Turkey Thicket and the Civil War Comes to Washington, DC

 

This is a greatly expanded version of an account first published on November 24, 2011 in A Flâneur in Washington, DC.]

Having just enjoyed a long, restful Thanksgiving holiday weekend, it seems entirely appropriate to mention the fact that Washington, DC is home to a small and little known neighborhood known as Turkey Thicket which is located a mile or so from where I am writing this at home just over the District line in Maryland.  I have been driving through it fairly regularly over the past 40 years not knowing it by its old name.  In fact, few people other than those who call it home are aware of it for it is now considered part of the larger University Heights neighborhood adjacent to The Catholic University of America in the Brookland section of northeast DC.    

There has been neither a thicket nor any turkeys to speak of in these environs in even the farthest distant memory yet until the late 19th century this area was still largely hilly woodlands and farms where Washington’s elite would come to escape the heat and humidity of the District’s riverside precincts.  The area now known informally as Turkey Thicket was originally part of the Bellair plantation belonging to Colonel Jehiel Brooks and his wife Ann Margaret, the daughter of Nicholas Louis Queen, a prominent Maryland businessman and one of the largest landowners in the District.    

Brooks (1797-1886) was originally from Albans Province of Vermont and spent most of his boyhood years in Conneaut, Ohio, on Lake Erie east of Cleveland.  He served as a First Lieutenant in the First Regiment of Infantry with the Ohio Militia, in the War of 1812, and later studied law in Cincinnati and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1823.  He practiced law in Ohio until 1826 when he moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, south of Shreveport.  He continued to practice law after being admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1828.

Brooks came to the District of Columbia later in 1828 seeking political appointment and married Ann Margaret.  He was appointed governor of the Red River Indian Agency beginning in 1830 during the administration of Andrew Jackson.  The Agency had been established in 1804 in Natchitoches, but during Brooks’ tenure the Agency moved in 1831 from Caddo Prairie to Peach Tree (or Orchard) Bluff, on the Bayou Pierre Channel, south of Shreveport.  Brooks successfully negotiated a treaty with the Caddo in July 1835 after which he and his 

family returned to the District, settling on a tract of land belonging to Ann Margaret known as the "Inclosure" which included Turkey Thicket.  He assumed the role of gentleman farmer and the Bellair plantation’s original Greek Revival-style plantation house was built around 1840 and still stands on the site.

Shortly after returning to the District Colonel Brooks was accused of fraud during his years in Louisiana while he initiated a number of civil suits, almost all of which he lost, concerning land he claimed he had purchased from his Indian charges.  In order to resolve his financial troubles brought on by his legal failures, Brooks petition successive presidential administrations for patronage positions yet his only subsequent public office was that of Supervisor of the District’s Washington County, in 1845.  Washington County, ceded by Maryland in 1790, included all of what is now the present District of Columbia east of the Potomac River.  The original Alexandria County ceded by the Commonwealth of Virginia formed the portion of the District west of the Potomac. It was returned to Virginia by Congress in 1846.

In 1861, as the Southern secession tore the country apart, the

federal government erected 68 temporary fortifications around Washington, including seven earthen and brick redoubts inside the District itself.  One of these, Fort Bunker Hill, was constructed by the 11th Massachusetts Infantry on Brooks’ land.  This drew the ire of the Colonel, who had become an ardent Confederate sympathizer, and he unsuccessfully challenged the government to remove it.  In 1862, the fort was manned by members of the 11th Vermont Infantry whose encampment was situated in the adjacent Turkey Thicket.  The fort was manned until the end of the war in 1865.

It seems few people around here know the only Civil War “battle” to take place within the boundaries of the District of Columbia occurred on July 11-12, 1864 at Fort Stevens, one of the capital’s defensive installations a couple miles northwest 

of Fort Bunker Hill and the Brooks plantation.  Following the Confederate campaign to drive Union forces out of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, General Robert E. Lee ordered General Jubal Early and 15,000 troops of II Corps of the Army of Virginia to invade Maryland for a third time with the goal of threatening Washington while disrupting the B&O Railroad.  This move came just 50 years after the British had successfully attacked Washington in August 1814 during the War of 1812.  Early’s corps crossed the Potomac River on July 5 and four days later defeated a smaller Union force from VI Corps of the Army of the Potomac at the Battle of the Monocacy, south of Frederick, Maryland.  Thereafter it continued to advance on Washington from the northwest. 

In the meantime, General Ulysses S. Grant was focused on tightening his noose on the Confederate capital of Richmond and had moved the majority of the 23,000 soldiers assigned to defend Washington, D.C., to join in the siege thereby leaving the capital vulnerable to attack.  With Early now in Maryland and moving ever closer to Washington, Grant withdrew some of his forces deployed near Richmond, just as Lee had hoped.  Fortunately, the delay of Early at Monocacy permitted Grant time to reinforce Union defenses of the capital.

