Before the colony of Maryland was established in 1632, the area of today's neighborhood was home to the American Indian, Nacotchtank tribe. Robert Peter and Anthony Holmead, two prominent colonial-era landowners, held the land beneath Adams Morgan when the District of Columbia was created in 1791. At that time, these local tracts sat just above the original planned City of Washington, and were either undeveloped or only lightly farmed. As the population of D.C. expanded, this land was divided into several estates purchased by wealthy residents, including Meridian Hill, Cliffbourne, Holt House, Oak Lawn, Henderson Castle, a part of Kalorama, and the horse farm of William Thornton. After the Civil War, these estates were subdivided and the area slowly grew. Once the city's overall-layout plans were finalized in the 1890s, these various subdivisions, using modern construction techniques, developed more rapidly, and the area of Adams Morgan then grew into several attractive and largely upper- and middle-class neighborhoods.