This is a post for something in the future, so I will try to be vague, as not to ‘spoil’ that post. While doing some research for a Truxton Circle house, I came across a couple who appeared to have been in an interracial marriage. They were married well before Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which was used to outlaw the Loving’s marriage in the case of Virginia v. Loving. However, I discovered, with this family, race can be a fluid and changing thing.
Hester DeaN
Hester Dean was born January 28, 1868 to Catharine Morgan and Robert Dean in Delaware. Her parent’s history was recorded for the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Indians of New Jersey in 1980, from an early 1940s source. That history intertwines with the Seeney’s history and American Seventh Day Adventist history.
In the 1870 census the Dean family were living in Kenton, Delaware and listed as ‘White’. This is the opinion of the census taker, so they were either White or white-passing. From an oral history Catharine’s mother was a White woman. Continue reading Multiracial Family in 1920s DC- a Truxton Circle Story