Early arrived on the northern edge of the District on July 11 but did not fully engage the Union defenders until the following day.  President Lincoln and his family happened to be staying at his summer cottage not far from the site of the impending showdown while a steamer waited on the Potomac to evacuate them if the situation became dire as even the White House was less than five miles from the advancing Confederate force.  In the meantime, Marylanders from the surrounding counties began to flock to the relative safety of the city.

The general defense of Washington was dependent on Major General Christopher C. Augur, Head of the Military Department of Washington and in command of the 31,000 largely untried troops of the Union XXII Corps of which less than 10,000 were combat ready.  Early’s troops, on the other hand, were battle-harden veterans.  Major General Alexander M. McCook was now called upon to assume overall command of Washington’s defense from Augur.  Reinforcement ordered from the siege of Richmond by Grant included troops from VI Corps commanded by Major General Horatio G. Wright and a detachment from the XIX Corps commanded by Major General Quincy A. Gillmore which manned the District’s northeast defensive line – Fort Bunker Hill, Fort Totten and Fort Lincoln.  The Union Army's Quartermaster General, Brigadier General Montgomery C. Meigs, commanded the northern line of forts, including Fort Slocum and Fort Stevens, and Augur's XXII Corps, First Division commander, Martin D. Hardin, commanded the northwest defensive line at Forts De Russy and Reno. 

As Wright's VI Corps troops arrived in the District July 11, advanced units of Early's II Corps were approaching from the north.  He delayed his assault on Fort Stevens until his troops had a chance to rest and for him to gather intelligence on the strength of the Union force he was facing.  This additional delay allowed McCook to further reinforce the Union positions with tried and test troops as it appeared they would bear the brunt of the Confederate assault. 

Around 3 pm, with the bulk of their corps present, Confederate infantry and artillery commenced skirmishing, probing the defense maintained by Hardin’s division of the XXII Corps in the northwest quadrant of the District.  The battle skirmishing increased around 5 pm when Confederate cavalry pushed through the advanced Union picket line in front of Fort Stevens.  It was quickly repulsed in a Union counterattack and fighting continued throughout the evening of July 11 as Union artillery shelled Confederate redoubts.

Additional Union reinforcements from the VI and XIX Corps arrived overnight and were placed in reserve behind the line as skirmishing continued on into July 12 with more Union artillery fire centered on Confederate positions in front of Fort Stevens.  When this failed to dislodge the attackers, elements of two Union brigades of VI Corps successfully advanced on these positions at 5pm but with heavy losses.

President Lincoln had personally welcomed the arriving Union reinforcements when they arrived in Washington, and on the morning of July 11 he and a few military aides arrived at Fort Stevens where he was warned to stay under cover as Confederate sharpshooters were already active in the vicinity.  Other than James Madison, who observed the Battle of Bladensburg (Maryland) in August 1814, Lincoln was the only other president to observe combat while in office.  Lincoln eventually returned to the safety of the White House, but later that afternoon he and his wife Mary returned to Fort Stevens.  Standing once again on a parapet to observe the fighting a bullet struck an army surgeon standing next to him and once again Lincoln was forced to take cover while giving a direct order for Union artillery to shell areas where the sharpshooters were positioned. 

It soon became clear to Early that Washington could not be taken without heavy losses.  He withdrew his forces that evening, heading west through Maryland, crossing the Potomac River into Virginia on the morning of July 13.  Early later commented on the battle: “We didn't take Washington but we scared Abe Lincoln like hell." 

The city of Washington began to expand following the war.  Colonel Brooks was involved in another local legal dispute in 1869 when the B&O laid tracks along an edge of his property. The Catholic University of America, situated adjacent to Turkey Thicket and the Brooks plantation, opened its doors in 1887.  Colonel Brooks died at home on February 6, 1886 at the age of ninety.  Marist College, as part of the CUA, took over the mansion and built an addition, and Brooks’ son John Henry (1841-1916), a physician, sold the remainder of the plantation to early 20th century developers for the new Brookland section of the city.  The area generally known as Turkey Thicket was still an open field in the 1930s as new homes and neighborhoods sprouted up nearby.  

The site of Fort Bunker Hill was improved into a park by the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps and later taken over by the National Park Service as part of the District’s Rock Creek Park complex.  Very little of the original fort remains.   A clubhouse was eventual constructed in the nearby field in 1948, and it was replaced in 2003 by the Turkey Thicket 

Recreation Center and Playground.  This is the only reference to Turkey Thicket one will find on a current map of Washington, DC. 

