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Privy chamber
Enslaved house servants labored in both large rural plantation households and large urban houses, as well as in urban taverns and hotels. They performed all the jobs involved with keeping a private or public house running, which included the labor inside the house as well as the care of riding horses and carriages. Under the supervision of the mistress of the house, servants divided the work as ased, with many beginning as young apprentices and advancing up the hierarchy, often inheriting the positions of relatives.
Letters and other written records kept by slaveholders rarely mention the names of enslaved house servants. One notable exception can be found in the records of Monticellothe Albemarle County home of Thomas Jefferson.
Other reminiscences of enslaved house servants also have survived. She is believed to have spied on behalf of her Union-sympathizing owner, Elizabeth Van Lew. The stories of both Minkins and Richards appeared in newspapers. The experience of Sally Cottrell Colewho served the domestic needs of faculty at the University servants chamber Virginia, can be pieced together from public records and in the letters of her owners. Enslaved house servants performed the wide array of daily tasks involved in running often large households that frequently hosted visitors.
The larger the household, the more specialized the jobs of its enslaved laborers.
In small households, servants took on many duties at once, and in both contexts they were always on call to care for their masters or mistressesoften sleeping on pallets on the floors of bedrooms or hallways. Among their many tasks, house servants were charged with maintaining fires. At a mansion such as Monticello, for instance, there were as many as eleven fires burning during the winter months. Houseboys and housemaids, some as young as eight years old, every day hauled firewood into the house and ashes out of it, in addition to servants chamber interior hearths and blacking andirons and the tools associated with indoor fires.
Enslaved house servants
They also carried fresh water to bedroom ewers and pitchers for washing, and emptied the dirty water after use. They emptied and rinsed chamber pots for family and guests.
In some settings such utensils had to be emptied into servants chamber common bucket and carried some way from the house to be emptied. Each bedroom and hallway was swept and dusted at least every other day and fresh linens put on beds likely once a week. Servants regularly swept and then, on hands and knees, scrubbed and waxed the floors. With no screens to cover open windows, insects and dust made such tasks even more frequent and onerous during the summer months and led to yet another job: covering often costly art and furniture with gauze or linen sheets to protect them in between uses or the arrival of visitors, when the coverings were removed.
Laundresses took care of washing, rinsing, drying, and basic ironing. That ongoing chore was done over a several-day cycle. First came a day of washing—which included the repeated hauling, boiling, and dumping of water until the cleaning was complete—then a day or more in the winter of drying, and, finally, a day of ironing.
They generally possessed the sewing skills necessary to make minor repairs. Seamstresses sewed sheets and towels and repaired all rips and tears.
In addition, seamstresses cut, sewed, and repaired clothing for the larger enslaved community. This could be a demanding task if a report from Mount Vernon was typical. The image was found in the studio belonging to Edward V. Valentine —a prominent sculptor in the Virginia capital who was renowned for his busts and statues of Confederate heroes that advanced the Lost Cause point of view. Lee at his tomb, also in Lexington, and the Robert E. Lee statue at the U. Capitol in Washington, D. Valentine referred to this daguerreotype as "My Mammy-Aunt Sallie.
This child-sized wooden chair and a doll cradle, measuring seven by fifteen and a half inches long, was made in by servants chamber enslaved person named Ben for the granddaughter of his owner, Jordan Edwards, of Sussex County.
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The soldily constructed furniture was made from yellow pine and painted black. An enslaved house servant identified only as "Mammy Sophie" poses with the child Mary Heath Davenport in this daguerreotype portrait probably taken in Richmond about Ellen Barnes, an enslaved servant in the household of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, holds his youngest daughter, Varina Anne "Winnie," in her lap. The Davis family referred to Barnes as "Mammy Nellie. Butlers and cooks communicated with their masters or mistresses during the day about their responsibilities, the of guests to be expected for meals, and the food stuffs necessary servants chamber various menus, which were planned several days in advance.
Servants' quarters
Butlers directed the work of the house staff, announced meals and sometimes served in the dining room, and answered the door to guests. It was necessary for butlers to understand the social status of guests—whether a new arrival was a member of the family, a dignitary, or an important local person—in order to lead them to the appropriate reception space in the house. A cook was given charge of the kitchen, with one or more scullions working servants chamber him or her.
