Blacksmith
The Blacksmith Shop was essential to the running of the plantation and vital to Washington’s business endeavors. Records indicate that as early as 1755 a blacksmith shop was located along the north lane, about 200 feet from the Mansion. Most of the smiths who worked for Washington were enslaved, except for a Dutch (or German) immigrant named Dominicus Gubner.
Many of the tasks performed here were relatively mundane: making nails and hooks, mending well-worn pots and pans, and crafting various farm tools. Washington also challenged blacksmiths to create a plow he had designed and to make intricate parts for pistols and rifles. In his rare spare time, the blacksmith did small jobs for Washington’s neighbors in order to increase the estate’s income.
This reconstruction of the Blacksmith Shop, completed in 2009, is on the site of the original building. An excavation by Mount Vernon’s archaeologists, along with period paintings and other primary sources, provided valuable clues about the structure’s design. Letters, account ledgers, and other written sources detail the tools Washington purchased to outfit the shop and the types of repair work done there.
Dung Repository
This building illustrates George Washington’s dedication to finding ways to improve soil fertility and to making Mount Vernon a model of progressive farming. The “Repository for Dung,” as it was known, was designed to compost animal droppings and other organic waste for use as fertilizer in the nearby gardens and orchards.
The original 31-by-12-foot open-walled structure was erected in 1787. It was reconstructed in 2001, based on Washington’s notes, historical documents discussing fertilizer production, and two years of archaeological excavation. Archaeologists revealed remnants of the brick foundation walls along the virtually intact cobblestone floor; these were incorporated into the reconstructed building. Washington’s dung repository is thought to be the first structure in the nation specifically designed for composting.
Kitchen
The kitchen was used to prepare all meals served to George and Martha Washington and their many guests. Cooking in Mount Vernon’s kitchen was hot, smoky, demanding, and skilled work. Enslaved cooks like Doll, Hercules, Nathan, and Lucy, arose at four each morning to light the fire in the oven and prepare for the meals to be served in the Mansion. Their duties could continue well into the evening. The Washingtons placed great trust in their cooks, whose talent was evident in visitors’ descriptions of sumptuous meals.
Under Martha Washington’s supervision, cooks planned menus and selected ingredients for each day’s meals. Enslaved laborers on the estate grew and harvested most of the Washingtons’ food: wheat and corn from the fields, fresh vegetables from the garden, fruit from the orchards, fish caught in the Potomac, and smoked ham from hogs raised on site. Imported luxuries like tea, coffee, chocolate, olives, oranges, and wine supplemented homegrown ingredients.
Their role in the kitchen allowed enslaved cooks to shape the tastes of the household—and the region. Many iconic southern dishes bear the influence of West African cuisine, from stews like gumbo to ingredients like okra, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and collard greens.
The placement of the kitchen at Mount Vernon was dictated by a series of functional, social, and environmental factors. The concern for safety from potential fires, the desire to avoid kitchen heat, and the need to avoid the smell of food cooking in the household were of significant importance. In addition, there was a desire to separate domestic functions from the main house in order to reinforce the segregation of enslaved workers' activities from those of the planter family...
Smokehouse
The Smokehouse was used to smoke meat over a fire pit. Vast quantities of pork—mainly bacon and ham—were smoked to feed the family and Mount Vernon’s guests. Fish, fowl, and the meat of larger animals were eaten fresh as well as cured to last longer.
After enslaved workers salted or pickled the meat, they hung it on the rails inside the smokehouse above a smoldering fire that burned in the pit at the center of the building. For long-term storage after smoking, the meats remained hanging or were packed in barrels filled with ashes. During the curing process, meat was locked in the smokehouse to prevent theft. This precaution was not always successful, however. In May 1795, while George Washington was living in Philadelphia, his farm manager William Pearce wrote to inform him that “some person ripped a plank off the Back part of the smoke House and Took out several pieces of Bacon. . . . I have not been able to find out yet who It is.”
According to Washington, Virginia ladies took special pride in the quality of the ham and bacon produced on their plantations. He and his wife even sent these meats as gifts to friends in far-off Europe. In 1786 Washington wrote the Marquis de Lafayette that Mrs. Washington “had packed & sent . . . a barrel of Virginia Hams. I do not know that they are better, or so good as you make in France but as they are of our own manufacture . . . and we recollect that it is a dish of which you are fond.”
Clerks Quarters
Clerk's Quarters
"To copy and record letters and other Papers, to keep Books... and an account of articles received from and delivered to the Farms... would constitute your principal employment."
George Washington to Albin Rawlins, February 12, 1798
After his retirement from the presidency, George Washington hired Albin Rawlins to perform clerical duties and act as his business agent, especially when travel was required. Rawlins, a bachelor, found this room and the loft above to be sufficient living space. The quarters were convenient to the Mansion study, from which Washington could quickly summon his clerk, and the Mansion cellar where the white servants' dining room was located.
Wash House
In the Wash House, enslaved laundresses performed weekly washings for the Washington family, long-term guests, hired white servants, and overseers.
Laundry in the 18th century was a three-day, labor-intensive process reserved for household linens, like sheets and tablecloths, and clothing worn closest to the skin: shirts, shifts, and stockings. Many people contributed garments to each laundry load, so clothes and linens were marked with the owner’s initials or name in ink or cross-stitch. At Mount Vernon, as at many other elite 18th-century houses, the employment contracts of unmarried, white male servants included the provision of laundry services.1 A married man’s laundry fell to his wife.2
George and Martha Washington’s famous hospitality included providing laundry services for Mount Vernon guests staying longer than one week (the typical turn-around time of the Wash House.) The constant stream of guests created a heavy workload for the enslaved laundresses.
Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, a visiting Polish Nobleman who stayed at the plantation for two weeks, noted that the enslaved workers “took care of me, of my linen, of my clothes,” treating him “not as a stranger but as a member of the family.”3 ...
Barn and Riding Chair
Riding Chair
As a young man, George Washington acquired a riding chair similar to the 18th century example you see here (alongside a modern reproduction). Popular in America and England, riding chairs could travel country lanes and back roads more easily than bulkier four-wheeled chariots and coaches. Riding chairs were relatively inexpensive in comparison with other wheeled vehicles, and the form was used by members of all social classes as an easy way to travel the rough Virginia terrain.
Stove Room
Stove Room
The stove room provided heat that palms, orange trees, lemon trees, and other tropical plants in George Washington's greenhouse needed to survive Virginia winters. Hot air from the stove flowed through a series of flues into the greenhouse floor next door. Fueling this fire consumed extensive quantities of wood, cut and split by Mount Vernon slaves. Keeping the fire going day and night required an enslaved man or boy to sleep in this room from late fall to early spring. The stove room and sleeping quarters on either side also helped to insulate the greenhouse from cold outside air.
Shoemakers Shop
The Shoemaker's Shop
Mount Vernon's shoemakers were kept busy making and repairing shoes for the nearly 100 adult slaves who labored on George Washington's farms. Every field hand received one pair of shoes each fall. In 1799, the enslaved shoemaker was William "Billy" Lee, the personal attendant who accompanied Washington during the Revolutionary War. Lee learned the trade of shoemaking after seriously injuring both knees.
He and several assistants also fixed saddles and the Washington family's shoes. They did not make shoes for the Washingtons, who ordered finer footwear from local merchants or London manufacturers.
Comments