AJ: Pierre L'Enfant, as much as his plan is celebrated here, he did not have a place for a burial ground and so a group of citizens purchased this parcel of land here and it became Washington Parish Burial Ground.

We're about a mile and a half, two miles away from the Capitol and back then, Congressmen, when they die, there's no place for them to go because there's no embalming, there's no refrigeration, and importantly there's no transportation infrastructure to get them home.

Washington Parish Burial Ground was the first available option for them.

They started interring a lot more of these Congressmen and it really became the first cemetery of national memory.

And that led to the name by the 1820s of Congressional Cemetery.

The cemetery's history reflects our nation's history and it really allows us this remarkable portal into the past, almost like a museum of people.

We have Belva Lockwood.

She's the first woman to legally run for president and we of course have J. Edgar Hoover, first director of the FBI.

We have Mathew Brady, the father of photojournalism.

What would a Mathew Brady memorial be without a camera?

And we have John Philip Sousa, "The March King," the author of so many iconic pieces of American march music.

And every year on his birthday, November 6, the band that he led, the Marine band, actually comes here and plays his own music for him.

(applause) JACKIE: Our cemetery is really more than a cemetery.

We're a community hub, we're a place for people to gather and we're a place that offers really special and unique programming for our community.

In the 1980s and 1990s the cemetery really was an unsavory place and at that time a number of neighbors decided that they wanted to save the place.

And so they started walking their dogs through the property and then taxing each other for the privilege to do so.

They took those membership dues and then used that to be able to cut the grass and maintain the property.

Today, the K9 Corps is our membership program.

We have about 1,100 dogs who are members and we are also very well known for our DC Beekeeping Alliance partnership.

BARRY: Congressional Cemetery is an amazing place for beekeeping.

You have the Anacostia River right here on your left.

Bees like to forage within two miles and there's so many flowering trees here.

You couldn't manufacture something that happened naturally.

And a typical honeyhive might contain eight or ten frames and we can remove those frames and add frames.

It's like a log in a tree, except the tree doesn't move, but we do.

Every year we harvest honey.

We lift up each of the frames and there's wax over all the honey.

The volunteers scrape the wax off, then it goes into a centrifugal force barrel.

And as we turn the crank, the frames go around, the honey is thrown to the side walls, comes down to the bottom.

We open up the spigot and the honey just flows out.

We bottle it right here on the premises and it's ready to be consumed immediately.

AJ: What I think really brings us together and unites us is community.

We are a place for the community to come together.