How would you live under "black codes" that restricted your activities and the occupations open to you? You would probably be careful to carry your certificate of freedom with you to protect you from being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

Although many rights were denied, it was legal in Washington for people of color to own property and a small number managed to do so. In 1840 Smith Harley, an African-American well-digger, paid $400 for a new row house on 8th Street near the corner of L Street. He and his wife Ellen lived there with their two children until they sold their property in 1850. George Garrison, who worked as a waiter and whitewasher, bought the house next door in the same year. Garrison’s name appears in the Manumission and Emancipation Record. Mrs. Ann Miller of Georgetown certified that she’d known Garrison since his infancy and that he was born free.

A very limited amount of archaeology tells us that the Harleys and Garrisons owned pretty much the same household objects as their white neighbors. The Harleys and the Garrisons are, so far, the only pre-Civil War free people of color that archaeologists can associate directly with excavated remains. Such finds are an important foundation for archaeology in the District and will be useful as more examples are found to build up a more complete picture of life in the city before the Civil War.