During the Federal retreat at Ball’s Bluff, Lewis A. Bell, a free African American camp worker, may have been the first Black man to fire a gun in support of the Union Army.

According to the 1870 edition of History of Worcester in the War of the Rebellion, Bell worked for Colonel Milton Cogswell, 42nd New York Infantry Regiment, while other sources cite his involvement with a Massachusetts unit. Bell “supplied himself with arms, and loaded and fired with great spirit” before being taken to Richmond as a prisoner of war.

Henry Harris was descended from a for­merly enslaved man and woman freed by Robert Carter Ill in the early 1800s. In 1844 Alfred Ball of Prince William County sold Harris 15 acres located just north of today's 1-66 and Bull Run Regional Park. The 1850 census recorded Harris as a farmer and the "only person" living on his farm. The Slave Schedule of that census, however, listed the enslaved resi­dents of Henry's farm as of a woman of 35, a girl of 6 and boys of 4 and 2. They were his wife Jemima and their children.