients so hospitalized fared better than 

those treated in the extemporary regimental hospitals. Some of the welfare ideas first 

advocated by the Women’s Central Relief Association were effected by Surgeon General 

Hammond, including the establishment of 

a “diet table”,32 in other words, special diets for invalids. As the first proponent of a 

centrally controlled medical service during 

a war, he paved the way, by his determined 

efforts, for reforms later effected by his 

successors.

As he said, “the hospital system had 

scarcely received any attention up until this 

time”, and at one period “hospitals for over 

twenty thousand sick and wounded were 

established in Washington alone”,33 where 

during the war a total of forty-three hospitals were operative, with seven additional 

Blair House, Silver Spring, Md.; Destroyed 

by Confederates, 1864
9

 A Half Century Before I

ones in Georgetown.34 Soldier, teacher and progressive physician, Hammond was well 

aware of the poor professional preparation of many of the apprentice-trained doctors 

of his day who had “read” medicine with a proctor but practiced on the unsuspecting 

public – or the soldier. To many of them even the poor standards of the temporary military hospitals were a professional revelation, for here the “country practitioners in green 

sashes35 (became acquainted) with hygiene and vaccination.” There is little cause for 

surprise that in addition to a permanent general hospital in Washington City,36 General 

Hammond favored establishing an Army Medical School for the orientation and post 

graduate instruction of medical officer candidates. Recommendations and accomplishments are, however, as far apart as dreams and reality. And Washington City, had it 

known of this future honor, then would have thought little of the proposal.

A Skirmish Is Called a Battle

Within the city proper the approach to the uncrowned Capitol was dusty or muddy, 

depending entirely on the season and the weather. Pennsylvania Avenue was for the 

most part tree shaded, although the double line of horse car tracks gave it the vague 

air of a metropolis. The cars were gaudy affairs, noisy and crowded.37 The buildings, 

some of them public in the private sense of the word, were architecturally unexciting 

by present day standards. A well known bawdy house operated within a block of the 

President’s Park,38and F Street, unpaved and sporting a mongrel architecture, hardly 

appeared cosmopolitan looking – or even urban. Although its pretentious boundaries 

were measured and its circumference extended thirty-seven miles, to the north the city 

outskirts reached only to Boundary Street or Florida Avenue, half-way to the Soldier’s 

Home, where the President had a summer White House.

The road was not in existence in 1800, when Congress and the government departments moved to the city, but travelers now approached the city from the north along 

the Seventh Street Road, a turnpike connecting the gawky metropolis with the outlaying 

Maryland farming area. Authorization for the turnpike was granted between 1808 and 

1810, when the Columbia Turnpike Company was chartered to build a highway, but since 

they delayed the work, the Washington and Rockville Turnpike Company undertook the 

job,39 which was not completed until after 1819. According to some records the Congress 

gave a “Maryland Company” authority to build a turnpike to the District Line, to be 

known as the Rockville Road. There was another road to Rockville, through Tennelly 

town, so the new road was commonly referred to as the Seventh Street Turnpike and 

Seventh Street Road.40 By 1822, it was noted as important,41 although it was narrow 

and at times impassable.

By 1832, prosperous Methodists had erected Emory Chapel in the outlying section, 

about three miles from Boundary Street, and a half mile or so from Crystal Spring, 

from which the area took its name. The Chapel was the first community landmark 

of its kind; the lower part was built of log and served as a school, while the upper or 

church-half had separate galleries for its fifty-nine white and thirteen Negro members. 
10

I Borden’s Dream

Some three miles beyond this settlement, on the Maryland side, Francis Preston Blair, 

editor of The Washington Globe, and his son Montgomery, later Postmaster General in 

the Lincoln cabinet, owned estates. It was probably because of the Blair influence 

that a plank road was laid on the turnpike in 1852, extending from Boundary Street to 

the District Line, for the older Blair retired in 1853 and moved from his Pennsylvania 