The job of a scullion was, above all, to obey the cook, but also to kill, scald, gut, and prepare chickens, wash and pare vegetables, feed servants chamber fires, clean pots and pans, stir pots, rotate spits, and to learn the kitchen skills that might allow them to apprentice to the cook. The kitchen staff produced the major daily meal along with breakfast, and a later evening tea or supper. They might be called upon to cook meals for any invalids in the household, as the sick were thought to need special foods.
All servants who directly interacted with whites in the public rooms such as the dining room or the parlor were expected to be ready to serve but always discreet. Mistresses generally insisted that their servants not appear to be listening to the conversations of white people except to be always ready to take orders. Houseboys and maids, with their lo of firewood or laundry, generally stepped to the side of hallways and kept their eyes lowered when encountering family or guests.
Maids and servants in dream of the red chamber: individuality and the social order
Household work was so necessary and time consuming that even during the wheat harvest at Monticello in Junewhen Jefferson tasked all available hands to bring in the servants chamber, the women of the Hemings family were excepted. At that time they formed the core of the household staff, expertly performing difficult work. As the harvest was brought in, they kept the mansion running smoothly, tending to the white family and guests, preparing meals, washing laundry, and supervising children. They handled the firewood, slops, and foodstuffs, swept the floors, made the beds, and served all meals.
Enslaved house servants were members of the larger slave community. More of them were women than men, and therefore tended to partner with and marry men who labored outside of the house, including the yard staff and skilled tradesmen such as wheelwrights or carpenters.
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Other enslaved men and women found spouses at other plantations. While many house servants slept where they worked, others, especially on large plantations, lived in dwellings that were located nearer the mansion house than those of field slaves. Because of their proximity, these houses were generally better built, with wooden frames and masonry chimneys and foundations.
House servants tended to receive slightly better cloth and clothing allowances than other enslaved laborers, although this likely varied depending on the size of the home and the likelihood of outside visitors.
Servants' quarters
Slaveholders occasionally purchased muslin, Irish linen, and calicos for housemaids, while shoes and bought stockings gave their servants chamber a finished look. In general, the clothing of enslaved laborers was expected to be plain, simple, and not attract notice, although butlers or dining-room waiters may have worn suits that had the look of a livery.
The enslaved men and women who worked in the house appeared to have received similar food rations as other slaves. Monticello records show the same weekly issues of corn and meat to both house servants and field hands. And work in the kitchen did not mean access to leftover food. The leftovers from the dinner were reserved for other family meals and were likely not consumed by the kitchen staff. Instead, like all enslaved laborers, the household servants sought to balance their diet through gardening and the raising of chickens for eggs and meat.
King also recounts the horrific punishment she received as for stealing a piece of candy from the kitchen. Others may have let their servants make arrangements within family networks to cook enough to feed them and their young children every day. Perhaps the circumstance that most separated household servants from other enslaved people was their daily, almost constant interaction with white slaveholders.
This made enslaved women and girls especially vulnerable to sexual predation by masters, the sons of masters, overseers, and male guests. The federal servants chamber countedmixed-race men, women, and children, the vast majority of whom lived in the South, a circumstance that clearly points to systematic abuse of black women and girls.
But contrary to popular tradition, house servants at elite plantations were not more likely to be mixed race. The historian Winthrop Jordan speculated that the proportion of enslaved people who were mixed race was about the same among household servants as in the larger enslaved population. Thus in some regions of the South and at some elite plantations they would have been very common, at others not.
Being noticeable and remarked upon by visiting whites and possibly teased or bullied by enslaved peers has given the mixed race house servant more of an historical emphasis than the actual s warrant. Encyclopedia Virginia Grady Ave. Virginia Humanities acknowledges the Monacan Nationthe original people of the land and waters of our home in Charlottesville, Virginia.
We invite you to learn more about Indians in Virginia in our Encyclopedia Virginia. Contributor: Leni Sorensen.
Possible Portrait of Hercules. Enslaved Girl. Sally Boles Gladman, probably a slave in the household of the Valentine family in Richmond, is pictured in a daguerreotype made about Cloth Samples for Slave Clothing. Virginian Luxuries.
