Below is a fascinating old broadside that we came across in the Library of Congress archives. Here is the description … A broadside condemning the sale and keeping of slaves in the District of Columbia. The work was issued during the 1835-36 petition campaign, waged by moderate abolitionists led by Theodore Dwight Weld and buttressed by Quaker organizations, to have ... Read More »
It’s probably obvious to GoDCers where Chain Bridge Road gets its name. There is a bridge that connects the eponymous road on the D.C. side to the one on the Virginia side. But, this bridge has no chains. What’s the deal? The bridge plays a significant part in Washington’s history, and as we were digging through the archives for some ... Read More »
In the 1830s, the Baltimore Sun was a far more prominent paper, covering the daily happenings of life in Washington City. We came across an interesting piece from the Baltimore Sun correspondent in Washington. You may find this, both a colorful description of life in the city, as well as a rather amusing observation. At the time of this piece, Washington ... Read More »
There actually was a spring and it was silver … sort of. In 1840, Francis Preston Blair came across a mica-flecked spring near, what is today, Georgia Ave. near the District line. The location today is Acorn Park at Blair Mill Rd., Newell St. and East-West Highway. Blair decided he liked the location so much that he would acquire the ... Read More »
It has been a really long time since we did a “Why is it Named…?” post, and since at least a quarter of GoDCers live in Bloomingdale (I totally made that number up), we are going to focus a quick history lesson on the ultra-hipster, fixed-gear bike and mustache epicenter of D.C. No, it is not named after the department store. ... Read More »
Some of you may not be aware of this, but an Englishman, who had never set foot in America, provided the financial backing for the nation’s greatest museum: The Smithsonian Institution. James Smithson was a wealthy man from across the Atlantic and on June 27th, 1829, he died while visiting Genoa, Italy. He was a man of science, being a ... Read More »
Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington