A caveat...this time line is based on information I acquired by reading and research...none of it is original...and all of it subject to the error which creeps into a formation of the 'conventional' view of history. In most cases I have provided a link to the source of the material I present.
John Smith led the establishment of Jamestown colony in Virgina in 1607. In 1608, he sailed up Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac and to the Indian village of Tohoga ..now Georgetown..the fall line of the river.
In 1632, English fur trader Henry Fleet documented a Native American village of the Nacotchtank people called Tohoga on the site of present-day Georgetown and established trade there.[1] The area was then part of the Province of Maryland, a British colony.
Colony of Maryland granted to Lord Baltimore..Charles Calvert...by King Charles
1703 The Maryland Assembly grants Scottish immigrant Ninian Beall a tract of 795 acres for his services “[against] all incursions and disturbances of neighboring Indians.” Beall names the property “Rock of Dumbarton,” after the distinctive geologic feature near Glasgow in his native Scotland.
Named for King George or George Beall and George Gordon from whom the land to become Georgetown was purchased by the Maryland legislature in 1751?
Situated at 3200 O street organized by John Beattie
The oldest unaltered structure in DC
"Dumbarton - Washington House" 1647 30th Street at R Street. Built by Thomas Beall shortly after he inherited the Rock of Dumbarton from his father George Sr. in 1784. At that time he gave his elder brother, George Jr., the Beall mansion on N Street. The new home "Dumbarton" went to Thomas' daughter Elizabeth Ridley as a wedding present when she married George Corbin Washington, great nephew of the President. It was inherited by their son, Lewis Washington, who sold it to Elisha Riggs, co-founder with W. W. Corcoran of Riggs National Bank.
Halcyon House is a Federal-style[2] home in Washington, D.C. Located in the heart of Georgetown, the house was built beginning in 1787 by the first Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Stoddert.[1][3] Its gardens were designed by Pierre L'Enfant,[4] and for several decades in the early 19th century Halcyon House was the center of much of Washington's social life.[3]
It was the site of a March 29, 1791, meeting between President George Washington and local land-owners to discuss the federal government's purchase offer of land needed to build a new capital city for the young United States of America. The meeting was a success and the land was soon acquired.
Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Jesuit and Catholic university in the United States. Georgetown's founding by John Carroll, America's first Catholic bishop, realized earlier efforts to establish a Roman Catholic college in the province of Maryland that had been thwarted by religious persecution.
The hundred square mile plot selected as the new seat of government was not unclaimed land. There were farms, estates and towns that were being swallowed up by United States government. But, I should add, that this wasn’t a case of eminent domain. Nineteen original landowners were negotiated with, directly by George Washington himself at the end of March, 1791. He met with them during the day and in the evening, closed the deal with them at Suter’s Tavern in Georgetown.
Holy Trinity is the oldest Catholic Church in continuous operation in the District of Columbia. Slaves and presidents have been among its parishioners. The first church building, which still serves as the parish's chapel, was built in 1794. Francis Neale, S.J., one of four brothers of an old Maryland family, was the first pastor. The second pastor of Holy Trinity, Benedict J. Fenwick, S.J., became the second Bishop of Boston and founded Holy Cross College. A subsequent pastor, John McElroy, S.J., founded Boston College. President John F. Kennedy and his family frequently worshiped at Holy Trinity. n 1862, following the Second Battle of Bull Run, the United States government requisitioned the main church for use as a military hospital. In the three months following the battle, more than two hundred sick and wounded Union soldiers were treated in Holy Trinity's church.
The City Tavern was constructed in 1796 and first managed by Clement Sewall, who served in the American Revolution alongside his friend George Washington Parke Custis, George Washington’s step-grandson. Sewall had previously managed another significant inn known as the Fountain Inn (also known as Suter's Tavern) on Fishing Lane (near the corner of today’s 31st and K Streets), where President Washington negotiated with local land owners to create the new Federal City.[citation needed] At the time, Georgetown was a separate municipality and thriving port in the nascent District of Columbia and the new City Tavern was one of several inns built to meet the growing demand for lodging. Located in the heart of Georgetown, the City Tavern served not only as a traditional lodging house but also as the meeting place for Georgetown’s governing body, the Georgetown Corporation and the location for elections and meetings of the Mayor’s Court. It also served as the terminal stop of the Georgetown-Frederick stagecoach line. Of the several taverns that were constructed in Georgetown during the founding era, the City Tavern is the only one that remains today.[citatiory info here
Dumbarton House is fine example of Federal period architecture. Our nation’s early years, from 1790 to 1830, generally define the Federal period. During this time, a keen sense of nationalism arose, and government leaders such as Thomas Jefferson looked to the classical ages of Greece and Rome for inspiration in forging an identity for the new American Republic.
