African American Families in Rock Creek Park around Broad Branch

For millennia, people have occupied the land that is now Rock Creek Park. For the majority of this time, Indigenous people lived or migrated through here. After European Americans claimed the land, it became home to Black and White families, some of whom built farms and gristmills. In this article, we focus on the African Americans who lived in part of the park near Broad Branch. It is a stream that today makes the western boundary of the park from Nevada Avenue, NW down to Rock Creek itself.

Residents of Camp Barker, one of DC’s “contraband” camps. National Archives and Records Administration.

The African American Population of Early DC

The city of Washington started small, but its African American population has always been sizable. When the seat of the federal government moved to the nation’s new capital city in 1800, around 8,000 people lived here. About 2,000 people were African Americans, and almost all of them were enslaved. At first, a couple of factors made the city a hub for the trade of enslaved individuals. These factors were the city’s location in the South and its accessibility by rail and water transportation. But by the 1830s, the tobacco economy was faltering in Maryland and Virginia. This economic change forced enslavers to downsize.

Washington's free Black population began to grow. This change was due, in part, to the sale of enslaved individuals to free Black family members, self-purchase agreements, and manumission (formal release from enslavement). By 1850, 73% of all Black residents of the city were free. By 1900, around 87,000 free African Americans, more than half of them migrants from the South, called the city home. They lived not only in urban inner neighborhoods but also in the sparse, outlying sections of DC. The latter includes the section west of Rock Creek.

During the Civil War, thousands of African Americans left the Confederacy and moved north to Washington. Nearly half a million self-liberated men, women, and children fled to Union territory during the war. The government referred to them as “contrabands.” A dozen congested, and often unsanitary, contraband camps arose around DC. These camps were further swelled by the Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862. This law freed the entire enslaved population in DC.

Some self-liberators found employment in the federal government or with the US Army. This made them eligible for Freedmen’s Bureau benefits. The bureau provided these benefits with limited success from 1865 through 1872. They included rations, accommodations, legal representation, and medical care. Some African Americans were able to climb the economic ladder. They entered skilled trades, founded businesses, and owned their own homes. A few even got rich, like James Wormley, who built his famous hotel at 15th and H streets in 1871. But most African Americans in Washington remained poor. Thousands of women worked as domestic servants and many men as laborers. Racism limited their economic options.

James Wormley's Hotel, one of Washington's premier Black-owned businesses in the 1800s. NPS.

The Freedmen’s Bureau and the contraband camps gave limited relief. Some of the camps laid foundations for Black communities that remained for decades. These include Civil War forts such as Fort DeRussy and Battery Kemble. During the war, these areas helped to defend Washington, DC from Confederate forces. After the war, laborers, carpenters, teamsters, and blacksmiths settled there with their families. They desired to own land and live in self-sustaining communities. The Black tenants and landowners in enclaves that are now part of Rock Creek Park were no exception.

A detail of A. Boschke’s Topographical map of the District of Columbia,1861. This section shows Rock Creek Church, the homes of the Blagdens and Shoemakers, and the mix of farms and woodlands along Rock Creek in the late 1850s. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

African American Families of Rock Creek Park around Broad Branch

Today, Rock Creek Park offers recreation and relaxation to a crowded city. It is easy to imagine that its landscape is ancient and untouched by humans. But the park has a rich human history stretching back 10,000 years.

Before 1800, individuals set up mills and established residences along Rock Creek. Prominent residents included the Shoemaker family, which owned Peirce Mill. At the end of the 1800s, the Broad Branch area also became the site of at least 25 African American households. These households developed in close connection with each other.

The Rock Creek Park Act of 1890 authorized the federal government to buy the land for Rock Creek Park. Along with the growth of nearby suburbs, the act drew protest from landowners. A few owners refused outright to sell their land. The Shoemaker family’s fight went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. All but two owners eventually gave in. Overlooked, however, is the cost of the Act to the park’s tenant populations. These tenants were mostly African Americans. They lacked the wealth and status of well-known names and longstanding roots.

Drawing by Delancey Gill of one of the Houses on Washington's Outskirts where Black Migrants from the South lived, 1883. NPS.

DeLancey Gill was an artist with the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnography. His studies give a rough idea of the kind of houses occupied by Black migrants in DC in the late 1800s.

But late 1800s maps were mostly concerned with Rock Creek Park’s physical landscape. So, they afforded little attention to tenants. In contrast, ownership maps glossed over natural features like streams and hills. Neither accurately shows the park lands.

A four-year archeological and historical study of the park was completed in 2007. The study shifts these long unknown African American families into focus. One remarkable site spotlights Sarah Whitby, an African American woman whose family lived in Rock Creek Park between 1870 and 1900. Archeologists uncovered the remains of her house in 2005. Documentary research and excavations of the Whitby house cellar now help tell part of her family's story.

Resources

“Bold, Rocky, and Picturesque”: Archeological Identification and Evaluation Study of Rock Creek Park, vol. 1. The Louis Berger Group, Inc., Washington, D.C. Prepared for the National Park Service, 2008.

Charles Dickson Site National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. National Park Service, 2022.

Jane Dickson Site National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. National Park Service, 2022.

Sarah Whitby Site National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. National Park Service, 2022.