Macedonia Baptist Church Cemetery
Site Brief:
Founded: 1968
Location: Washington, DC
Additional name(s): James Thomas Howard
Affiliate group(s): None
History:
First church erected by former enslaved families in Hillsdale/Barry Farm, a new African American settlement established by the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1867 to help relieve the housing problem encountered by black refugees who had arrived in Washington in droves during the Civil War. The idea for the settlement grew out of a meeting between General O.O. Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and a group of African American refugees living in a makeshift settlement on K Street between 14th and 17th Streets. Howard told the group that they could not stay on land that was not theirs. They responded “very pertinently,” according to Howard’s autobiography, “‘Where shall we go, and what shall we do?’” Howard replied with a question of his own: “What would make you self-supporting?” and heard an almost unanimous answer: “Land! Give us Land!”
The Freedmen’s Bureau responded by creating a settlement for newly arrived African Americans, offering to sell them lots and enough lumber to build a small house. In April 1867 the agency spent $52,000 to buy 375 acres of farmland from the Barry family (former slave owners) on the eastern bank of the Eastern Branch, as the Anacostia River was then known. The land was quickly surveyed into one-acre lots that “were taken with avidity,” Howard noted, because the prospect of owning land was an excellent stimulus for the newly freed African Americans. “Everyone who visited the Barry Farm and saw the new hopefulness with which most of the dwellers there were inspired,” Howard recalled, “could not fail to regard the entire enterprise as judicious and beneficent.” Macedonia was quickly built on one of the first plots purchased.
Resource links:
BCN Contact Information:
Trish Savage
tsavage2737@comcast.net