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| Now we're married Never to part Little Anacostia Is my sweet heart |
Good Hope was the first permanent modern settlement of size in Southeast Washington. The Nacotchtank Native Americans were the first settlers to inhabit the area now known as Good Hope, living and fishing along the nearby Anacostia River.
The name Nacotchtank, existing in several historical variants including Nacostine, Anacostine, Anaquashtank, Nacothtant, Nachatanke etc., is said to mean "Trading village". Around 1668, greatly depopulated from Eurasian infectious diseases endemic to the English, to which they had no immunity, the Nacotchtank relocated to Anacostine Island (present-day Theodore Roosevelt Island.) Remnants and descendants likely merged with the Piscataway Indians.
Captain John Smith was the first European to visit the region in 1612, naming the river the "Nacotchtank". He noted that their main village had 80 fighting men, with a total population of about 300. It was an important trading center; tribes as distant as the Iroquois of New York would come to trade beaver pelts.
European settlement in Southeast Washington first occurred in 1662 at Blue Plains (now the site of the city's sewage treatment plant just to the west of the modern neighborhood of Bellevue), and at St. Elizabeth (now the site of St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital) and Giesborough (now called Barry Farm) in 1663. Lord Baltimore granted ownership of the Good Hope area and much of what is now Southeast D.C. (giving it the name "Chichester") to John Meeks in 1664. "Anacostia Fort" was built on the heights at the present-day neighborhood of Skyland some time in the 18th century.
William Marbury, a wealthy Georgetown merchant, purchased much of the "Chichester tract" some time in the late 18th or early 19th century. The large Marbury Plaza apartment building complex (2300 thru 2330 Good Hope Road SE) is named for William Marbury.
The growth of the Washington Navy Yard created the need to provide housing for the many new employees working at the facility, but little land was available for new construction in the area and housing prices were high. Consequently, in 1818, the privately owned "Upper Navy Yard Bridge" was built over the Anacostia River at 11th Street SE. A toll bridge, this bridge was designed to permit easy access to Anacostia so that housing could be constructed on the eastern shore of the Anacostia River. A road was built from the bridge to the town of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and named Upper Marlborough Road (called Good Hope Road SE today).
In 1820, the town of Good Hope, D.C., was founded around a tavern located near the current intersection of Good Hope Road SE and Alabama Avenue SE. Businesses began to construct buildings along Upper Marlborough Road toward the village of Good Hope, and a post office was established in the area and named Good Hope Station. In 1849, the post office's name was changed to Anacostia.
Good Hope remained little more than a crossroads, however. Uniontown/Anacostia, Barry Farm, Congress Heights, and Randle Highlands were the focus of most housing and retail development until 1940. Even these communities remained isolated from one another, and most of the land between them was undeveloped until World War II. The oppressive need for housing during the war, brought about by a massive influx of federal workers to the capital, led to extensive development of Southeast Washington and the linking of Good Hope with other parts of southeast D.C.
(Click on the poem for an excellent history of Anacostia)