Washington Bowie, merchant, real estate speculator, church vestryman, officer of the militia bank, director and one of Georgetown's wealthiest men in the first decades of the 19th century, built for himself and his large family a suitably monumental federal style house on heights of Georgetown, offering majestic views south toward the port of Georgetown. Built circa 1810 and attached to a much smaller slightly earlier dwelling the house's well-proportioned spices decorated with a blending of adamesque and classical revival details served elegantly until 1953 as home to only four families: The Bowies, the Nicholls, the Hollingsworths, and the Seviers. Upon the Death of Mrs. Ella Sevier, the house passed to the Episcopal church ministry to be enlarged as a retirement home for Episcopal women and as a memorial to her husband John's great Grandfather, General John Sevier. The first governor of Tennessee Congressman, and military hero....
The land of Dumbarton Oaks was formerly part of the Rock of Dumbarton grant that Queen Anne made in 1702 to Colonel Ninian Beall (ca. 1625-1717). About 1801, William Hammond Dorsey (1764–1818) built the first house on the property (the central block of the existing structure) and an orangery, and in the mid-nineteenth century, Edward Magruder Linthicum (1787–1869) greatly enlarged the residence and named it The Oaks. The Oaks also was the Washington residence of U.S. Senator and Vice President John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) between 1822 and 1829.[1][2][3][4]
Commissioned in 1801 and completed a year later, the stately Evermay mansion was commissioned by Samuel Davidson, a prominent 18th century businessman and landowner. A Federal-style home, Evermay was designed by famous architect Nicholas King. King was the first surveyor of Washington, D.C., a gifted mapmaker, and the founder of the city's first library.
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, formerly named the Custis-Lee Mansion,[5][6] is a Greek revival style mansion located in Arlington, Virginia, USA that was once the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It overlooks the Potomac River and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. During the American Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery, in part to ensure that Lee would never again be able to return to his home. However, the United States has since designated the mansion as a National Memorial to Lee, a mark of widespread respect for him in both the North and South. Arlington Woods, located behind Arlington House, contains the oldest and largest tract of climax eastern hardwood forest that still exists in Arlington County.
George Town, at this time, was even favored by the presence of one of the greatest portrait painters of his time, Gilbert Stuart. About 1803 he spent two years here. He painted Jefferson and the men who followed him in the Presidency up through John Quincy Adams. He had, of course, previously been much at Mount Vernon while doing his famous portraits of General Washington. It is said that Washington was the only person in whose presence Stuart was ever embarrassed.
Known as one of Georgetown's finest examples of Federal period architecture, Cox's Row in the 3300 Block of N Street was built around 1805 to 1820 by Colonel John Cox.
Enter story info here
Tudor Place is a Federal-style mansion in Washington, D.C. that was originally the home of Thomas Peter and his wife,[3] Martha Parke Custis Peter, a granddaughter of Martha Washington. Step-grandfather George Washington left her the $8,000 in his will that was used to purchase the property in 1805. The property, comprising one city block on the crest of Georgetown Heights, had an excellent view of the Potomac River.
