The Nacotchtank/Anacostin and Piscataway people inhabited land along the Potomac River when the English began exploring the area in the early 1600s. Infectious diseases introduced by Europeans and armed conflict that resulted from indigenous people defending their ancestral lands devastated these communities. These events combined with unscrupulous land deals that indigenous people were forced to accept provided the English with the means to claim ownership of land and grant it to colonists.

One of these grants included the original tract of land occupied by Tudor Place, which was part of the “Rock of Dumbarton” (originally, “Dunbarton”) tract in George Beall’s Second Addition to Georgetown, an area also known as Georgetown Heights. In 1794, Beall’s grandson, Thomas Beall, sold a portion of his land to Francis Lowndes, a merchant and importer from Bladensburg, Maryland. Lowndes owned the property for eleven years during which he constructed the two wings of the present historic house. Lowndes intended to complete the house but never did, instead selling the property to Martha and Thomas Peter. Martha Parke Custis was Martha Washington’s granddaughter who married Thomas Peter.

In 1805 when Martha and Thomas Peter purchased the property, the estate was 8 1/2 acres and encompassed the entire block bounded by Congress Street, Valley Street, Stoddert Street, and Road Street. The couple paid $8,000 for the plot. “Tudor Place” — a name that first appears in the public record in 1811 — remain a mystery.

Tudor Place was designed to impress and entertain but also, in its classical design references, to pay homage to the nascent American Republic. Its structures began more humbly, however and tax records show, it contained eight buildings and service structures.

Moving from an elegant K Street townhouse, the Peters and their children settled into one of these structures, a two-story Flemish bond brick building that would later become the existing house’s west wing. Measuring 16 by 34 feet, it was two rooms deep; a second two-story brick structure of the same size stood to its east and functioned as a stable and carriage house.

While Tudor Place supported some subsistence uses, including limited grazing of livestock, a smokehouse, and a kitchen garden, substantial provisions for the household came from the Peters’ extensive farm-holdings in what is now Seneca, Maryland. These goods were transported to Georgetown primarily by enslaved African Americans, as until the Civil War or shortly before it, the Peters relied on slave labor to maintain their properties and households.