Owners and Tenants, 1819-1956

• Decatur
• Hyde de Neuville
• de Tuyll
• Clay
• Van Buren
• Livingston
• Vaughn
• Gadsby
• Dallas
• Gales
• John & James King
• Appleton
• Orr
• Benjamin
• McBlair
• United States Army
• Edward Beale &
  Mary Beale
• Truxtun Beale
• Marie Beale

TIMELINE OF OWNERS AND TENANTS
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Henry and Lucretia Clay (tenants, 1827-1829)
Enslaved residents including the Dupuy family, Charlotte, Aaron, Charles, and Mary Ann

The election of 1824, a race between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, and Henry Clay, became one of the more controversial elections in American history. Jackson received the majority of the popular vote but lost the election due to a lack of electoral support. Rumors that Adams bribed Clay to give him the crucial vote in Congress he needed to win intensified when Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State. Clay, his wife Lucretia, and likely some of their seven living children moved to Decatur House shortly thereafter.

A close personal friend of Susan Decatur, this American statesman, was likely attracted to the spacious rooms and prime location of Decatur House. The Clays renewed the property’s status in Washington society as a center for entertaining, lavishly furnishing the home and regularly holding large parties on alternate Wednesdays. Though Clay considered the house “the best private dwelling in the city,” his occupancy was cut short in 1828. The presidential election of that year was a bitter re-match between incumbent President Adams and the vengeful Jackson, This time Jackson won the election, and temporarily forced his nemesis Henry
Clay out of Washington. Margaret Bayard Smith, chronicler of Washington society and frequent guest of the Clays, described the family’s masked sadness in the face of this political upheaval, writing that “I could not bear it as well as Mrs. Clay. . . . She received all with smiling politeness and Mr. C. looked gay and was so courteous and gracious, and agreeable, that every
one remarked it and remarked he was determined we should regret him.” A month before leaving Decatur House in March 1829, the Clays sold nearly all their furnishings.

As the Clay family returned to Kentucky to run for the Senate, one of the
women he enslaved remained in Washington to pursue a lawsuit against her owner – a suit for her freedom. This woman, Charlotte Dupuy, lived at Decatur House with her husband Aaron, and two children Charles and Mary Ann. Like many of his enslaved servants, the Dupuy family was brought to Washington from Clay’s Kentucky plantation. Charlotte Dupuy remained at Decatur House brought suit against Clay, residing in the Van Buren household. After losing
her court case in 1830, Dupuy was forcibly removed to New Orleans, where she resided in the household of Clay’s daughter, still separated from her husband and children. Clay finally granted Charlotte Dupuy freedom in 1840.

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