The Slave Trade Act (citation 47 Geo III Sess. 1 c. 36) was an Act of Parliament made in the United Kingdom passed on 25 March 1807, with the title of "An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade". The original act is in the Parliamentary Archives. The act abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, but not slavery itself. Many of the Bill's supporters thought the Act would lead to the death of slavery. It was not until 26 years later that slavery itself was actually abolished.[1] Slavery on English soil was unsupported in English law and that position was confirmed in Somersett's Case in 1772, but it remained legal in most of the British Empire until the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
The land for the Old Methodist Episcopal Burying Ground was purchased in 1808 by the Dumbarton Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The membership of the Dumbarton Street M.E. Church was fifty percent black, consisting of both free blacks and slaves. At the time, Georgetown was about thirty percent African American. In 1816 the black members of the Dumbarton Street M.E. Church formed the Mount Zion Methodist Church. Eventually the Mount Zion Methodist Church took over the cemetery in 1879
he Burning of Washington in 1814 was an attack during the War of 1812 between British forces and those of the United States of America. On August 24, 1814, after defeating the Americans at the Battle of Bladensburg, a British force led by Major General Robert Ross occupied Washington City and set fire to many public buildings, including the White House and the Capitol, as well as other facilities of the U.S. government.[3] The British commander's orders to burn only public buildings and strict discipline among the British troops are credited with preserving the city's private buildings[
Married a graduate of Miss Lydia's Finishing School
Christ Church was organized in 1817 as the fourth Episcopal congregation in the portion of the District of Columbia ceded by Maryland. At that time the District of Columbia also included territory ceded by Virginia. Christ Church broke away from Saint John's Church in Georgetown whose Rector's inclinations did not match the stronger evangelical ardor of most of his congregation, including Francis Scott Key. They called Reuel Keith as their first Rector and immediately became involved in the movement which eventually resulted in the Virginia Theological Seminary at a time when the idea of a local seminary (as opposed to the General Theological Seminary in New York City) was considered radical.
From 1820 to 1861 this was “Miss English’s Seminary for Young Ladies”. Many of the daughters of Washington’s elite families were educated here under the direction of Miss Lydia Scudder English. Miss English wrote in her brochure that she would provide girls with “that amount of mental and moral culture necessary to render them amiable, intelligent, and useful members of society”. About 140 girls boarded each year at Miss Lydia English’s Georgetown Female Seminary. One of the most famous was Harriet Williams, the teenage bride of the middle aged Russian nobleman whose marital home is at 3322 O St. NW. The seminary was three floors high and contained 19 bedrooms, a library, several parlors, and porches on the wings. It even had running hot water. The union army confiscated the seminary in 1861 and turned it into a hospital for officers after the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run. It is believed that Mary Walker, the famous doctor, served here. She was the first woman to receive the Medal of Honor. Miss English, however, was one of Georgetown’s most ardent secessionists. She could not stand to see the United States flag flying over her building so she moved out of sight around the corner to 2812 N Street, where the widow, Susan Decatur, lived after the death of of her husband, Stephen Decatur, who died from wounds suffered in a dual in 1820.
Ground was broken for the railroad with great celebration of July 4, 1828. The first stone was laid by 90-year-old Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Maryland, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. A route was laid out to follow the Patapsco and Monocacy rivers to the Potomac, and work began.[6] The line was opened for scheduled service to Ellicott's Mills (renamed Ellicott City) on May 24, 1830. On December 1, 1831, the road was opened to Frederick, 60 miles (97 km). The B&O opened a branch from Relay, Maryland (then called Washington Junction) to Washington in August 1835, crossing the Patapsco River on the Thomas Viaduct, one of the B&O's signature structures. Two years later a bridge was completed across the Potomac to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia (then part of Virginia; the separation of the western portion of Virginia did not occur until 1863). At Harpers Ferry the B&O connected with the Winchester & Potomac Railroad, thus forming the first junction of two railroad companies in the U.S.[2]
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal, and occasionally referred to as the "Grand Old Ditch,"[1] operated from 1831 until 1924 parallel to the Potomac River in Maryland from Cumberland, Maryland, to Washington, D.C. The total length of the canal is about 184.5 miles (296.9 km). The elevation change of 605 ft (184 m) was accommodated with 74 canal locks. To enable the canal to cross relatively small streams, over 150 culverts were built. The crossing of major streams required the construction of 11 aqueducts. The canal also extends through the 3,118 ft (950 m) Paw Paw Tunnel. The principal cargo in the latter years was coal from the Allegheny Mountains. The canal way is now maintained as a park, with a linear trail following the old towpath, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.
