Frederick Douglass's Magnolias at Cedar Hill

Frederick Douglass planted these two magnolias for his wife, or so his household always said. The window the tradition gives runs from 1877, when he bought Cedar Hill and moved his family up onto the Anacostia ridge, to 1882, when Anna Murray Douglass died. There is no receipt, no diary entry and no nursery record. The story comes down through the family and the site rather than on paper, which is how most of what is known about any house's garden survives. Casey Trees, on the grounds in February 2026, found both trees still standing outside the window of his study. That study is the reason to come. Douglass worked here for the last eighteen years of his life, through his term as US Marshal for the District and his appointment as minister to Haiti, and the view out of it was these two trees. Southern magnolias hold their leaves all year, so they were green outside that window in every season he wrote at it. The Cultural Landscape Foundation records two magnolias east of the residence dating to the late nineteenth century, which puts the pair itself beyond dispute even where the planting story rests on memory. The grounds are free to walk. The house tour that brings you closest runs on timed tickets, booked in advance or picked up at the visitor centre.