Beyond the Burgers and Fireworks: The First 100 Years
A recording of our Jan. 29 webinar, “Chevy Chase DC at 250: Beyond the Burgers and Fireworks,” is now posted here for your enjoyment. It is the first of a three-part series to thoughtfully examine our community’s history century by century through the stories of people whose descendants once lived and raised their families on the same land we do today.
They were people like Caroline Branham and John Hutton, both of whom were born enslaved but by twists of fate and relentless willpower, they ensured their offspring would thrive by the middle of the 19th century as free people. And they did, right here in Chevy Chase DC.
The 90-minute discussion, with an introduction by Carl Lankowski and hosted by Chas Cadwell, both HCCDC board officers, featured lively presentations by historians Jocelind Julien and Mark Auslander. Julien is a descendant of Branham, a woman who was enslaved at Mount Vernon to serve Martha Washington and whose family just a couple of generations later bought land on Broad Branch Road. Historical anthropologist Mark Auslander of American University, shared some of his latest research on the role of African Americans on both sides of the Revolution, including John Hutton, likely the first Black landowner in what became known as the Hepburn tract of land near Broad Branch Road.
Lankowski said that the webinar series is an outgrowth of HCCDC’s work over the past several years to understand how Chevy Chase DC became the community it is today, and what it owes to our future residents especially as community and city leaders contemplate development.
This upper Northwest neighborhood had a unique opportunity to witness much of this history due to its geographic proximity to the seat of the world’s longest-surviving democracy. History tells us that the citizens who shaped Chevy Chase DC literally crossed paths with the founders as colleagues, nation builders, and also as enslaved laborers. We can In fact trace the stories of several early African American landowning families to their economic ties to George Washington.
The Jan. 29 webinar reflected on the first 100 years of America, from the early 1700s to about 1840, when the land that would become Chevy Chase DC evolved from tobacco plantations to middling farmsteads. Two additional installments – scheduled for March and June – will draw attention to the re-founding of our republic and its betrayal as we examine the role of Chevy Chase DC in the Civil War, Reconstruction, our suburban expansion under Jim Crow, and displacement of locals who did not fit into the racially exclusive community envisioned by its founder, Francis Newlands.
The final installment examines the local response to a modern democracy, with visionary leaders that included local citizen Walter Tobriner, and how the Great Migration – into and out of Washington, DC – affected life within our neighborhood. The webinar will look at redemption efforts targeting the promises of the nation’s Declaration of Independence.
HCCDC looks forward to having you join us, for the next two webinars and will be publicizing the dates soon. We thank all our neighbors, friends, and members for their continued support of our programming.