For Immediate Release
August 30, 2007
Digital images available
Media Contact:
Melissa Wood (703) 799-5203
mwood@mountvernon.org
Mount Vernon, VA – For the first time in its history as a site open to the public, Mount Vernon will exhibit a Slave Cabin to show how 75-percent of George Washington’s slaves lived. The Slave Cabin will be dedicated on September 19, at 11:00 a.m., with a ceremony that will include descendants of Mount Vernon slaves, musical tributes, and a scholarly keynote address.
The reconstructed 16-by-14-foot slave cabin is an important domestic space that further illustrates the story of slavery at Mount Vernon. Previously, home life was represented by the Slave Quarters, a dormitory-style brick structure where enslaved workers on the Mansion House Farm lived. By contrast, the wooden Slave Cabin represents the small, substandard dwellings of approximately 235 slaves who lived on one of Washington’s four outlying farms.
“After conducting extensive research and archaeological excavations, we determined that it was critical to portray how the majority of slaves lived at Mount Vernon,” said Dennis Pogue, director of preservation. “In order to fully understand what their lives were like, visitors must see how they lived.”
The Slave Cabin at Mount Vernon is located near the 16-sided barn at the George Washington: Pioneer Farmer Site, a four-acre farm that demonstrates how crops were grown and harvested in the 18th century. Because the barn was originally located about five miles from the Mansion on Dogue Run Farm, the nearby Slave Cabin represents housing from that same area of the Estate. Silla and Slammin’ Joe, a married couple, and their six children were a slave family who lived on Dogue Run Farm, and it is their home that will be interpreted to the public.
The Slave Cabin joins the Slave Quarters, Slave Memorial, a slavery gallery in the Donald W. Reynolds Education Center, and tours, public programs, and educational outreach, as means by which the story of slavery is told to visitors.
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