Am I just looking for Truxton residents who share names with famous people? Maybe.
Famous Grace Jones starred opposite Roger Moore in View to A Kill. To my knowledge she never stepped foot in the neighborhood.
The Truxton Circle Grace L. Jones was born as Grace Louise Butler, daughter of Henry and Josephine Butler in DC August 1896. In 1910 the family lived in Truxton Circle at 304 P St NW. Her father was a driver for the government. Her mother was a cook at a cafe. She was was 13 years old and an only child.
She married George Jones when she was 20 years old in April 1917. The 1920 showed that she lived at a second unit in 304 P St NW with her husband George who worked as a messenger for the government. Grace worked as a cleaner for Pullman cars.
By the 1930 census the couple moved to 1532 1st St NW. Grace was still cleaning railway cars. Her husband worked as a laborer for the government. She had her mother living with them, but they were not supporting her, as her 50 year old mother worked as a government charwoman. They also had a male lodger who worked as a messenger.
In 1940 it was just Grace and her mother Josephine. Her husband George was not in the home at the time. George died in 1941.
And that’s where the trail ends. Unless she was White Passing and wound up in a rooming house in Baltimore in 1950. Being the only child of her parents and not having any children, the chance of someone reporting her death to the papers was lower. From her husband’s obituary, I did not get the sense that they were plugged into a greater community that would have marked her passing.
Thousands of people have lived in the Truxton Circle neighborhood for over 100 years and they have thousands of stories. The goal of the Truxton Circle History Project is to find every man, woman, and child who lived in the neighborhood using every available source. The Project uses the 1880-1950 censuses, the power of Ancestry and every other online resource to discover and uncover neighborhood history.