On September 16, 1776, Colonel John Fitzgerald distinguished himself at the Battle of Harlem Heights, a key early victory for General George Washington and the Continental Army. Serving as Washington’s aide-de-camp, Fitzgerald was at his side through the grueling campaigns of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, and Monmouth—where he was wounded.
After leaving the army, Fitzgerald returned to Alexandria, becoming a prominent civic leader, merchant, and friend to Washington. As mayor, councilman, and port collector, he shaped the city’s early institutions—including helping establish St. Mary’s Catholic Church, now the Basilica of St. Mary, where a pivotal fundraising dinner at his home in 1788 featured a $1200 donation from Washington.
Though buried at his wife’s estate near present-day Fort Washington, Fitzgerald’s influence endures in Alexandria—in city records, in the bricks of the Lyceum, and in the warehouse he built in 1781, still standing at King and Union Streets.
