Pictured is the original 1833 loan agreement document between Tobias Henson, a newly freed African and Henry Evans providing Henson $155 to purchase his daughter’s freedom using her labor as the collateral for the loan. Henson eventually acquired land in Stantontown and a portion of that land has recently been redeveloped into the Henson Ridge single family townhouses.
Image courtesy of the Anacostia Community Museum, ca. 1833
Anacostia's refurbished "Big Chair" and Chuck Brown
Pictured is Anacostia's refurbished "Big Chair" and Chuck Brown, the "godfather" of Washington DC's popular Go-go music. A neighborhood attraction, the first giant chair--a 4500 lb, 19 1/4 ft high mahogany Duncan Phyfe replica--was originally commissioned from Bassett Furniture Industries in North Carolina by the Curtis Bros. Furniture Company in 1959 as a promotional landmark for the now closed Anacostia business. It survived the 1968 riots but was rebuilt out of aluminum in 2006 because of weather damage.
To many, Washington. D.C. is all monuments and government facilities, but communities such as those east of the Anacostia River, have thrived and always been home to a large part of the District’s residents. This early 19th century photograph depicts Anacostia's (then Uniontown) Birney Public School children lined up with a teacher behind the Kennebec Ice horse-drawn wagon as the ice man shows them large chunk of ice suspended by tongs.
"Kennebec Ice Truck" photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston, Courtesy of the Library of Congress, circa 1899