Avenue mansion to the Maryland estate. The engineering for this project consisted 

of embedding half-split trees, rounded side down, into the ordinary road base, with 

the pike depressed several inches below the road. Heavy teams were excluded, and 

doubtless as an effort to meet the cost of such a luxurious highway, a Toll House was 

erected a little to the north of the church but well above the Milk House Road (Shepherd Street), which connected this unpretentious area with Tennelly town (Cleveland 

Park) and Georgetown on the west and southwest.42 Crystal Spring, Emory Chapel, 

rebuilt of brick in 1856, and in close proximity Moreland’s Tavern,43 with its handsome 

grove of tress, were the most important landmarks in the area. The rustic name of 

Crystal Spring was already falling into disuse prior to the Civil War, when this small 

link to urban activity was known first as Brighton, but later, because of confusion 

with a nearby Maryland town, as Brightwood. By 1860, the latter name was apparently 

better known then Crystal Spring, for here, at the reserve “Camp Brightwood”, the 

death of a Union Soldier was noted November 16, 1861.44

Breastworks and Sallyport; Ft. Stevens, Washington, D.C.; 1864
11

 A Half Century Before I

The Piney Branch of Rock Creek was an open stream and some of the large and 

prosperous farms in the area were owned by the Whites, Pierces, Shoemakers, the 

Klingles and the Bealls.45 The Beall tract, know as Norway, included about 338 acres 

and extended north along “the old plank road” (to approximately Aspen Street) and 

adjoined the Lay farm.46 When the new Emory Chapel was appropriated by the Union 

Troops, razed, and the bricks used to build Fort Stevens, the old log schoolhouse was 

converted into a guardhouse for unruly soldiers.47 Moreland’s Tavern was commandeered 

as headquarters for General Alexander McCook in 1864.48

A half mile to the north of Fort Stevens the turnpike was itself bisected by a deep 

ravine, later called Cameron’s Creek, a small tributary of the Piney Branch of Rock 

Creek. All the land within two miles of the fort49 was cleared during the war in order 

to prevent surprise attacks, but the section beyond Norway was generally wooded and 

rugged. In spite of such precautions, and the string of forts that rimmed the city, the 

Capital was not well protected during that hot July 1864. Levies of men were hard to 

come by, and a large number of the garrison troops had been deployed to active combat 

areas. Thus it was an excellent time for the rebels to attack. With a better intelligence 

system to aid them, or more perseverance, they might have succeeded in spite of the 

sultry heat and the fatigue induced by forced marches. When word circulated in the city 

that Rhodes’ Division of General Jubal Early’s rebel troops was moving south, the outlying defenses were hastily strengthened and “General Alexander McCook was assigned 

to command a reserve camp on Piney Branch Creek, midway between the city and Fort 

Stevens (on) the Seventh Street Road.”50 This was apparently Crystal Spring,51occupied 

by one company of the 150th Ohio regiment, two hundred and nine men if counting 

a battery of artillery and a few convalescent soldiers. And it was this meager support, 

occupying the adjacent rifle pits, that created the “white puffs of smoke (which) rose 

from the entrenched line of Federals in the valley, and from the groves and orchards 

and farmhouses where the Confederate sharpshooters were posted.”52

There were fifteen or twenty thousand of Early’s rebel veterans approaching the city 

by way of the Georgetown and Frederick Turnpike when the Union forces, panicky 

because of the unexpected invasion, began calling for re-enforcements. Preliminary 

skirmishes with Union troops in the outlying area to the northwest caused Early to 

turn his advance east in order to prevent the Union troops from making a stand at the 

natural defense of the deep Maryland channel of Rock Creek. He therefore turned off 

the main road at Rockville and moving east to the Seventh Street Road, entered it about 

Silver Spring, Maryland.53 Spotters as well as evacuees fleeing from Rockville, Silver 

Spring and other Maryland towns warned of the advance, but in spite of the prospects 

of a battle, the usual curious spectators from Washington thronged the Seventh Street 

Road, anxious to view the battle from a safe place. Crowded by those going out and 

those going in to the city, the turnpike was a busy place.

