From Slave Ship to Harvard: August 2013

The property at 3324 Dent Place NW in Georgetown is an important site for black history with likely archaeological relics that are threatened by already-approved plans for demolition even though the two-block long street is on the city’s historic register. The property also holds at least one unmarked grave, that of Yarrow Mamout. Listing it as endangered would spotlight the potential loss of significant artifacts that require investigation and preservation.

Yarrow Mamout once owned this place. Yarrow (his last name) was an extraordinary individual. Even though he came to America on a slave ship in 1752 at age sixteen, he eventually became a freeman and indeed one of the most prominent in Washington D.C. Yarrow’s story is unusual in three respects. First, he is one of the few identifiable individuals known to have arrived on a slave ship. Second, his lineage has been traced to living relatives of his daughter-in-law. Third, we know what he looked like because two artists, Charles Willson Peale and James Alexander Simpson, painted his portrait. Indeed, the Peale portrait is one of only two formal portraits by a major artist of a slave ship passenger.

Peale was interested in the African because, as he wrote in his diary, Yarrow owned not only a house and the lot on Dent Place but also bank stock. These were obviously no small accomplishments for a man who had come to America via the Middle Passage. Peale also wrote and perhaps believed, wrongly, that Yarrow was 140 years old. In any event, the artist went to the property in December 1818 to engage Yarrow for a sitting and in late January 1819 painted the portrait there. The portrait is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

James Alexander Simpson did his portrait of Yarrow three years later. It hangs in the Peabody Room of the Georgetown Public Library only a few blocks from the property.

Yarrow was a man of many talents and among them was brick-making. He was considered the best brick-maker of his day in Georgetown, commanding one and a half times what white brick-makers could. His last owner, Brooke Beall, told Yarrow he would free him if he made the bricks for his new house. Yarrow carried out his part of the bargain, but Brooke died before fulfilling his. Brooke’s widow kept the promise.

Yarrow acquired this property four years later in 1800. But within a few years, Yarrow lost all his savings because the man to whom he had entrusted his money ran off with it or lost it in insolvency. The only thing of value Yarrow had left was this property. So he cleverly put it out of the reach of his creditors by transferring title to his teenage son. The National Archives has the Recorder of Deeds’ copy of that document showing the West African signed in Arabic.

Yarrow died on January 19, 1823. According to an obituary in the February 1823 Gettysburg Compiler, he was buried in the corner of the yard where he, a devote Muslim, was known to pray. (The old Presbyterian cemetery was just a block away, between 33^rd and 34^th Streets and Volta and Q. However, graves of African Americans have been discovered on the same block as Yarrow’s property. What connection, if any, there may be among these three burial places hasn’t been established).

The heirs of Yarrow were listed as the owners of the property on tax records until 1837 when it was sold for delinquent taxes. The purchaser then flipped the lot to the wealthy Francis Dodge, who presumably rented it out.

At some point in time, the original house burned down or was torn down because the house on the lot today is of later design and construction. Estimates date it to around 1870 although it is hard to be sure. It seems clearly not the house Yarrow lived in. However, as will be explained, a part of the structure, the foundation, may well be original.

The house is in great disrepair, and the city has declared it beyond saving. This came about because it had been vacant for several years when, in the fall of 2011, a large tree crashed through the second floor. Tax delinquencies on the property began to mount, and so in the spring of 2012, the property was sold, once again, for taxes. The buyer applied for and received permission to demolish the house. This is where things have stood for more than a year. At this writing, a crushed, vacant house that is subject to demolition sits on the land.

But the house isn’t what is important about property; the historically and archaeologically important parts are the land, what is under the land, and what is in the house. The contents of the house are important because the former owner has said that a collection of papers about the house’s history, which she inherited from her father, were in a study on the second floor when the tree fell. She said they may still be there.

Yarrow’s grave and his remains were once there and presumably still are. He was probably buried in the southeast corner of the lot, or perhaps just southeast of the original house, a place where he bowed to Mecca to pray. These parts of the property appear not to have been disturbed since his death.

Then there is the foundation or cellar. The existing house, supposedly of 1870s vintage, sits on a brick cellar. An archaeologist has looked at photographs and opined that the bricks are older than the house. He said they appear handmade, and brick-making machines came into use around 1850. Hence, the cellar may be original. In fact, it may be made of bricks fashioned by Yarrow Mamout himself, the best brick-maker of his day in Georgetown.

Finally, there is an expectation that other artifacts from Yarrow’s occupancy are on the property. The cellar reportedly has a dirt floor, so things Yarrow once owned may be embedded in the dirt down there. The same is true of the yard. One can fancy finding a used paintbrush that Charles Willson Peale threw out the window or pieces of a broken smoking pipe of Yarrow’s, such as the one he holds in the Simpson painting, in a privy or trash heap on the property. More likely, of course, would be pedestrian things, such as oyster shells, kitchen utensils, and brick-making implements.

In sum, 3422 Dent Place is an endangered site of major historic and archaeological importance. Its significance seems underappreciated, but it is hard to overstate. This is the only property in the United States that is known to have been titled to an ex-slave from Africa. It is the oldest lot in Washington known to have been owned by an African American. Archaeological work on the land has the potential to give us details on how free blacks lived then, what they owned, what they ate, and how skilled they were as craftsmen. And, of course, the property probably still holds the mortal remains of Yarrow Mamout and perhaps other African Americans.