In 1830, merchants from Alexandria, Virginia, which was still part of the District of Columbia at the time, proposed linking their city to Georgetown to capitalize on the new Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.[1] Congress granted a charter to the Alexandria Canal Company in 1830,[2] and construction soon began on the Aqueduct Bridge that would carry canal boats across the Potomac River and downriver on the south side without unloading in Georgetown. The bridge was designed by Major William Turnbull.[3] Construction of the bridge and Alexandria Canal began in 1833, and both were completed in 1843.[3] To withstand Potomac ice floes, the piers were made of gneiss, with icebreakers made of granite.[4] The water-filled bridge was a weatherproofed-timber, queen-post truss construction.[5] The bridge was 110 feet (33.5 m) wide across the top. It had eight piers, each set on riverbottom bedrock and 7 feet (2.1 m) wide at the top. The third and sixth piers were 16 feet (4.9 m) wide at the top. Each pier was designed so that its top was 30 feet (9.1 m) above the mean high water level.[4]
Holy Rood Cemetery is located at 2126 Wisconsin Avenue NW at the southern end of the Glover Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It stands at one of the highest elevations in Washington, D.C. and has memorable views. Holy Rood Cemetery contains approximately 7,000 graves, including as many as 1,000 free and enslaved African Americans, and may be the best-documented slave burial ground in the District of Columbia. At the western edge of the cemetery is the grave of Joseph Nevitt, a veteran of the American Revolution.[1] Originally named Trinity Church Upper Grave Yard, the cemetery was established by Holy Trinity Catholic Church in 1832, and enlarged between 1850 and 1870. The cemetery was active from the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, and a few burials took place as late as the 1990s.[1]
The District of Columbia retrocession was the process of returning to the state of Virginia a part of the land that had been ceded to the federal government of the United States for the purpose of creating Washington, D.C., the national capital. The area, formed in 1790 under the name of "District of Columbia",[1] initially consisted of 100 square miles (259 km2) ceded by the states of Maryland and Virginia in accordance with the Residence Act. In 1846, the area of 31 square miles (80 km2) which was ceded by Virginia was returned,[2] leaving 69 square miles (179 km2) of territory originally ceded by Maryland as the current area of the District in its entirety.[3] 21st-century proposals to return the remaining portion of the District of Columbia to the state of Maryland are cited as one way to provide full voting representation in Congress and return local control of the city to its residents.[4]
Few ventures were dearer to George Washington than his plan to make the Potomac River navigable as far as the Ohio River Valley. In the uncertain period after the Revolutionary War, Washington believed that better transportation and trade would draw lands west of the Allegheny Mountains into the United States and "...bind those people to us by a chain which never can be broken."ter story info here
Resting place for Katherine Graham, Dean Acheson, William Cochran, John Eaton..defended by Andrew Jackson
The Pearl Incident in 1848 was the largest recorded escape attempted by slaves in United States history. On April 15, 1848, seventy-seven slaves attempted to escape Washington D.C. by sailing away on a schooner called The Pearl. Their plan was to sail south on the Potomac River, then north up the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware River to the free state of New Jersey, a distance of nearly 225 miles. The attempt was organized by both whites and free blacks, who expanded the escape to include many more slaves. Paul Jennings, a former slave who had served President James Madison, helped plan the escape. here
Robert Perley Dodge was born in 1817, the son of Francis Dodge, an important merchant and shipper in Georgetown. He attended Princeton University. In only two years he graduated fifth in a class of seventy-six. He then entered the School of Engineering in Kentucky where he completed his major course of study in six months. He was offered a professorship in mathematics, but declined the offer in favor of a position as a civil engineer. Dodge returned to Washington to become a consulting engineer for the C. and 0. Canal Company. In 1850, along with his brother, he engaged Downing and Vaux to design his house. In July of 1854 Congress granted a charter to David English, Robert P. Dodge, Richard Cruikshank, William M. Fitzhugh, Richard Pettit, W. T. Seymour, Adolpheous Pickerell and William Bucknell to form "a body corporation by name and style of Georgetown Gas Light Company."
