Category: Housing

So just to get an idea to see if what I am seeing with the Black Homeowners of Truxton Circle is normal, or not, I am comparing them with white home owners.  I am looking at blocks that were over 90% white in 1950 but also in the same “red lined” zone, which was F1. I should explore that more. There is a lot I should do.

Anywho.

So over in Capital Hill we’re going to look at James McCracken who according to the 1930 census was the head of household and owner of 219 E St SE. He worked as a steam engineer. Well according to the paperwork, his wife Barbara was the owner. His name didn’t get on the property until 1944.

James Joseph McCracken was born July 1st, 1880 in Washington, DC. His parents might have been James and Mary McCracken of Ireland. “Appears” because a James McCracken appears twice in the 1900 census. Once with his parents and siblings on Maryland Ave SW working as a government clerk and again on the USCG Steamer Blake in Puerto Rico. Same birth date, birth place, same parental linage, and same address (for ships they list home address).

In 1916 he married Barbara E. Morgal, a dry goods clerk. They were in their 30s, she was a little older. It appears they had no children.

When the first World War draft came around in 1917-1918 he was living at 219 E St with his wife. The online records from the DC Recorder of Deeds starts around 1920, and so the first record is release for a loan Barbara McCracken took on in November 1919 from trustees Frank Johnson and J. Walter Stephenson.

In 1930 Barbara took on another loan, which she alone signed, on a document that acknowledged she was a married woman, with trustees Frank Johnson and William Church Jr. for the Mutual Building Association. The loan appears to have been for $1,500 (maybe $20,000 max).

In a June 1930 release for a loan with the Mutual Serial Building Association (idk if it was the same building assoc. but Frank Johnson is the trustee) they note Barbara McCracken was a married woman contracting as a separate estate.

The 1933 release for the 1930 loan is….interesting. Normally I just look to see which loan it is for, maybe an institutions name, but something caught my eye.

So….. if she sold the house to someone like me*, there would be a $2,000 lien on the property. Being that it was 1933, I chucked that number into the Inflation Calculator and that’s $45,662.77 in today’s money.  This forced me to look back at the 1930 loan doc and there it was buried on the 2nd page (a page I ignore). I currently live in a house that had a similar covenant or legalism attached to it. I’m the 1st Black person to own it. Okay back to Babs McCracken.

In 1944 Barbara does this thing that I’ve seen several of my Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle do when they want to get someone’s name on the property. She transferred it into the name of someone, this someone being Etta H. Groff, who in the next document transfers it to Barbara and James McCracken.

And then nothing happens for 20 years.

James McCracken sold 219 E Street SE on August 4, 1964 to J. Harry Brogden. The deed notes that Barbara died on June 10, 1963. James died several years later in 1969.

*I may be pale because I haven’t seen the sun since 1995, but I am 100% African American.

Although the African American home owners of Truxton Circle are my focus, I am looking at a few other blocks in Washington, DC to compare them to. So I looked at the census for blocks in the city that were in the F1 or red lined category, but happened to be 90%-100% white. I included Georgetown, and this is the story of one household.

According to the 1930 Census Charles P. Reckert was the owner of 3214 Volta Place. He lived there with his wife Valeria Irene Warner Reckert, and their children, Charles Peter Jr., May Callista, William F. and Eileen Reckert. By the 1940 census the Reckerts had 3 more children Joseph W., Virginia M. (later Lapp), and Robert W. No surprise, they were a Catholic family and parishioners of Holy Trinity Church.

Mr. Reckert was a multi-type machinist working for the Government Printing Office. He had been employed with the GPO since he was a messenger boy in 1911 then moved up to the role of machinist before 1920 after serving in the first World War.

According to the land records the Charles and Valeria purchased 3214 Volta in April 1929 from Eudora B. Johnson. In December 1931 they took out a loan with the Oriental Building Association. It looks sort of like a HELOC where there was a range, and the range appeared to be $1,800-$4,000. They closed the loan ten years later in 1941.

Then something curious happens. When I’ve seen this sort of thing with the TC homeowners it happens on the same day and is a way to change the name of who is on the property. Usually to remove the name of a spouse or add or transfer it to a family member. November 1945 the Reckarts sell/transfer the property to Minnie May Wanner. I attempted to find any connection with Minnie May with either Charles or Valeria. As far I as could find, Mrs. Wanner was a Baltimore widow and Charles’ family lived in Charm City at some time in the 1920s. A few months later, in March of 1946, Wanner sells/transfers the property to Valeria and in her name only.

I’m not entirely sure why this was done. They did not divorce and Charles was no where near death. I’m guessing taxes.

Valeria took out two loans. In her name only. The first was in 1946 ($3,000-$20,000) and the second in 1950 ($7,500 ) with the Washington Loan and Trust Company. It appears the second loan paid off the first and the second loan was completed in 1969.

By the 1950 census the Reckerts had moved a few blocks over to 3130 Dumbarton Ave NW. That census revealed they had another son, David. World War I records show that the Dumbarton Ave home was previously home to Charles’ father Charles G. Reckert, a Baltimore grocer.

Charles and Valeria died in 1972. Their many heirs, being their children and their children’s spouses, sold the property in 1973.

I’m going to try something new. For a few years I have been looking at the African American home owners of Truxton Circle. As a part of it, I look at land records and then I get confused. I wonder if the borrowing activities are unique to Black home owners. So I am looking at DC white home owners from another part of DC that isn’t a “suburb” like Adams-Morgan.

According to the 1950 census German immigrant Frieda (nee Bohraus) Humphries lived at 215 E Street SE. She worked at a hospital for a number of years as a seamstress and as an office clerk. Looking at the land records she owned 215 E St SE prior to 1923. She took out very few loans. Because a release (cancelling/payment of loan) in 1923 we are aware of a few loans Frieda and then husband George Milton Humphries made in 1913 and 1915. However, according to the 1920 census they were renting 2310 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

George was a carpenter turned auto mechanic. They married in 1905, a month after she arrived in Baltimore from Europe. At some point prior to 1930 the marriage failed. She was listed as a widow in the 1930 and 1950 census but George didn’t die until the 1970s. They had two children, Carl W. and Cara/Cora Humphries.

During the years at 215 E St SE, as head of the household Frieda housed relatives and lodgers. In 1930 she lived with her children, son-in-law James Bristow, sister in law Myrtle Humphries, and two roomers Sidney S. Ball and Erma Brewer. In 1940 it was just her daughter, sister-in-law and a lodger William M. Hobbs.

For the 1950 census the home appears to be 3 units. Frieda, her daughter and new son-in-law Malcolm N. Walters, a house painter, lived in the first unit. Reginald and Gertrude Burns from West Virginia lived in the second unit. Divorced Pentagon telephone operator Alice C. Jennings, her son William F. and her brother George Myers, a mechanic, lived in the 3rd unit.

Mrs. Humphries took out a loan in her name of $2,500 at 6% interest from the Permanent Building Association in 1925. That loan was settled in 1943. The next document came in 1960 when she sold the property to Sharon and Thomas Lias. Frieda was 79 years old at the time of the sale.