Rome, Maryland

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Rome, Maryland was the original name of a community which would eventually become Washington, District of Columbia. Specifically, Rome was the original community name of Capitol Hill, upon which the United States Capitol Building sits.

In 1663, the property that would become the Capitol’s site was inscribed in the Maryland property records as “Rome,” its owner a man named Francis Pope. The southern boundary of this property was shaped by a river named for the river that runs through Rome, Italy, the Tiber.

The community was part of the ten mile square tract of land which would become the American capital Washington, D.C., and its owner, Daniel Carroll, transferred the community to the federal government after the amendment to the Constitution sanctioning the building of the new United States capital city was ratified.

Daniel Carroll was the chairman of a three-man commission appointed by President George Washington to find a suitable location for the capital city. A signer of the Declaration of Independence, Daniel Carroll was a Roman Catholic educated by Jesuits in Maryland and France. His brother John Carroll, became the first Catholic bishop in America, presiding over the See of Baltimore, which included Washington, D.C. John Carroll also founded Georgetown University.