Bethesda
The Bethesda area includes Chevy Chase, Cabin John, and Glen Echo. By the Civil War years, families such as the Hodges, Perrys, Dunlops, and Poseys, enslaved between 12-42 persons each. These farms and manor homes, taverns such as the Old Stone Tavern near Old Georgetown and Wisconsin Roads, the C&O Canal, stone quarries, and mills for flour, cider, and lumber all used enslaved labor. After the Civil War, new hotels along the canal offered respite from the D.C. heat for visitors.
In the 1890s, an electric trolley running from the new Glen Echo Park to Wisconsin Avenue, and the new B&O Railroad improved transportation to and from D.C. All of these businesses, as well as new suburban developments, provided employment for emancipated slaves from local plantations, as well as Virginia, North Carolina and even Mississippi. They lived on lanes like the ones in the image above, creating small communities with churches, schools and mutual aid societies.
As Bethesda developed in the early 1900s, former enslavers such as Peter Posey still owned 270 acres of land, R.H. Goldsborough 440 acres, and H. Loughborough 117 acres. Other swathes of land were being bought by developers like the West Chevy Chase Land Company, which included restrictive covenants not allowing Black or Jewish people to occupy homes there.
Alta Vista | Brookmont | Cabin John | Carver Road | Clipper Lane | Dorsey Lane | Gibson Grove / No. 10) | Graysville / Elm Street | Hawkins Lane | Jones Bridge Road | Miller's Flats | River Road | Rock Spring
Alta Vista
Bethesda, Md
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In the vicinity of Old Georgetown Road and Alta Vista Road northwest of Bethesda. In 1901 the Bethesda Land Company bought 222 acres and developed it. It was further subdivided later on to allow for homes for people of more limited financial means. It is likely that some of the residents of the Black Alta Vista community worked for the white families in this new suburb.
If anyone knows a more specific location or has information about founders and residents of this community, please let us know.​
Photo courtesy of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC)
Brookmont
Bethesda, Md
Brookmont Park celebrates the small 1920s Brookmont neighborhood in Bethesda, which included three families. The community was located near Locks 6 and 7 in Bethesda, and community members quite possibly helped build and maintain these locks.
More about Brookmont...​​​
Photo of barge "Canal Clipper" between Fletcher's boathouse and Brookmont. Date not noted. Courtesy of Montgomery History.
Carver Road
Cabin John, Md
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​As a ship-testing site, the U.S. Navy built the David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock in the late 1930s. In order to provide housing for its new employees, it built a white neighborhood of 100 homes, and a Black neighborhood with 25 homes. Initially, the Black families were required to pay rent, but many were sold to the residents after a few years. The community was linked to Gibson Grove. Between 1891 and 1935, residents may have traveled into D.C. using the streetcars that ran from Glen Echo Park into Bethesda, and then down into D.C.
More about Carver Road...​​​​
Clipper Lane
Bethesda, Md
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In the 1900 U.S. census, John and Martha Clipper, their six sons and two daughters, lived next to George (his son? 27 years apart in age) and George’s wife Lucy and their three children. The adult men were working as day laborers.
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Apparently the census takers had stopped listing an occupation for women who were doing the work of keeping the house, because no occupation is listed for any of the women on this census page unless they were a servant.
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More about Clipper Lane...
Dorsey Lane
Bethesda, Md
Dorsey Lane, once home of the Dorsey family, is now an industrial section of Bethesda.
If anyone knows more about the founders and residents of this community, please let us know!​
Gibson Grove (originally called No. 10)
Bethesda, Md
Gibson Grove was founded by Sarah Gibson, who after being enslaved in Virginia, saved money while working with her husband, Robert, on a farm in Potomac.
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In 1861 Sarah, her husband Louis, and their two sons were freed by Union soldiers during the battle of Bull Run. In the ensuing chaos, Sarah and her sons became separated from Louis. She managed to cross Bull Run by balancing her sons, one on each side, and walking across a log placed over the stream. She found her way to Washington, D.C. and later was reunited with Louis at the Shiloh Baptist church, a known meeting place for freed slaves.
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More about the Gibsons....
Photo courtesy of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC).
Gibson Grove (originally called No. 10)
Cabin John, MD
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Gibson Grove was founded by Sarah Gibson, who after being enslaved in Virginia, saved money while working with her husband, Robert, on a farm in Potomac.
