Julia Dorsey (suffragist)

She and her husband, Ignatius Dorsey, were African American signers of an 1877 petition in Washington D.C. calling for women's suffrage.

In 1880 Ignatius Dorsey purchased a lot of land on nearby Nicholas Avenue for $200 and built a two-story house.

The couple had no children at this date; Julia Dorsey was recorded as keeping house, while her husband worked as a laborer.

[2] The Dorseys befriended the Douglass family in the Hillsdale neighborhood, now Anacostia, and came to support the woman suffrage movement.

[3] Julia and Ignatius Dorsey are not seen in the 1900 census, but she was a 62-year-old widow in D.C. in 1910, renting rooms to five Black lodgers.