Georgetown

When we think of President John F. Kennedy, we picture him living in the White House with Jackie, Caroline and John Jr.  But for most of the time he spent in Washington — the years from 1946 through 1960 — he was a resident of the city’s Georgetown neighborhood.

Colonel Ninian Beall, a towering Scottish settler who helped found Georgetown and lived to 92, earned a bronze‑plated memorial in 1910—complete with a hidden surprise. The stone carver was an aviation enthusiast who tucked newspaper clippings and a biplane photo into a compartment inside memorial, turning a colonial tribute into a quirky time capsule.

In the 1850s, Georgetown’s Fourth of July celebration was a neighborhood pageant of marching Sunday schools, bands, banners, barrels of lemonade, and speeches at Parrott’s Woods, now the site of Oak Hill Cemetery.

Yarrow Mamout — a West African who survived the Middle Passage, won his freedom, and became one of early Washington’s most remarkable figures — left a rare portrait of early Georgetown.