The unpopular Halleck, ranking military man in the city,54 apparently made no effort 

to restrict the sightseers, although re-enforcements were being sent to Fort Stevens 
12

I Borden’s Dream

as rapidly as word could be spread that the Capital was threatened. Men from the 

Army of the Potomac were brought in by train and boat, within three days some 

ten thousand of them. The main advance of Confederates halted on the outskirts, 

near the hastily abandoned house of Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General, 

but a mile or so farther down the turnpike sharpshooters from Rhodes’ Division 

occupied the Reeves House, to the East of Seventh Street Road. The cupolaed Lay 

House, on the west, with its giant tulip tree, provided excellent vantage points for 

sniping at occupants of the fort.55 The President, no less curious than the other 

Washingtonians, ventured to the Fort and narrowly missed being a military casualty. Instead, a surgeon56 standing by his side was killed by a sharpshooter’s bullet, 

fired from a tall cherry tree in the rear of the Reeves House, a distance of about 

900 yards.57 In quick retaliation, thirty-six shots were fired from Fort Stevens and 

nearly as many from Fort De Russey, on the left and just across Rock Creek.

The Lay and Reeves houses were destroyed, and the giant tulip tree was damaged, but the sharpshooter, later wounded by an equally good Union marksman of 

his kind, died on the grounds of the Beall farm.58 When Wheaton’s men advanced 

to clear the rebels from their stronghold, Rhodes’ men appeared from concealment 

in the ravine of Cameron’s Creek and a short-range but important engagement 

Sallyport at Fort Stevens; Defense of Washington, D.C.; 1864
13

 A Half Century Before I

took place. The outnumbered rebel forces withdrew during the night of July 12, 

leaving seventeen of their dead to be buried in the Episcopal graveyard at Woodside, Maryland, and one at Silver Spring. The Union men were buried in a hastily 

created cemetery to the east of Seventh Street Road, behind the Reeves House but 

on land which may have been part of Norway, as this tract was apparently bisected 

by the turnpike.

Brightwood area residents disapproved of the tollgate, so they organized and 

purchased a right-of-way around it and extending south to the approximate location of the Tavern, later known as Brightwood Club House59 and still later the site 

of the Masonic Temple. The northern part of the meandering right-of-way became 

Piney Branch Road;60 the southern part, crossed by Magnolia Avenue, renamed in 

turn Concord and Missouri Avenue, was renamed in accordance with the Capital 

planning, for the State of Colorado.

In time the Lay farm was sold to Thomas Carberry, Mayor of the District from 

1822_1823. Still later it was sold to Ex-senator J. Donald Cameron,61 whose ownership gave the small stream the name of Cameron’s Creek. Alexander Shepherd 

purchased the land to the north and after he became famous Milk Ford Road was 

renamed for him. Military Road, cut through from the northwest section during 

the war, was the only one of the thoroughfares to retain its original name. 

The Crystal Spring Race Track (at 

Kennedy and Colorado) flourished 

until about 1860. Here the sports 

came from Washington, and families 

came on picnics. The fare by stage 

was seventy-five cents for the round 

trip, with one-half fare for children.62

Saul’s nursery, one of the finest of 

its kind in the country, dated from 

1872, and by 1885 it consisted of 

some seventy-five acres and twenty 

greenhouses,63 with the owner specializing in rare evergreens as well 

as fruit trees. The principal place 

lay between the turnpike and “Piney 

Branch Park”, to the west.

