THIS WEEKEND IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

You Are Invited To A Multimedia Experience of Brookland’s History

@OPTIMISM w/Brookland co-author Rosie Dempsey

Saturday November 5th from 4 to 7 p.m.

OPTIMISM LOUNGE @ 3301 12th St. NE @ Kearney in Brookland: Rosie Dempsey, co-author of Brookland, will project historic photos from the new neighborhood history book & share our neighborhood’s rich African American history. Signed copies of Brookland, as well as Black Brookland posters & T-shirts for sale. Info: BrooklandBook@gmail.com OR BrooklandDChistory.com

MEET THE DESCENDANTS OF BROOKLAND'S FIRST FAMILY

Join us Sunday, November 13th 4 - 6 p.m. for

The BROOKS Family in BROOKland

at 1021 - 7th St. NW at the

WAREHOUSE THEATER

Gather with host and Brooks’ descendant Molly Murray Ruppert and many other descendants for an afternoon of Brookland history. Featured will be new photos discovered since the recent release of the Brookland book, as well as artifacts from Ann Queen & Jehiel Brooks, including the Colonel’s pocket watch and signet ring, family heirlooms and more. Broad array of presenters, including the authors of Brookland, Rosie Dempsey & John Feeley, as well as Laura Henley Dean, author of “Our Past Before Us, A History of Northeastern Washington Co.” F R E E

Info @ BrooklandDChistory.com or email BrooklandBook@gmail.com

You Are Invited To the Brookland History Luncheon

at Brookland Union Baptist Church

Sunday, November 20 at 1:30pm Free

3101 - 14th St NE ● 14th & Irving St.

For Brookland’s African Americans in the 1950s & 1960s, the most central institution and the focus of community life was the Brookland Union Baptist Church. You are invited to explore this legacy, in word and photo, during a free buffet luncheon at Brookland’s first Black church. Bijan Bayne, a Brookland born commentator, will moderate a panel on Brookland’s Black history: from our home grown civil rights leaders to McKinley Tech & Turkey Thicket spawned sports professionals; from the importance of Brookland Union Baptist Church co-founder and visionary, Reverend Miles to long time residents sharing the fabric of life long ago. Panelists include Brookland co-author Rosie Dempsey, Brookland Civic president Caroline Petti, and Brookland history expert Laura Henley Dean. Brookland the book will be available for sale, and new images discovered since its publication will be displayed. This afternoon is co-sponsored by Brookland Civic and the Black Women’s Playwright Group. Info/RSVP appreciated but not required: BrooklandBook@gmail.com Or visit BrooklandDChistory.com

Hosted by Pastor Ridgeway, the members of the Brookland Union Baptist Church & the authors of Brookland, a new neighborhood history book

Event! Brookland sale & signing at CUA Homecoming

Come out to the Homecoming Game at CUA's Raymond A. DuFour Athletic Field next Saturday and get your copy of Brookland!

October 22nd
1pm
Raymond A. DuFour Athletic Center Field
at Taylor Street & Hawaii Avenue NE

Brookland co-author John Feeley will be there autographing books and selling other historic Brookland items. 

You can read about this and other Brookland book events at http://www.brooklanddchistory.com/upcoming.html

Feel free to share your comments and stories of Brookland at brooklandbook@gmail.com.

Anna Brinley's blog post, Brookland & Its Civil War Forts, is now live on the Brookland Avenue blog.

She includes this image:

{Caption: "This stately house stood on Fort Bunker Hill at the corner of 13th and Otis Street when the park was privately owned land in the 1930s. Brookland resident Noelle Senerchia remembers playing in the foundation of the house as a child in the 1950s after it was torn down and Fort Bunker Hill was already national park land."}

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Brookland & It's Civil War Forts

These little tidbits of history are only a drop in the vast pool of stories packed into Brookland the book, by John Feeley and Rosie Dempsey. See the full companion article to these bits by Anna Brinley on Brookland Avenue. 

1. Ann Queen Brooks’s family owned land stretching all the way to the town of Bladensburg, Maryland, and gave the land to her husband Colonel Jehiel Brooks, who founded Brookland. Their home, now called Brooks Mansion, still stands next to the Brookland Metro Station.  Another of the Brookland estates was Anderson Cottage, a favorite summer retreat of five U.S. presidents in the years before Camp David and Cape Cod became popular.  President Buchanan was a committee member of Rock Creek Episcopal Church’s parish whose historic structure sits on the far side of North Capital Street from Brookland and will celebrate its 300th anniversary in 2012.  Congregants abandoned this parish during the war because of its Confederate sympathies—sympathies shared by the slave-owning Brooks family.

2. Fort elevations:

Fort Bunker Hill:  226 ft. 
Fort Totten:  318 ft.
Fort Slemmer: 233 ft.
Fort Slocum: 220 ft. 

3. “North of the city there are a few infantry pickets on the road in from of Forts Stevens, Totten, Slocum, and Bunker Hill; but they are weak and could only give alarm by firing musketry which is unreliable” The new forts depended on the sturdiness and flexibility of soil to support their own guns and cannons, and to absorb anticipated projectile attacks.

4. Co-author John Feeley is a deacon at St. Anthony’s where he was baptized, confirmed, grew up in, and was married to Helen D. Young, to whom he dedicated the book.

5. The forts brought wartime activity to Washington County’s estates and farmlands —32 miles of new roads were constructed throughout for transportation of goods and improved communication between the 68 forts.  Some military roads were maintained after the war, drawing the Brooks and their neighbors further into the sphere of the city of Washington, which would later consolidate with Brookland to become the District of Columbia that we know today. 

6. Brookland co-author Rosie Dempsey is a 25-year resident of Brookland whose family roots in the neighborhood go back to the 1940s. She dedicated the book to her mother Marianne Kerins Dempsey, who lived on the 1000 block of Perry Street in Brookland when she met Rosie’s father Bill Dempsey, at the time a graduate student at CUA. Since the Brookland’s release in September 2011, Rosie has been interviewed for both a short piece on Brookland for WAMU radio’s Metro Connection here, and in the Washington Post’s Metro Section column on Brookland: “A fond look back through Brookland’s history”

7. A young Thomas Diggs:

8. Carrie Harrison was among the small but growing number of activist women in the early 1900s—she was a Republican, a suffragette and worked as a professional botanist with the Department of the Interior and the National Museum, a precursor to the Smithsonian Institution. More information about Ms. Harrison in Brookland. Ms. Harrison built the Spanish villa at 1331 Newton Street, based on houses she saw in Spain, where she lived and did her work. Residual vegetation from her scientific endeavors remains. As recalled by a contemporary Brookland resident now deceased, Presidents Taft and Hoover were both guests in her home. 

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