Currently owned by Bass Family Foundation...Sold by Judi Cochran
The Dodge brothers, Francis and Robert, operated the most successful pre-Civil War shipping business in Georgetown. So successful that when Francis went looking for someone to design his new home in 1850 he couldn’t land any bigger names than Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. It was noted by Vaux, in a letter from his client in 1854 that Francis complained about the $15,000 cost of building his new Italianate villa, although he was quite satisfied with the comfort the excesses provided. Robert’s villa stands nearby, at the corner of 28th & Q Street.
But there's another Georgetown bridge that still carries both water and traffic safely across a separate body of water, thus serving as a functioning aqueduct. The bridge in question is the one carrying Pennsylvania Avenue over Rock Creek and the Rock Creek & Potomac Parkway at the eastern edge of Georgetown.
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (also known as John Brown's raid or The raid on Harpers Ferry; in many books the town is called "Harper's Ferry" with an apostrophe-s.[1]) was an attempt by the white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt in 1859 by seizing a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown's raid, accompanied by 20 men in his party, was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his formative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness, and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan would fail.[2]
This is a story of ego, intelligence, death and retribution. This is the story of the Cabin John Bridge. I refer to the bridge that carries MacArthur Boulevard over the Cabin John Parkway, not to the Capital Beltway's American Legion Bridge. The one-lane span wasn't built to be a bridge at all. It was built to be an aqueduct, bringing water from the Great Falls of the Potomac and quenching the thirst of a city that once relied on wells and cisterns.
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia. Passage of this law came 8 1/2 months before President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.
The company ran the first streetcar in Washington D.C. from the Capitol to the State Department starting on July 29, 1862. It expanded to full operations from the Navy Yard to Georgetown on October 2, 1862.[1][5] Another line opened on November 15, 1862. It was built along 7th Street NW from N Street NW to the Potomac River and expanded to the Arsenal (now Fort McNair) in 1875.[6][7] A third line ran down 14th Street NW from Boundary Street NW (now Florida Avenue) to the Treasury Building. In 1863 the 7th Street line was extended north to Boundary Street NW.[2]
Prior to the development of side-bearing rail streetcar tracks in New York City in 1852, transit in Washington D.C. consisted of horse-drawn wagons, or omnibuses, that ran on several established lines. As early as 1858 an effort was made by New York City businessmen to open a streetcar in Washington, D.C., but, it was not until May 17, 1862 that the first streetcar company, the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company was incorporated.[1] It was authorized to build three street horsecar lines using the standard track gauge of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.[2] The first streetcar started running on Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the Capitol to the State Department on July 29, 1862. Full operations, from the Navy Yard to Georgetown on Pennsylvania Avenue NW/SE, began on October 2, 1862.[Enter story info here
By 1886, Hollerith had perfected his “new and useful improvement in the art of compiling statistics.” In his system, data was encoded on a rectangular card assigned to one person, with holes punched in the cards representing information about that individual— age, sex, race, whatever needed to be tallied. The cards were then run through the “tabulating machine,” passing beneath a series of pins on a roller. When a pin encountered a hole, an electrical connection was made, indicating that the person fell within a certain category. The cards were then sorted accordingly. It was the first modern computer, a punch card system of data storage that would persist well into the 20th century. That same year, Hollerith field-tested his machine in Baltimore, compiling mortality statistics for the city, a successful trial that brought demands from a growing list of other agencies, from the Bureau of Vital Statistics in New York City to the U.S. Surgeon General’s office in Washington. Hollerith didn’t sell the machines outright, but rented them for $1,000 a year—insuring a steady cash flow for his fledgling enterprise.
Begun in 1892, the B&O laid track from MP 8.3 on the Metropolitan Branch to Chevy Chase, MD originally to serve a coal fired power plant of the Chevy Chase & Kensington Electric Rwy. and some other freight customers. Petitioners in Georgetown eventually won their case and the B&O built on down to the bustling port along the Potomac between 1908-1910.
Volta Laboratory and Bureau Photo courtesy of the DC SHPO The Volta Laboratory and Bureau building, a National Historic Landmark, was constructed in 1893 under the direction of Alexander Graham Bell to serve as a center of information for deaf and hard of hearing persons.
Formerly Bell's Court a community of small houses occupied by black servants of the big house in Georgetown Volta Place near Wisconsin Avenue
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