Frederick Douglass, Anacostia’s most famous resident, escaped slavery as a young man and rose to become a distinguished abolitionist, writer, publisher, and orator. By the 1860s he was one of the nation’s intellectual and political giants and had President Lincoln’s ear, arguing early in the Civil War that Lincoln should allow African Americans to fight as soldiers in the Union army. Appointed U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877, Douglass soon bought the country retreat of bankrupt Uniontown founder John Van Hook in a mostly white neighborhood and named it Cedar Hill, while his sons lived in the adjacent, mostly African-American, Hillsdale community. From his hilltop porch he looked across acres of fruit and vegetable gardens and down upon official Washington, which so often disrespected him because of his race. Active in local as well as national affairs, he hosted gatherings at Cedar Hill, spoke frequently at local churches, and served on Howard University’s Board of Trustees. Succeeding U.S. presidents appointed him DC recorder of deeds and ambassador to Haiti. Douglass died at home on February 20, 1895. His widow, Helen Pitts Douglass, left Cedar Hill to the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association upon her death in 1903. Despite volunteer maintenance and fundraising, the house fell into disrepair until Congress appropriated funds for the National Park Service to acquire and restore it, and it opened to the public in 1972.
