The Sarah Whitby Site: An African American Home in Rock Creek Park

An artist's conception of Sarah Whitby's house, based on archeological evidence, the description in the rental agreement, and historical drawings by DeLancey Gill. Credit: National Park Service.

White citizens' associations, suburban developers and government officials often regarded the homes of Black residents as substandard, and their efforts erased many traces of the Black tenant settlements in what is now Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC. Yet enough survives to tell the story — and archeology reveals things about the Whitby family's everyday life that no other source can.

The Whitby family

The Whitbys were among the many African American families who moved to the rural outskirts of Washington in the late 1800s. Elijah and Sarah Whitby first appear in the 1870 census; their children were born in the capital by 1868 at the latest. Elijah described himself as a farmhand. Sarah kept house for him, their two young sons, and the Taylors, another couple who helped on the farm. Two other Whitbys, Ambrose and Africa, lived nearby with their families and may have been Elijah's brothers.

By the 1880 census Elijah was a teamster — a driver of horse-drawn wagons. The family rented a two-room house and a stable, which the Rock Creek Park Commission judged in 1895 to be in "poor" condition. In the 1900 census Sarah Whitby, probably by then Elijah's widow, was head of the household and a laundress. She could not read herself, but all nine of her children could.

What archeology found

Archeologists working for the Park Service examined the five-acre site where the house had stood. Near a large walnut tree they noticed a dip in the ground. A small test hole in its centre turned up, under about half a foot of sod and recent fill, bricks, corrugated metal roofing and artifacts from around 1900 — enough to bring them back for a larger dig.

Using metal detecting, subsurface testing and surface inspection, they found an 11-by-9-foot cellar hole with a stone floor and brick and stone rubble dating to about 1900. Two layers of fill yielded several hundred artifacts, most often clear, amber and aqua bottle glass, cut and wire nails, and whiteware dishes. Personal items — a slate pencil, a porcelain marble, a perfume bottle — show that men, women and children lived there, up to sixteen people at one time.

Other finds pointed to a richer story than expected:

• Buttons. Fifty-two buttons are probably linked to Sarah Whitby's work as a laundress. One reads "Saville Row" — which, if it refers to Savile Row, the London street of the finest tailors, means she washed for at least one very well-dressed client.
• Colonoware. Two fragments of what may be colonoware — handmade, unglazed pottery fired at low temperature, closely associated with enslaved African Americans before the Civil War. Either the family kept it as an heirloom, or the house and the Whitbys' life there may date from before the war, which would mean African American migrants had lived in the area longer than was known.

A thriving community

Small tenancies like the Whitbys' offered some safety, privacy and independence, which suited both formerly enslaved people and those who had been free before emancipation. The Whitbys may have been among the first African American families to settle at Broad Branch, part of a community of at least 25 households. Archeologists have identified two related sites, the Jane Dickson and Charles Dickson sites, and research has begun on nearby enclaves — opening many ways to learn about African American life at Broad Branch.

Sources

Based on "The Sarah Whitby Site," part of the series "The Sarah Whitby Site and African American History," published by the National Park Service, Rock Creek Park; rewritten in hubnx's own words.

• The article draws on "Bold, Rocky, and Picturesque," an archeological study of Rock Creek Park prepared for the Park Service by The Louis Berger Group (2008), and the 2022 National Register nominations for the Sarah Whitby, Jane Dickson and Charles Dickson sites.
• The article spells the London street "Saville Row"; the button's own spelling is kept in quotation marks, and the street is given as Savile Row.