Truxton Circle- People and a lost traffic circle
If you haven't seen it arleady Left for LeDroit has a post on the Truxton Circle and how you can still find it's outline today.And I think I can say I can now start the writing portion of Truxton Circle 1900. I cleaned up a lot of data, deleted addresses that you'd think were in the study area, but aren't and tracked down people for whom some enumerators were too drunk to write down their addresses. When I started out whites outnumbered black residents by a smidgen. With the data clean-up and address removal, blacks outnumber whites by a smidgen and I still have 4 Chinese guys.
There was this one fellow, Paul Pearson, of 218 N Street. He was a white DC born Druggist, who lived with his Maryland born wife, Emma, and owned his home free and clear. According to the 1899 city directory he worked at 500 New Jersey Avenue NW. The National Association of Realtors building sits where his workplace sat. Considering where his home and work were located he must of had a pretty good commute. And if memory serves me right there was a streetcar nearby that could have taken him straight there.
Labels: data/demographics, neighborhood history, Truxton Circle
posted by Mari @ 8.1.10
5 Comments:
You have 4 Chinese guys. So, you can speak Chinese?
Mari, how about your 4 Chinese guys? Are they overseas students?
The Chinese guys are more than likely dead by now. I'm talking about the 1900 census and they were in their 20s and 30s on April 1900, so add 110 years and that equals more than likely dead. And this being 1900 they were laundrymen. But in 1900 the laundry industry was big for residents of the TC. Lota laundresses.
My chinese is limited to the word water.
what where the laundries that were nearby?
yale? dont know when it opened, but that was very close.
manhatten? kinda a hike though.
Well I'm not entirely sure that they would have worked for one of the big laundry institutions like Yale or Manhattan. Laundresses were like independent contractors who would work for 5 or 6 families. Washerwomen would go house to house trying to pick up work.
Right now the work-life of DC 1900 Chinese is a mystery to me. I don't know if laundrymen work-life was like that of laundresses or washerwomen or shopkeepers. I guess I could try the 1899 city directory to see if any of them had a shop.
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