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Map of the District of Columbia with the original jurisdiction of Washington County highlighted in red

The County of Washington is one of the five political entities contained within the geographic region comprising what was originally the 10-square-mile District of Columbia. These were the City of Alexandria, the County of Alexandria, Georgetown, the City of Washington, and the County of Washington. Washington County was that area of the District that had been ceded by Maryland to the federal government (excluding Georgetown and the City of Washington).

In an 1846 act, Congress returned the Virginia portions of the District to Virginia, leaving Washington County as the sole county in the District of Columbia.

Primarily, the county consisted of farmland, much of which was part of a ring of large country estates owned by wealthy farmers and statesmen. These included Pleasant Plains, the estate of the Holmead family; Edgewood, home of Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase; and Petworth, the estate of Col. John Tayloe. Also established in Washington County was the U.S. Soldiers' Retirement Home, where Abraham Lincoln lived during his summers as President. Thus despite its size, the population of Washington County was scant.

Because of its small and scattered population, the county was governed by a group of Justices of the Peace (appointed by the President, who also had the discretion to determine the number of justices), acting in the same capacity as county commissioners and met on a Levy Court council. The Justices were subject to the Maryland state laws governing county officials.[1]

During the Civil War, Washington County was host to a circle of defensive forts that made the Washington the most heavily fortified city on Earth.[2]

After the war, many of the old estates in Washington County were bought by real estate speculators and developed into suburbs for the growing capital. Among the earliest were the villages of Le Droit Park and Mount Pleasant, the latter becoming the first "streetcar" suburb. Uniontown and Barry Farm, a settlement for freedmen, developed on the other side of the Anacostia River.

In 1871, Congress enacted a Territory Act for the District by which "... all that part of the territory of the United States included within the limits of the District of Columbia be, and the same is hereby, created into a government by the name of the District of Columbia, by which name it is hereby constituted a body corporate for municipal purposes[.]" (The 1871 act merged the corporate charters of Georgetown and the City of Washington and brought the entire District of Columbia together under a single eleven-member legislature, including two representatives for Georgetown and two for the County of Washington.)

Washington County ceased to exist in 1878, when Congress passed the DC Organic Act that merged all of the District of Columbia into the City of Washington. (Georgetown remained nominally separate until 1895.)

• History of Washington, D.C.