Carberry House, or the Lay Mansion, as it was more generally known, 

was rebuilt after the war and continued to be known as Norway until the 

early part of the twentieth century. It 

Sharpshooters Tree used by Confederates; 

Battle of Ft. Stevens
14

I Borden’s Dream

was a stately four-chimney house with a fashionable observatory on the roof and 

with spacious porches of which only the front remained in any state of repair. A 

double line of maples bordered the drive, concealing its decaying grandeur from 

the disinterested public traveling the turnpike. Few people knew and fewer would 

have cared that a privately owned clay and gravel road trailed off to an ironstone 

springhouse in the low southwest section of the grounds where passed a “rocky, 

tree-lined stream”,64 for Cameron’s Creek rose close to the District Line west of 

Takoma and after describing a crooked course from northeast to southwest entered 

Rock Creek at the Military Road.

Bleak House, the Shepherd residence to the west of the Turnpike, was a mansion of 

historic proportions,65 with a stone lodge for the gate-keeper located at the front of its 

spruce-line drive. These were the days when the rickety “Red Bird” stagecoach plied 

between Washington City and the suburb.66

When the Brightwood Citizens’ Association was organized in 1891, the community began to make improvements. Horse racing was no longer the community sport; 

Boundary Street was still Boundary Street, not Florida Avenue, and the reliable old 

Washington Star warned its cycling readers that “It is true there are a number of streets 

extending beyond Boundary, but they lead nowhere, ending in wilds and wilderness”.67

By 1899 a venturesome capitalist had extended the District’s street railroad from Rock 

Creek Road to the village of Brightwood. 

Equipped with the discarded horses and 

bobtail cars of the metropolitan line of 

the B & O, the impatient patrons dubbed 

their public transportation system the 

GOP, “get-out-and-push”, because of its 

frequent founderings en route. Takoma 

Park and North Takoma were disarticulated rural dependencies. The Brightwood 

postal service, one a “will-call” station in 

the crossroads store at Piney Branch Road 

and the turnpike, location of the tollgate, 

sported a letter carrier, complete with 

horse and sulky. The adolescent breastworks of Fort Stevens, and unimportant battleground where a President went to war in 

his carriage, evoked little interest from passers-by, for it had become a dumping ground 

for trash. The sharpshooter’s tree had recovered from its barrage, concealing its battle 

scars with new growth; the ejected bullets from the rebel guns had settled deep in the 

soil at Norway. By 1901, when a second war provided dead heroes, the Brightwood 

Citizens’ Association began sponsoring memorial services in the Union cemetery on 

Brightwood Avenue.68

The Lay House; Once a Mansion of Historic Proportions
15

 A Half Century Before I

References 1. P.M. Ashburn, A History of the Medical Department of the United States Army, Boston and New 

York, Houghton – Mifflin, 1929, pg. 213. 

2. Relative rank accorded by Resolution of the Continental Congress, 3 Jan. 1781, see Harvey E. 

Brown (comp), The Medical Department of the U.S. Army from 1775–1873, SGO, Washington, D.C., 

1873, pg. 61; definte military rank was accorded by Act 11 February 1847 (9 Stat. 124).

3. Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., Pioneer Work For Women, N.Y., E.P. Dutton, 1914.

4. Kathrine Prescott Wormley, The United States Sanitary Commission, Boston, Little, Brown 

and Company, 1863, pg. 3-8; Albert G. Love, The Geneva Red Cross Movement, European and 

American Influences on its Development: A compilation with notes. Army Medical Bulletin No. 

62, Special Issue, Carlisle Barracks, Pa.: M.F.S.S., May 1942. Reprinted, GPO, 1944.

5. Margaret Leech, Reveille in Washington, 1860_1865, New York and London, Harper and Brothers, ca 1941, pg 212. 

6. James Mathew Phalen, Chiefs of the Medical Department United States Army 1775_1940. (published by the Army Medical Bulletin) pg. 39.

7. Love, op cit, pg. 11.

8. The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes, Vol. VII, Prisons and Hospitals, pg. 330.

9. Jean Henri Dunant, Swiss citizen, is generally credited with the pioneer work in organizing 

military relief.

