Fort Ellsworth - Wartime Use

Wartime Use

On June 26, 1861, 30 - 10 Pounder Rifled Cannon were tested at Fort Ellsworth.

Col. J. Howard Kitching with the 6th New York Artillery occupied Fort Ellsworth:

Now we are in Fort Ellsworth...It is a very fine piece of work on a splendid commanding position, overlooking Washington, Alexandria, and all the surrounding country, for fifteen or twenty miles. When we came in here...it was occupied by four hundred 'man -of-war's men:' in fact, a complete frigate's crew - and they have been spending the past two months in putting the fort in order, just as sailors do, sodding and whitewashing everything, and planting evergreens, until the inside of the works is the very picture of neatness.

They moved on to Fort Worth, on Wednesday, November 27, 1861.

Fort Worth, Va., December 3, 1861. My dearest L: I received your lovely letter, and would have answered it immediately, but that I was taken sick the day after I got it, and have been sick ever since. We received orders late Wednesday night to move our two companies which had been guarding Fort Ellsworth to Fort Worth, the next morning, Thanksgiving Day. So we were obliged to give up our comfortable quarters, and take up our line of march for an unfinished earthwork, on the outskirts of our line of fortifications; where instead of spending our time drilling on the guns, and teaching our men something useful, we are forced to take up our axes and shovels, and go to work upon the Fort. In Ellsworth we had very nice quarters within the works, and everything convenient, and were able to crib a little time every day to ourselves.

In 1862, Nathaniel Hawthorne visited the Fort, as detailed the Atlantic:

We paid a visit to Fort Ellsworth, and from it ramparts (which have been heaped up out of the muddy soil within the last few months, and will require still a year or two to make them verdant) we had a beautiful view of the Potomac, a truly majestic river, and the surrounding country. The fortifications, so numerous in all this region, and now so unsightly with their bare, precipitous sides will remain as historic monuments, grass-grown and picturesque memorials of an epoch of terror and suffering: they will serve to make our country dearer and more interesting to us, and afford fit soil for poetry to root itself in: for this is a plant which thrives best in spots where blood has been spilt long ago, and grows in abundant clusters in old ditches, such as the moat around Fort Ellsworth will be a century hence.

In September, 1864, Company F, 1st Wisconsin Heavy Artillery Regiment was assigned to the Fort.

The George Washington Masonic National Memorial was built on Shuter's hill, the site of the fort.