Citizen Activist Delves Into History at Fort Ward

For Glenn Eugster, Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site on Alexandria’s West End offers one compelling story after another.

The site, located at 3601 West Braddock Road, was formerly home to a black community, members of which Eugster believes are buried in site’s rolling hills.

The city calls Fort Ward the best preserved of the system of Union forts and batteries built to protect Washington during the Civil War.

“One of the reasons the Civil War was fought was because of slavery,’ said Eugster, 64. “There’s an amazing story here about how this war freed these people, our neighbors, families, who had a community here, and they’re now in the community and they’re prospering. It’s the American Dream. It’s the direct result of what was accomplished in part through that conflict.”

Eugster, who lives next to the park’s cemetery, first got involved in the neighborhood due to crime concerns. Then he began to talk to his neighbors about the park. When the city placed a solid waste transfer station next to the park’s cemetery several years ago, he communicated with neighbors to have the Dumpsters removed.

He became a thorn in the city’s side with his efforts to try to remove the transfer station, forming an alliance with local residents and Oakland Baptist Church, a historically black congregation. He got involved with Friends of Fort Ward following his retirement in 2008, researching the park’s history and found a 1962 city plan that showed a number of graves on the site.

Eugster wants to know where the original graves are, and, if they were moved, where they are now.

“I believe if it were your brother, your father, your grandfather, whatever, you’d want to know,” he said. “And we’re not talking about great memorials or anything like that, but at least respect it. Don’t put a parking lot on top of it. Don’t put a picnic shelter on top of it.”

Eugster worked for the federal government for 33 years, serving with the Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, the National Park Service, then the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of his work focused on planning and technical assistance to state and local governments. He served briefly on the Fort Ward Park and Museum Task Force, which developed a management plan for the park.

He admits he’s hung up on the issue of the graves. A two-year investigation by the city found 53 graves on the site, only three of which were marked by headstones, but Eugster said those were all on the 1962 maps of the property and that the city has failed to identify some graves Eugster found by following the paper trail. He believes archeologists should be looking in more places for graves and have the Alexandria Department of Parks and Recreation work with local families on how to properly recognize the graves.

Lance Mallamo, director of the Office of Historic Alexandria, which has overseen archaeological work at Fort Ward, said the city is selecting a consultant to begin $30,000 worth of archaeological work related to drainage improvements at the site.

"Right now, we have finished the most recent phase of work,” Mallamo said. “We are going to be doing more work when a permanent drainage system is done at the park.”

That phase will only involve areas impacted by the drainage system, he said. Any archaeological work after that depends on funding.

Frances Terrell, a West End resident who attends Oakland Baptist Church and has worked with Eugster, believes she has relatives who lived at the fort. African Americans lived on the site from the end of the Civil War until the 1960s, when it became a park, she said.

Terrell is certain the site contains unmarked graves of African American residents and supports Eugster’s efforts.

“He is very thorough, he’s very knowledgeable, and he always has facts to substantiate what he’s talking about,” she said. “He’s well aware of the documentations, the papers, so we’ve really been supporting him, and he’s really been a tremendous asset to us, the African-American community, to make sure the African-American community is preserved and the African Americans who have passed are respected.”

The city first sponsored an archaeological investigation of the park, which aimed to recover enough information to reconstruct the fort itself, in 1961. In 1991, the city conducted a second dig, which discovered additional Civil War features and domestic artifacts post-dating the war. Research uncovered deeds and other records confirming the artifacts once belonged to African Americans who lived on the property for nearly 100 years.

Today, Eugster manages a Facebook page called the Fort Ward Observer and co-manages a page for the Fort Ward African-Americans Descendent Society. And he continues to push the city to identify the graves he believes dot the park’s landscape.

“None of this is about Glenn Eugster,” he said. “It’s about the Civil War fort, it’s about this historic park, and it’s about this African-American community, and how does the city feel about this part of Alexandria’s story? My hope is that we’ll embrace it.”