In 1802, Congress granted the citizenry of the District of Columbia limited local government and James Hoban served on the twelve-member city council for the next two decades, except for the years during which he was rebuilding the White House.Founder of Grand Lodge Number One of the Masonic Order, captain of a local militia company, a city councilman, and successful

Leslie Greene Bowman is President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the home of Thomas Jefferson. She has spearheaded the Foundation’s vision to bring history forward into national and global dialogues — with a special emphasis on civic engagement, race and the legacies of slavery. Believing that Monticello is an essential place to unde

The White House Historical Association and presidential libraries, historic homes, and museums have a shared goal of providing access to presidential history. Below you will find a variety of digital educational resources compiled by the White House Historical Association that have been sourced from presidential sites relating to President Thomas Jefferson.Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar ForestLearn about the life and le

The White House Historical Association and presidential libraries, historic homes, and museums have a shared goal of providing access to presidential history. Below you will find a variety of digital educational resources compiled by the White House Historical Association that have been sourced from presidential sites relating to President James Monroe. James Monroe Museum and Memorial Library Lesson plansEducational activitiesColoring

Theodore Roosevelt became president after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. The early months of his administration were a tense period of trial and error as Roosevelt had not been elected president. Fond of dinners as a means of entertaining, the Roosevelts held them nearly every night over the last few months of 1901 and constructed the guest lists with

The son of an enslaved woman and an unknown white man, Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey was born into slavery in 1818 on Maryland's eastern shore. He was enslaved for twenty years in city households in Baltimore and on Maryland farms. In 1838, he fled north and changed his name to Frederick Douglass.Douglass was highly active in the abolitionist movement and became

The phrase "The Half Had Not Been Told Me" is taken from a Biblical reference Frederick Douglass used to describe the beauty of the new Freedman's Savings Bank and Trust building, once located on Lafayette Square. Douglass compared the experience of seeing the building for the first time to the way the Queen of Sheba, an African queen, felt upon

To imagine what it was like here when the White House was being constructed in the 1790s, erase everything else you see now on and around Lafayette Square. The park was a field—muddy or dusty, depending on the weather. Enslaved workers who were building the White House were housed in temporary shelters—each about 10 feet wide and 10 feet long—lined

Asantewa Boakyewa currently serves as Associate Director of Collections & Exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution’s Anacostia Community Museum. has held research and administrative appointments at Johns Hopkins University, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture (A Smithsonian Affiliate Museum), Georgetown University, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She has been an invited speaker an