Washington County, D.C.

The County of Washington is one of the five political entities contained within the geographic region comprising what was originally the 100-square-mile District of Columbia. These were the City of Alexandria, the County of Alexandria, Georgetown, the City of Washington, and the County of Washington. Washington County was that area of the District that had been ceded by Maryland to the federal government, other than Georgetown and the City of Washington.

In an 1846 act, Congress returned the Virginia portions of the District to Virginia, leaving Washington County as the sole county in the District of Columbia.

The county was farmland and large country estates owned by wealthy farmers and statesmen. These estates included Pleasant Plains, the estate of the Holmead family; Edgewood, home of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase; and Petworth, the estate of Col. John Tayloe. Also established in Washington County was the U.S. Soldiers' Retirement Home, where Abraham Lincoln lived during his summers as President. Despite its size, the population of Washington County was small.

Washington County was governed by a group of Justices of the Peace, who met on a Levy Court council. They performed the duties of county commissioners, and were subject to the Maryland state laws governing county commissioners, even though the county was outside the "state of Maryland". The President appointed the justices, and had the discretion to determine the number of justices. [http://prorev.com/dchomeru]

During the Civil War, Washington County was surrounded by a circle of defensive forts that made Washington the most heavily fortified city on Earth. [http://www.nps.gov/archive/rocr/ftcircle/]

After the war, many of the old estates in Washington County were bought by real estate speculators and developed into suburbs for the growing capital. Among the earliest were the villages of Le Droit Park, and Mount Pleasant, which became the first "streetcar" suburb. Uniontown and Barry Farm, a settlement for freedmen, developed on the other side of the Anacostia River.

Washington County ceased to exist in 1871, when Congress passed the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871. This created a single government for the entire District of Columbia by merging the corporate charters of Georgetown and the City of Washington, and brought the entire District of Columbia together under a single eleven-member legislature, including two representatives for Georgetown, and two for the County of Washington. It reads: "... all that part of the territory of the United States included within the limits of the District of Columbia be, and the same is hereby, created into a government by the name of the District of Columbia, by which name it is hereby constituted a body corporate for municipal purposes [.] " [http://weblinks.westlaw.com/Find/Default.wl?DB=DC%2DST%2DTOC%3BSTADCTOC&DocName=DCHIACTOF1871CREATINGLEGISLATIVEASSEMBLY&FindType=W&
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*History of Washington, D.C.