Existing comment:
"Lodged chiefly in houses of their own building"
By the last year of George Washington's life, 318 enslaved African-American workers lived on the Mount Vernon plantation. More than 200 of those individuals worked on the four outlying farms, where they tended 3200 acres of fields. Another 11 men supported the work at the gristmill and the distillery. The remaining 87 slaves lived at the Mansion House Farm, where they served the Washingtons as house servants and performed various crafts, such as blacksmithing, spinning, and carpentry.
Cabins made of logs and consisting of one or two rooms were the standard type of housing for the slave families living on the farms. In 1793, Washington remarked that these houses were "chiefly.... of their own building." The photograph of a derelict building identified as a Mount Vernon slave house served as the model for designing a replica cabin that was erected in 2007. |