History & Culture: Collingwood Picnic Area

From The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South by Andrew W Kahrl, page 35.

Map design by Gordie Thompson.

In July 1889, two boxers departed Washington, DC aboard tugboats. The boats travelled south on the Potomac River and stopped near what is now Collingwood Picnic Area (then Collingwood Beach) to host a fight there. A group of people bearing shotguns told the boats not to dock at Collingwood.ⁱ Having been rebuffed, the boats docked at River View, a facility near Fort Washington, Maryland. The fight happened there instead.ⁱⁱ

Today, it is difficult to imagine such scenes developing on the banks of the Potomac River. But in the late nineteenth century, the Potomac bore witness to gambling, prostitution, prize fights and other illicit forms of revelry. Each was part of a complex entertainment industry which flourished on the river during these decades.ⁱⁱⁱ

Collingwood Beach was designed with different clientele in mind. Collingwood was one node on a network of beaches that competed in the nineteenth century excursion industry. Customers boarded steamboats at urban wharfs for a day of scenic views and picnicking on remote beaches. By the turn of the twentieth century, resort destinations spanned both the Virginia and Maryland sides of the Potomac, reaching as far south as Leonardtown, Maryland.^iv

The reputation for debauchery held by the shores of the Potomac was widespread. Excursion entrepreneurs were careful about how trips and destinations were advertised to the public. At Marshall Hall—a Maryland destination across the river from Mount Vernon—visitors were held to a code of conduct. One boat vowed that it would allow “positively no improper characters” aboard excursions.^v

At the height of Jim Crow’s influence, mixed-race usage of recreational facilities was classified as improper. Some facilities allowed Black customers to buy excursion tickets only for certain offseason dates or to make use of separate, segregated facilities. Others (like Marshall Hall) chose not to do business with Black people at all.^vi But as excursion destinations proliferated on the Potomac, newcomers to the industry sought to find customers in what had become a crowded field. Soliciting business from urban Black communities was a promising source of potential profit.^vii

In 1888, a white steamboat captain named Levin J Woolen leased Collingwood Beach. Collingwood was furnished with a pavilion, bathhouse and amusement park rides.^{viii ix} Woolen advertised cruises to the resort aboard his boat, the Pilot Boy, among African Americans in Washington, DC.^x

The Pilot Boy was reserved by Black churches, fraternal groups and mutual aid societies.^xi Others in the excursion industry noticed Woolen’s success and duplicated his business model. Moonlight excursions, which were popular among Black customers, became increasingly common. These allowed excursionists an opportunity to enjoy music and dance on the Potomac after working long hours in the city.^xii

Woolen and others in the industry oversold tickets to board Black excursion boats. Sometimes, ticket sales more than doubled the legal capacity of vessels, making it impossible for paying customers to board. Black social groups who had reserved excursion boats complained that rather than enforcing standards of conduct among passengers, white managers of Black excursion facilities actively encouraged drinking and gambling. Stories of crime, violence and police activity at Collingwood Beach and Notley Hall (a nearby Black excursion destination in Maryland) filled columns of local newspapers. The press nicknamed the sites Razor Beach in reference to the well-publicized killings that took place on them.^{xiii xiv}

Bawdy tales of Razor Beach conformed to preexisting white stereotypes about working class Black people and entertainment venues on the Potomac River. For African Americans, these developments were cause for consternation. Some inveighed against continued patronage of the excursion industry, referring to boat rides and days at the beach as a waste of time and money.^xv Others decried the white-owned industry as exploitative and indifferent to the needs of its Black customers.^xvi

One solution was for African American entrepreneurs to found and manage Black excursion businesses of their own. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many African Americans viewed investments in property and ownership of businesses as the most promising route to prosperity for Blacks in the United States. Without the capital or connections necessary to compete in high overhead industries, investing in real estate and entertainment was the strategy most often pursued by aspiring entrepreneurs in urban Black communities.^xvii A Black-operated steamboat company would theoretically be better attuned to the desires of its customer base than white-owned competitors and poised to make inroads on a lucrative market.^xviii

In May of 1894, John W Patterson incorporated the People’s Transportation Company. Patterson was a Christian minister and aspiring Black businessman from Washington, DC. He sold shares in the company to local Black churchgoers with the goal of raising $25,000, enough money to buy The Lady of the Lake, a defunct steamboat. Once The Lady of the Lake was acquired, Patterson planned for her to sail to Glymont (near Indian Head, Maryland) on Black excursions and to haul freight along the Potomac to Norfolk, Virginia.^xix

When Patterson’s fundraising push fell $12,000 shy of his goal, he convinced partners to buy additional shares in the People’s Transportation Company on credit issued by the company. This enabled him to purchase The Lady of the Lake and start doing business. Patterson told investors that future profits from their shares in the People’s Transportation Company would wash out their debt to the company.^xx

By late July, it was clear that shareholders’ return on investment in People’s Transportation Company would be much more modest than Patterson had projected. White-owned steamboat companies threatened to fire dockworkers who handled freight hauled by The Lady of the Lake. They retained the business of Black excursionists by offering reserving organizations donations in exchange for their continued patronage. Patterson told investors who had purchased shares in People’s Transportation Company on credit that no dividends were forthcoming and that payment on their shares was now due.^xxi

