Loading ...This is significant for a number of reasons.
Before It Was Washington, D.C., This Land Was Called Rome
The land beneath Washington, DC was once a Maryland plantation called Rome, owned by a man named Francis Pope.
The east side of the Anacostia River, June 5, 1663. A surveyor walks the woods of Charles County, Maryland, and ties off a 400-acre tract at a marked oak standing at the mouth of a small inlet. The tract has a name. The inlet has a name too.
The land is called Rome. The water is called Tiber.
Both names belong to a Maryland planter named Francis Pope, and his bounded oak stood somewhere underneath what is now the United States Capitol.