{"id":629,"slug":"frederick-douglass-national-historic-site-washington-d-c","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Cedar Hill is the house the covenant couldn't keep. In 1877 Frederick Douglass paid $6,700 for the hilltop estate in Anacostia — a purchase the original deed explicitly barred to Black buyers — and made it his final home: fourteen rooms expanded to twenty-one, a library of over a thousand volumes, the grounds a 'rustic sanctuary' with the Capitol dome visible across the river. The man who'd taught himself to read in slavery spent his last seventeen years in the house on the hill looking down at the city.","The house holds the whole late life — Anna Murray Douglass's years there until her death in 1882, the controversial 1884 marriage to Helen Pitts, the writing and the diplomatic work, and February 20, 1895, when he came home from a women's rights meeting, spoke of it at dinner, and fell dead in the front hall. Helen spent her widowhood securing the estate — the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association chartered by Congress in 1900 — and the National Association of Colored Women completed the first restoration in 1922.","The Park Service took it in 1962 — one of the earliest NPS sites dedicated to a Black American. Cedar Hill keeps what he kept: the books, the growlery study he built apart from the house, the view southeast over Anacostia that he chose when he was choosing where the free life would be lived.","Cedar Hill is the archive's hilltop file — Frederick Douglass's Anacostia estate, bought across a racial covenant in 1877, where he lived his last seventeen years within sight of the Capitol and died in the front hall in 1895."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Frederick Douglass NHS is the archive's Cedar Hill file — the Anacostia house the formerly enslaved statesman bought across a covenant barring Black ownership, preserved by his widow Helen and the National Association of Colored Women into an NPS site.","A house bought against the deed keeps its view — the file's suggestion being that Cedar Hill's hold is the hilltop: the estate overlooking the Capitol that Douglass chose for his last years, kept whole by the women who made it a memorial."]}],"name":"Frederick Douglass National Historic Site","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_SITE","type_label":"Historic Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD_HISTORY","AFRICAN_AMERICAN_HISTORY","HISTORIC_SITE","UNDERGROUND_RAILROAD","CIVIL_RIGHTS"],"groups":["dark-history","historic-sites"],"desc":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","full_desc":"A historic site in Washington, Washington, D.C., a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site is filed here for what the record attaches to it. NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad. HauntHunt files it with dark history, Underground Railroad history and the Underground Railroad. The dossier holds 2 documented facts — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. The site is open to visitors.","address":"1411 W. Street, SE","city":"Washington","county":"Washington D.C.","state":"Washington, D.C.","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.904243,"lon":-77.016524,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":"NPS public listing access field: Yes. This is a listing snapshot; current arrangements still require confirmation.","ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02DC01, source row 22. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":62.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.35,"identity_confidence":0.85,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"NPS includes this site in the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01' documents the entry. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}},{"description":"Frederick Douglass National Historic Site is documented on the National Park Service Network to Freedom for its role in the Underground Railroad. A documented site gives the file real substance; this entry is part of that record. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'NPS Network to Freedom listing' carry the record. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic site; verify hours and access with the managing agency before visiting; check nps.gov for current hours and alerts.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Public NPS Network to Freedom listings, row 2, ID 01GA01","url":"https://www.nps.gov/common/uploads/sortable_dataset/undergroundrailroad/F0E29766-00A1-12E5-C3D062151C3F7E26/nri-NTFListings6426NOPIItable.csv?t=1784017173223","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"NPS Network to Freedom listing","url":"https://www.nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/index.htm","publisher":"National Park Service","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1},{"name":"Underground Railroad","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Railroad","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"NPS-listed historic site associated with the Underground Railroad.","incoming_value":"Cedar Hill—where Douglass lived his last years.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"historic_designation","existing_value":"National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom listing","incoming_value":"NPS Network to Freedom","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Government-registry discovery record, unique ID 02DC01, source row 22. Inclusion concerns slavery, freedom-seeking and resistance history; no haunting is inferred. City, coordinates and detailed history are not inferred from the name. The source Year Established field is not treated as year built/opened. ","incoming_value":"UGRR enrichment wave 4; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":{"title":"Frederick Douglass National Historic Site","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass_National_Historic_Site","desc":"House and grounds in Washington, D.C.","extract":"The Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, administered by the National Park Service, is located at 1411 W Street, SE, in Anacostia, a neighborhood east of the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, D.C. United States. Established in 1988 as a National Historic Site, the site preserves the home and estate of Frederick Douglass, one of the most prominent African Americans of the 19th century. Douglass lived in this house, which he named Cedar Hill, from 1877–1878 until his death in 1895. Perched on a hilltop, the site offers a sweeping view of the U.S. Capitol and the Washington, D.C., skyline.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Frederick_Douglass_House.jpg/330px-Frederick_Douglass_House.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":93,"lat":38.86333333,"lon":-76.98527778},"counts":{"claims":0,"history":2,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":3}}