A Washington newspaper excoriated Patterson as a conman and blasted People’s Transportation Company as a fraud. In spring 1895, a group of Patterson’s former partners created the National Steamboat Company, a competitor with a business model similar to that of the People’s Transportation Company.^xxii

Desperate to keep pace with his new competition, Patterson leased Collingwood Beach for the summer of 1895. He renamed the resort Douglass Beach in honor of Frederick Douglass. The Lady of the Lake had been destroyed by a fire in February. To ferry crowds to Douglass Beach, Patterson put a down payment on the Jane Moseley, a high capacity steamboat from Baltimore, Maryland. Patterson could not afford to mortgage or buy the ship outright. Instead, Patterson acquired the Jane Moseley under a contract that stated the boat’s seller, Isaac Tibbert, would retain control of the vessel and her crew until Patterson had paid for the boat in full via several sequential installments.^xxiii

Patterson began to prepare People’s Transportation Company for a busy summer. But when reservation dates arrived in May, BF Kirby, the captain of the Jane Moseley, refused to dock her at Douglass Beach, citing safety concerns with the beach’s pier. Patterson found a way to transport passengers from the Jane Moseley to the shores of Douglass Beach without requiring Kirby to dock there.^xxiv Then, on Decoration Day (Memorial Day), Kirby refused even to embark on the Potomac River with the Jane Moseley at all, leaving more than three thousand of Patterson’s paying customers “angry and disappointed.”^xxv Patterson attempted to fire the ship’s captain, but Kirby told Patterson that Patterson did not have any authority over Kirby or the Jane Moseley’s crew. Patterson had not yet paid for the Jane Moseley in full. As a result, Kirby was employed not by Patterson, but by Tibbert, the boat’s legal owner, who had instructed Kirby not to embark.^xxvi

Tibbert never intended for Patterson to come into full possession of the Jane Moseley. Tibbert had already collected Patterson’s first summer payment of $4,500 towards ownership of the boat. By preventing the Jane Moseley from making trips to Douglass Beach, Tibbert made it impossible for Patterson to operate his business and raise the revenue necessary to make additional payments. This enabled Tibbert to foreclose on the Jane Moseley. In so doing, Tibbert retained the assets he had contracted to Patterson and profited by keeping the money Patterson had already paid him.^xxvii

Just three days after the Decoration Day calamity, the Jane Moseley returned to Baltimore.^xxviii The People’s Transportation Company had no services left to sell. The excursion industry would continue on the Potomac during future decades, but Collingwood Beach was abandoned by 1908. ^xxix For Patterson, it was an ignominious end to a venture that seemed sure to be fruitful at its outset. For his thousands of customers, it was a memorable story of a holiday ruined. For twenty-first century visitors to Collingwood Picnic Area, it is a reminder that rich history may be discovered even in the most unassuming of places.

 

ⁱ Alexandria Gazette. 1889. "Alexandria gazette. [volume], July 03, 1889, Image 3." Library of Congress. July 3. Accessed January 8, 2024.

ⁱⁱ The Washington Critic. 1889. "The Washington critic. [volume], July 03, 1889, Image 1." Library of Congress. July 3. Accessed January 8, 2024.

ⁱⁱⁱ Kahrl, Andrew W. “Corporate Ventures,” Chapter One in The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth in the Coastal South, pg 22–23. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016.

^iv Kahrl, pg 35.

^v Kahrl, pg 24.

^vi Fletcher, P. M. (2015). Chapter 3: Rollin' Down the River, Steamboat-Related Amusement Parks and Excursions. In P. M. Fletcher, Historically African American Leisure Destinations Around Washington, DC (pg 56-57.). Charleston, South Carolina.: The History Press.

^vii Kahrl, pg 24-25.

^viii The Washington Bee. 1889. "The Washington bee. [volume], July 13, 1889, Image 4." Library of Congress. July 13. Accessed January 8, 2024.

^x Kahrl, pg 25.

^xi The Washington Bee. 1888. "The Washington bee. [volume], August 25, 1888, Image 3." Library of Congress. August 25. Accessed January 8, 2024.

^xii Kahrl, pg 25-26.

^xiii Waterbury Evening Democrat. (1888, July 18). Waterbury evening Democrat. [volume], July 18, 1888, Image 1. Retrieved from Library of Congress.

^xiv Kahrl, pg 26-27.

^xv The Washington Bee. 1888. "The Washington bee. [volume], July 21, 1888, Image 3." Library of Congress. July 21. Accessed January 8, 2024.

^xvi Kahrl, pg 27-28.

^xvii Kahrl, pg 20-21.

^xviii Kahrl, pg 28.

^xix Kahrl, pg 28-29.

^xx Kahrl, pg 30.

^xxi Kahrl, pg 30-31.

^xxii Kahrl, pg 31-32.

^xxiii Kahrl, pgs 32, 34, 36.

^xxiv Fletcher, pg 60.

xxv The Washington Times. (1895, May 31). Image 1 of The Washington times (Washington, D.C.), May 31, 1895. Retrieved from Library of Congress.

^xxvi Kahrl, pgs 36-37.

^xxvii Kahrl, pg 37.

^xxviii Kahrl, pg 37.

^xxix Alexandria Times. 2018. "Collingwood Beach: An early African American resort." Office of Historic Alexandria. August 8. Accessed January 8, 2024.