Dominion Hills, Past and Present

Dominion Hills, Past and Present. . , Native Americans , Native Americans lived along the Potomac River in what is now Arlington County. Among the tribes that nomadically lived in the area were the Pamunkey, Piscataway, and Tauxenent (also known as the Dogue), many of which were in the Algonquin language group and some within the Powhatan Confederacy., Arlington and Slavery , From 1669 to 1865, hundreds of enslaved persons and freedmen lived and labored near this area. In 1860, the Febrey family had five enslaved people working on their farm. Following the Civil War (1861-1865), about 15 African Americans continued working as domestic servants or farm laborers on the estate., Early Settlers , In the late 1600s, colonists and enslaved individuals arrived to established farmsteads on the land grants provided by the English Crown. The main cash crop was tobacco, which relied on enslaved labor and crop rotation. In 1836, Samuel and Rebecca Upton from Salem, Massachusetts, purchased 250 acres of land that extended from present-day Washington Boulevard to Leesburg Pike. Their property included the area that would later become Dominion Hills., From Rural to Suburban , In 1920, rural Arlington County, including the Dominion Hills area, had a population of 13,812 residents, 1,900 of whom were African American, counting for 14% of the total population. The introduction of electric railways resulted in significant growth in both population and residential developments as the County evolved into a suburban area., Urbanization , During World War II (1939-1945), thousands of people from all over the United States moved to the Washington, DC area, including Arlington County, for government and military jobs. A housing shortage encouraged real estate developers, including Mace Properties, to buy and subdivide the original Febrey property. The company's president, Merwin A. "John" Mace named one of these subdivisions Dominion Hills. Between 1945 and 1955, 420 homes were built.