We entered one of the huts of the Blacks, for one can not call them by the name of houses. They are more miserable than the most miserable of the cottages of our peasants.
- JULIAN URSYN NIEMCEWICZ, MOUNT VERNON VISITOR FROM POLAND, 1798
The standard slave quarter on Mount Vernon’s five farms was a rough one-room log structure with a wooden chimney, measuring about 225 square feet. Some dwellings were slightly larger and divided into two rooms, each housing a different family. As many as eight people could be crowded into a single room. They slept on pallets or on the dirt floor. On each farm, the cabins were placed in a cluster near the overseer’s house.
On Mansion House Farm, many enslaved house servants and craftsmen lived in larger barracks-style quarters: first the two-story House for Families and, after 1792, in the wings of the brick greenhouse, which held bunkrooms. These structures provided efficient housing for the large number of laborers, primarily men, who worked near the Mansion.
"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."
- Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Mount Vernon visitor, 1798
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