Other Black Communities in Rock Creek Park

Investigations at the Whitby and Dickson sites shows the permanence of African American settlement at Broad Branch. Yet these three home sites are only part of a larger picture. The efforts of Black migrants to own land and to live in self-sustaining communities transformed DC’s landscape in the 1800s.

Battery Kemble

Oral tradition tells that formerly enslaved people lived on and farmed the hillside below Battery Kemble. The military fortification protected the Potomac River crossing.

Period maps shows that the area around the former fort gained permanent occupants after the onset of the Civil War. G.M. Hopkins’ 1878 Atlas of 15 Miles Around Washington shows about 15 dwellings east of William Murdock’s former estate. These dwellings were not there in 1861. Hopkins’ map lists names including Williams Peters, John Sephes, Daniel Cusberd, and Jacob Hayes at this location. The 1880 Census identifies these people, ranging from age 27 to age 55, as “Black” or “mulatto.” They were likely freedpeople who had migrated to Washington in the past couple of decades. Two nearby Black settlements mirror their migration story.

A postcard of a Ford on Rock Creek Park from the 1920s. NPS.

The Hepburns at Rock Creek Ford / Milkhouse Ford Road

An enclave of 11 Black families on Milkhouse Ford Road began with the property of John and Thomas Hepburn. (Milkhouse Ford Road was later named Rock Creek Ford Road and does not exist today.) John Hepburn acquired the land as early as 1836. He bought it from an African American man who had used the land since around 1813.

The US census of 1850 notes the two families of Thomas and Maria Hebbern, and John and Eliza Hebbern (Hepburn). Each possessed real estate worth $150 on Milkhouse Ford Road. The Hepburn brothers amassed a tract of eight acres, which appears on A. Boschke’s map of 1861. They later sold small portions of it to other African Americans.

A portion of Boschke’s map of 1861 with a tract labeled “J & T Hepburn.” Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

John Hepburn died in 1872, leaving instructions that his wife give the current tenants full deeds to their land. In 1888, six households are listed on the former Hepburn tract. Most of the men likely continued to work for white landowners. However, they controlled their own labor and tenancy. Women such as Francis Beckwith and Ruth Ann Davis led half of the households. As of the 1890s, 13 home sites and a small cemetery constituted the former Hepburn tract. They all fell under Black ownership. Many names on census records for the enclave changed each decade. There was a high degree of mobility, but a few remained as long as they could. Sarah Whitby, for example, previously lived as a tenant a mile or so south for 20-30 years. She came to rent one of the Hepburns’ parcels in the early 1900s. Around 1912, however, the Park Commission terminated all leases.

Broad Branch Road

Just around the corner on Broad Branch Road, another Black enclave found its footing. At least five Black households—John and Anna Hyson, Joseph and Matilda Johnson, Robert and Laura Dorsey, Mary and Armisted Morton, and Joseph Harries—owned their property, free of mortgages. A few of them were even noted on G.M. Hopkins’ atlases of 1879 and 1887. Their parcels originated with George Milburn, a free Black man.

Early 1900s photograph of 3900 block of Davenport Street NW in Reno. NPS photo.

Reno

Reno was working class neighborhood built surrounding the Civil War Fort Reno. Black Americans began renting and buying land in Reno in the late 1800s. Reno was linked to the Rock Creek Ford and Broad Branch Road enclaves. The communities shared a school, the Rock Creek Baptist Church (founded in 1872), and the Moses Order benevolent association. Interviews with former residents of Reno in the 1900s suggest a fair amount of intermarriage and movement between the Reno and Broad Branch communities.

Black owners transferred to Reno from former Hepburn parcels in the early 1900s. As wealthier, white neighborhoods around Reno grew in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so did their discomfort with Reno. Local, white-run citizens associations began to push for the federal government to buy Reno and turn it into parkland and schools for white children. And though residents fought back, by 1951 all Black Reno residents were forced out and lost much of the money invested in their homes.

One tenant, Ruth Ann Davis, continued to rent her property. In the end though her descendants could not produce evidence of her ownership. Lawyers were quick to condemn the Davis building assemblage as “unimproved.” Their language was no different than the Park Commission’s dismissal of Broad Branch tenancies as “poor” in the late 1800s.

Dispossessed in Northwest

Disgruntled neighbors, park and suburban developers, and government officials collaborated to erase countless Black families—from the Whitbys to the Hepburns and individuals still unrecognized—from the land in northwestern DC on which they had once lived and worked. Now, archeological and historical investigations work together to resolve the incompleteness of the modern-day Rock Creek Park landscape. Together they restore the memories of all those who invested their names, lives, and legacies into making it their home.

References

“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.St. Phillips Hill (the Palisades), NW DC. National Park Service.