Author: Mari

I’ve been doing this neighborhood history thing for well over a decade and I have learned some lessons. Doing these mini genealogies and digging into the land records, newspaper clippings and other research I discover the people who lived here were complicated people. Just as complicated as you or I.

Recently, I’ve seen a couple people bring up the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, claiming women could not own land, have a credit card or bank account in their name, etc, before 1974. Really? But several things can be true at the same time. There are women now who are unbanked/ debanked. My sister-in-law was unbanked until she was able to get POA over my mother-in-law’s nest egg & bank account which she drained before abandoning the old woman.*

Anyway, Truxton Circle has many female homeowners and landladies who owned property in their own name with nary a man in sight. Eloyce Gist, never had any of her husbands’ names on the documents. The only man who ever had his name on 134 R St NW was her father when it was purchased with her parent’s help in the 1920s. Dr. Euphemia Haynes-Lofton, owned lots of property in DC in her own name. Then there was Kat Miller who owned several properties as well. Followed by all the divorcees, widows and single women who purchased WSIC houses in the 1950s. Speaking of WSIC homes, I am reminded of pre-WSIC owners Marie Clarice Eustis and Louise Eustis Hitchcock.

Dr. Carrie H. Thomas, who seemed to have inherited 1629 NJ Ave NW from her father, never married. Sometime before 1910 her father had died and she died in 1930, which meant she owned the house free and clear for at least 20 years. She had a career and a life.

It seems to reason that if women were owning property, acting as landladies or real estate investors or plain old homeowners they would have bank accounts. I’ve seen enough mortgages where women held the debt in their own name, sometimes even when they were still married. All well before 1974.

Believe it or not, a woman in say 1920 be unmarried and financially independent. She could be like Mary Harvey Chiswell who was instrumental in changing the 1700 block of New Jersey Avenue  in 1920.

She did not marry until she was well into her early fifties. In the 1941 article announcing her nuptials to Maj. Joseph Byers II, she was described as a “prominent Washington career woman”. What she did on New Jersey Ave NW wasn’t her only real estate investment, she was all over the DMV.

I really do need to do a thing on Dr. Haynes-Lofton as I have seen her bank account info.

These women did not need the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. They managed to get along quite fine without it. They owned property. Some had careers. Many were getting on with the business of living (and eventually dying).

*Why yes. My MIL has been dead for 8 years, and we are still hurt and bitter. We forgave but did not forget, and we moved on. Like one does from any major injury.