10. Leech, op cit, pg 204-233; Photographic History, op cit, Vol. VII; Ashburn, op cit, pg 68-93; 

James Tanner, Experience of a Wounded Soldier at the Second Battle of Bull Run. Reprint from 

Military Surgeon, Feb. 1927.

11. Leech, op cit, 189.

12. Love, op cit, pg. 10.

13. Roger Chew Weightman, Military Laws and Rules and Regulations for the Army of the United 

States, Washington City, 1814 (quoted).

14. Photographic History, op cit, pg 220.

15. One general and several regimental at Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1845. See Ashburn, op cit, pg 56.

16. Leech, op cit, pg 211.

17. 12 Stat, 288.

18. Leech, op cit, 179, 180.

19. Leech, op cit, page 180.
16

I Borden’s Dream

20. Louis Casper Duncan, Capt., MC, U.S. Army, The Medical Department of the United States Army 

in the Civil War, Washington, 1911, pg 2.

21. Photographic History, op cit, pg 310.

22. Photographic History... op cit, pg 334; Phalen, op cit, pg 43. 

23. Leech, op cit, 216.

24. Ashburn, op cit, pg 70, 80.

25. Leech, op cit, pg 197. 

26. Photographic History, op cit, pg 219.

27. Statement of Causes Which Led to the Dismissal of Surgeon General Hammond, pp, New 

York, 1864, pg 8.

28. Photographic History... op cit, pg 305-306.

29. Phalen, op cit, pg 48.

30. Phalen, op cit, pg 49.

31. George M. Sternberg, The Functions of the Army Medical School, address given at the annual 

commencement, 1902, American Medicine, Vol. III, No. 14, April 5, 1902, pg 547-551.

32. Hammond, op cit, pg 8.

33. Statement of causes... pg 11.

34. John Claggett Proctor, Washington Star, June 11, 1950.

35. Military identification for medical officer.

36. Phalen, op cit, pg 44.

37. Leech, op cit, 182-183.

38. Leech, op cit, pg 264, 267.

39. Proctor, op cit, Feb. 14, 1932.

40. Ibid –Washington Star, Jan. 31, 1937.

41. Proctor, op cit, Feb. 14, 1932.

42. Proctor, op cit, April 21, 1929.

43. Later location of the Masonic Temple.

44. Proctor, op cit, Jan. 31, 1937; Feb. 3, 1938.
17

 A Half Century Before I

45. Ibid.

46. Proctor, op cit, April 21, 1929.

47. Proctor, op cit, April 7, 1929.

48. Proctor, op cit, Feb. 13. 1938.

49. “With the Rambler”, Washington Star, Apr. 9, 1916.

50. Leech, op cit, pg 336.

51. Proctor, op cit, Jan. 31, 1937.

52. Leech, op cit, pg 342.

53. Leech, op cit, pg 337.

54. Ibid, pg 342.

55. Annual Report, WRGH, 1919.

56. Leech, op cit, pg 343.

57. Annual Report, WRGH, 1919, pg 2.

58. Proctor, Washington Star, April 21, 1929.

59. Proctor, op cit, April 21, 1929.

60. Proctor, op cit, Feb. 13, 1938.

61. Proctor, op cit, April 21, 1929.

62. Proctor, op cit, April 7, 1929.

63. Ibid.

64. “With the Rambler”, Washington Star, April 9, 1916.

65. Built about 1873, in the area between Alaska on the east; Holly on the north; Geranium on 

the south and 14th Street on the west. “With the Rambler”, Washington Star, May 7, 1916.

66. Public Improvements Secured in the Northern Section of the District of Columbia, an address by 

Wm. Van Zandt Cox, Aug. 6, 1897, on file Washingtonia Sect., D.C. Public Library.

67. “On Suburban Rides”, Washington Star, Jan. 29, 1896.

68. Proctor, op cit, Jan. 31, 1937.
18

I Borden’s Dream