So now you know the rest of the story.

Fifty Years Ago -- A Very Special Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time to spend with family and friends.  That’s the way it always was when I was growing up; the thought of spending a Thanksgiving alone did not cross my mind when I was young.  I never missed a Thanksgiving with my family until I was twenty years old and attending university in Germany.  

The fourth Thursday of November (the 26th in 1971) had no holiday importance in Freiburg.  I attended my regular classes that day and in the afternoon walked to the local post office to place an overseas call hoping to catch my family celebrating Thanksgiving at home.  I waited for two hours to get a free line and no one answered when the phone finally rang back in Wisconsin.  The holiday and home seemed awfully far away as I walked back to my apartment that evening.  No turkey.  No stuffing with gravy.  No cranberry sauce.  No pumpkin pie.  I settled for a bowl of Hungarian goulash and a couple steins of beer at the Gasthof Sonne, my favorite Stammtisch before hitting the books

But all was not lost and I was not really alone.  Several other American students and I decided, if we could not be home for the holiday, we would at the very least celebrate Thanksgiving with each other on that Saturday (the 28th).  With the campus closed on the weekend we had made arrangements to use a meeting room with kitchen privileges.  Each of us was tasked with shopping trips and preparation assignments, and we each invited a German friend to share our very special thanksgiving with us.

I skipped the one class I had on Friday and a friend who had PX privileges and I made our way to the Freiburg Hauptbahnhof where we caught a train north to Karlsruhe. We changed to another train to the main station in Stuttgart, and from there we took a local train out to Vaihingen where we visited the US Army commissary at Patch Barracks.  We purchased two large (well, large for Germany) frozen turkeys, a few cans of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie filling (at the time these items were nowhere to be found back in Freiburg), and a few other items that reminded us of home.  I took the opportunity to pick up several boxes of Aunt Jemima pancake mix and large bottles of Log Cabin syrup to stock my own larder.  Who knew when I would next make it back up to Stuttgart?  We were soon retracing our route back to Freiburg where we arrived late in the evening, the turkeys already beginning to thaw.

Early the next morning I brought the defrosted turkeys to our meeting room and all of us began our preparations for the feast to come.   Having been partially responsible for the acquisition of the turkeys, the task of cooking the birds also fell to me and I used my family’s rules of thumb - cook the stuffing separate from the birds and baste only at the very end of the roasting time.  Thankfully we had an oven large enough to accommodate the turkeys, a small ham, and the pans of stuffing. 

Everything was ready by mid-afternoon when we sat down to eat.  I was given the honor of carving the birds and slicing the ham.  A short prayer of thanksgiving was offered up and we toasted our absent families and friends, as well as our new friends who had come to join us.   Better yet, a gentle snow fell throughout the afternoon which helped us enjoy the holiday spirit.  We ate and drank until we could eat and drink no more, and it was late evening by the time I made my way back through the snow to my apartment and fell into bed.

The following day, the 29th, was Totensonntag, the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent.  A mostly German Protestant celebration for the deceased, it is similar to the Catholic celebration of Allerheiligen and Allerseelen (All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day) at the beginning of November.  It is normally a day of silence and churches forego music in their traditional liturgy.  The bells of the Lutheran church a block away from my apartment, which normally began to ring early each Sunday and went on for quite some time, did not ring that day.  Still, I managed to arise from bed without the aid of that cacophonous carillon, and after a few cups of coffee to declinate my internal compass and regain my orientation after a night of tryptophan-induced foodmares, I walked through the new fallen snow to the campus to clean up from the day before.    A few others also showed up and we warmed up the leftovers and had a second feast before putting everything back in order.  

That following Monday I returned to my classes and in the late afternoon I made my way again to the post office hoping I might reach my family.  I requested an overseas line, and after another long wait for a connection, I heard that familiar ring of an American telephone.  My dad was still at work, but I had a nice chat with my mother with whom I had not spoken to for over three months.  She told me all about the first holiday celebration I had missed at home, and I told her about my very special Thanksgiving, perhaps the first one when I fully understood the meaning of giving thanks for what I had long taken for granted.  Home suddenly didn’t seem all that far away.

I Apologize for My Long Silence

I apologize for my long silence.  These past five months have been full of trials and tribulations and unfortunately my postings here have suffered as a result.  I have continued to write, but there has been precious little I was ready to share with the world.   There is a time and a place for everything, but sadly the past few months have not been conducive to sharing.  That said, I am confident the tide has turned and I hope to be posting here again on a fairly regular basis.  The first half of 2021 was productive, and now that I have weathered the lean months, I hope to finish off the year with my attention back on what I have to say.  So thank you for your patience, and stay tuned.