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In 1861 Sarah, her husband Louis, and their two sons were freed by Union soldiers during the battle of Bull Run. In the ensuing chaos, Sarah and her sons became separated from Louis. She managed to cross Bull Run by balancing her sons, one on each side, and walking across a log placed over the stream. She found her way to Washington, D.C. and later was reunited with Louis at the Shiloh Baptist church, a known meeting place for freed slaves.
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More about the Gibsons....
Photo courtesy of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC).
Graysville / Elm Street
Bethesda. Md
Graysville was originally located on Elm Street in Bethesda. It was moved out of the center of Bethesda down to River Road, along what is now the Crescent Trail. George and Mary Kensilo, Martin and Elizabeth Turner, Victoria and Moses Smothers, and Mary and James Knowland were some of the residents noted in the 1880 census. The C & O Canal and African American Communities Historic Resources Study from 2022 tells us that some of the residents came from the nearby former Loughborough plantation on Little Falls Road. The C & O Canal study contains detailed information on many of these historic Black communities which were located near the canal. (National Park Service and McMahon 2022, 162)
Detail of Graysville in 1879 Hopkins Map, Bethesda Dist No 7. (Needs complete citation)
Hawkins Lane
Chevy Chase, Md
Driving up Hawkins Lane still gives a sense of what this small kinship community must have been like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Residents in the late 20th century fought off developers and had the lane designated as an official historic district. This kinship community was founded by James H. Hawkins in 1893, when he bought three acres of land...
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More about Hawkins Lane...
Hawkin’s Lane, Chevy Chase, MD. Photo by Neile Whitney, 2025
Jones Bridge Road
Chevy Chase, Md
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Several homes on Jones Bridge Road, such as this one, were built by family and friends of the Hawkins and were connected to the community around the corner.​
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More about Jones Bridge Rd....
Home built in 1913. Photo by Neile Whitney
Miller's Flats
Bethesda, Md
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Miller’s Flats was a small residential neighborhood originally near what is now Bethesda Row. Black families here would have worked in the coal and lumber yards here. (Offutt 2009)
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By the 1917 Deets & Maddox map of Bethesda, we see the B&O Railroad tracks (now the Capital Crescent Trail) crossing Wisconsin Avenue, which included the Georgetown Electric Railroad. Surrounding these are the flats built for Miller coal company employees. They stretched from close to today’s Hampden Lane down almost to...
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More about Miller's Flats....
Photo courtesy of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC).
River Road
Bethesda. Md
The River Road / Crow Hill community was about where the McDonald’s is now, northwest of Little Falls Parkway. The Clipper Lane and Dorsey Lane kinship communities were down the road a little way and across the street.
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Two acres of Crow Hill belonged to John Burley, formerly enslaved by B.T. Hodges, and two acres belonged to Nelson Wood. Harvey Matthews, Sr., interviewed for Bethesda Magazine in 2017, remembered being raised on a farm where the Whole Foods is now. (Roberts 2017) The church cemetery was across the street.
River Road School, circa 1930s. Archival photo courtesy of The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (M-NCPPC)
Rock Spring
Glen Echo Heights, Md
The Rock Spring Club was one of the hotels that grew up near the C&O Canal and employed local Black residents. In the 1900 U.S. Census, 47 year old Mariah Gray, born in North Carolina, is listed as working as a cook, and 40-year-old John W. Lewis, born in Maryland from parents originating in Maryland and Virginia, is a servant. Families living nearby included John and Alice Coates, and Mary and Robert Harrod. Black residents are listed as working in farming, as servants, in day labor, and other jobs.
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Learn more about Rock Spring....​
C&O Canal Lock 6. Photo by Neile Whitney.
More About Bethesda HBCs
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References
The Ad Hoc Committee to Save Hawkins Lane and Lois Snyderman. 1991. “The Hawkins Lane Historic District Development Guidelines Handbook,” Proposal to make Hawkins Lane an historic district. Montgomery Planning. https://montgomeryplanning.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Hawkins-Lane-HD-Development-Guidelines-Handbook.pdf .
Baist, George W. 1904. “Baist's map of the vicinity of Washington D.C., 1904, Washington, DC and surrounding suburbs." Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/87691445 .
Deets, Edward H., and Charles J. Maddox. 1917. “A Real Estate Atlas of the Part of Montgomery County Adjacent to the District of Columbia,” 1917 Deets Map. Montgomery History. https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12366/455.
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