At the time of George Washington's death in 1799, 317 enslaved people made up roughly 90% of the population of his properties, which were known as the the five farms that comprised Mount Vernon.1 At each property, quarters for enslaved people marked the landscape. These areas are best described as clusters of dwellings in which enslaved people lived in a community, and these quarters were often organized by family. However, at some farms such as Mansion House Farm, featured shared living quarters known as the Greenhouse, which were arranged by gender to house those enslaved there, and "Quarters [or House] for Families."
The largest area of enslaved quarters was at the Mansion House Farm, where around ninety enslaved people resided. The others ranged in size from Dogue Run Farm, with forty-five enslaved residents on 650 acres of land, to fifty-seven at River Farm, containing 1,207 acres of arable land, forty-one enslaved people at Muddy Hole Farm which had 476 acres, and seventy-six at the 928-acre Union Farm.
There were three basic types of housing used on the estate by the enslaved community, which varied considerably in their style, quality of construction, and degree of privacy. The majority of the people who worked in the house and skilled workers on the Mansion House Farm were assigned quarters that were considerably better in terms of construction quality than the residences of enslaved people on the outlying farms. However, considering privacy, enslaved laborers completing tasks related to agriculture on the four outlying farms had an advantage in terms of privacy. These quarters were housed no more than two families and were a greater distance from the supervision of a white overseer or farm manager.
The most substantial buildings used for housing the enslaved population were the quarters at George Washington's Mansion House Farm. For approximately thirty years, beginning in the 1760s, the principal dwelling for enslaved people was a two-story frame building, constructed on a brick foundation, with two chimneys, one on each end, and glazed windows. This structure was known as the "Quarters [or House] for Families" and was located on the service lane north of the Mansion.
These quarters were eventually torn down in the 1790s. Washington wrote to his farm manager Anthony Whitting, "the Sooner the old Quarter is pulled down the better," and followed up with plans for enslaved carpenters to construct a new quarters and four garden houses.2 However, from around 1793 until Washington's death in 1799, most of the enslaved people at the Mansion House Farm lived in the brick wings flanking the Greenhouse, in four large rectangular rooms each measuring thirty-three feet, nine inches by seventeen feet, nine inches, a total living space of about 600 square feet. Each of the rooms had a fireplace on one of its shorter walls and glazed windows. Others enslaved at Mansion House Farm lived in rooms over the kitchen building and some families had individual cabins nearby.
The standard form of housing for enslaved people on George Washington's four outlying farms was described by one eighteenth-century visitor as "log-houses."3 These cabins were daubed with mud to keep out draughts and rain and often had exterior wooden chimneys that were fashioned of sticks plastered with mud. There appear to have been two sizes of cabins used as quarters for enslaved people, small ones made up of one room and a larger "duplex type" for two families, consisting of two rooms, each with a separate entrance divided by a chimney in the middle. Most living quarters were poorly constructed and leaky, described by one observer visiting Mount Vernon in 1797 as being "wretched." The visitor further explained, "We entered one of the huts of the Blacks...The husband and wife sleep on a mean pallet, the children on the ground; a very bad fireplace, some utensils for cooking, but in the middle of this poverty some cups and a teapot."4
Notes:
1."Washington’s Slave List, June 1799," Founders Online, National Archives.
2. “From George Washington to Anthony Whitting, 14 October 1792,” Founders Online, National Archives.
3. Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Under Their Vine and Fig Tree: Travels through America in 1797-1799, 1805 with some further account of life in New Jersey, ed. Metchie J.E. Budka (Elizabeth, New Jersey: The Grassman Publishing Company, Inc., 1965), 100.
4. Ibid.
Bibliography:
Macomber, Walter M. "The Rebuilding of the Greenhouse-Quarters," Mount Vernon Annual Report for 1952. Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, 1953, 19-26.
Pogue, Dennis J. "Slave Lifeways at Mount Vernon," in Slavery at the Home of George Washington ed. Philip J. Schwarz. Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, 2001,111-135.
Ragsdale, Bruce A., Washington at the Plow: The Founding Farmer and the Question of Slavery. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.
Schoelwer, Susan P., ed. Lives Bound Together: Slavery at George Washington's Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon, VA: Mount Vernon Ladies Association, 2016.
Thompson, Mary V. “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2019.
