Most people know about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth and David Herold after the assassination of President Lincoln. Far fewer know about Lewis Powell’s desperate run to our area as he tried to escape after his attack on Secretary of State William Seward.
The story of the Brookland Baptist Church and the people who created it, in the words of a well-known Brookland developer. Begun as the Queenstown Baptist Church in 1881, it changed as the neighborhood began to grow.
In 1835, Jehiel Brooks is appointed commissioner to treat with the Caddo Nation to purchase their lands in Louisiana, nearly a million acres. His daily journal offers insight into the negotiations and the final treaty, from which would flow long-lasting repercussions.
The 1881 murder of two children in Washington County set off a storm of newspaper coverage, centering on a poor, illiterate African American woman.
A short, photo-rich history of the Brookland neighborhood in Washington DC.
Brookland once had a bowling alley with 28 lanes. The Brookland Recreation Center may not have survived, but at least the Art Deco building did.
The story of the Washington Aqueduct that brought water into the city, and the ill-fated Lydecker tunnel.
Slavery was legal in Washington DC until 1862, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act. Through it, we can learn a great deal about those people held in bondage in what would become Brookland.
Many streams and brooks once ran through Brookland. They were piped underground as the neighborhood grew. Maps show where they once ran.
A personal account of the tension and anguish in Washington DC in the days after Martin Luther King’s assassination.
Bygone Brookland 