Caroline Read French

Biography

Caroline Read French was born in 1820 and came of age in the nation’s capital during a time of great tension and transformation. She devoted herself to the quiet work of keeping family ties strong and supporting neighbors as Washington swelled into a center of governance and society.

She passed in 1884 and was laid to rest in Rock Creek Cemetery, where visitors still find her among the hallowed grounds that remember those who shaped the capital’s nineteenth-century community.