The Mount Vernon estate was divided into five separate farms, each of which was managed by an overseer who was either a hired free, white male, or one of George Washington's African slaves. These overseers were often supervised by a farm manager who reported to Washington on a weekly basis.
The enslaved population at Mount Vernon typically worked from the time the sun rose in the morning until it set in the evening, with about two hours off for meals in between. During the winter, slaves toiled for around eight hours each day, while in the summer the workday might have been as long as fourteen hours. Sunday was a day off for everyone at Mount Vernon, both free persons and slaves. Throughout the year slaves were also given a few holidays off, including Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. During certain times of the year when jobs such as fishing or harvesting had to be completed in a limited time period, the slaves had to work through their days off, though they were often reimbursed either through cash payments or another day off when the job was finished.
The jobs done by enslaved workers at Mount Vernon varied considerably from person to person. Of the 316 slaves working on the Estate in 1799, 42% were either too old or too young to work. Of the remaining people, 28% were skilled laborers working as house servants, blacksmiths, barrel makers, cooks, dairy maids, gardeners, millers, distillers, seamstresses, shoemakers, spinners, knitters, ditch diggers, wagon drivers, or postillions driving the carriage. Most of the skilled slaves were men, who held nearly 75% of these jobs. A significant number of the skilled slaves appear to have been of mixed race, a fact that was frequently noted by visitors to the estate.
Almost three-quarters of the working slaves at Mount Vernon labored in the fields. Over 61% of the field slaves were women who hoed and ploughed, harvested, and built fences around the Estate. Slaves who were physically disabled in some way were often given less physically demanding jobs such as making clothing or shoes, or picking the seeds of wild onions out of the oat seeds.1
Notes:
1. The statistics here are culled from the 1799 slave list compiled at Mount Vernon.
Bibliography:
Pogue, Dennis J. "Archaeology of Plantation Life: Another Perspective on George Washington's Mount Vernon," Virginia Cavalcade, Autumn 1991, 79.
Boston King, profiled in the Yorktown Victory Center’s Witnesses to Revolution Gallery, was apprenticed to a carpenter in South Carolina and escaped enslavement in 1780, joining the British side, where he worked for a time as a boat pilot.
Welcome to All About the Revolution. Our topics range from historical insights to updates on plans for the next generation of the Yorktown Victory Center. We encourage your thoughts and reactions to each post.
What Kinds of Jobs Did Enslaved African Americans Do?
In the 18th century, most enslaved African Americans worked as agricultural laborers, but not all did. Below is a list of 78 different occupations mentioned in The Virginia Gazette, a late-colonial-era newspaper. How many of these jobs were sometimes performed by slaves in Virginia?
(Answer: All of them.)
Bakers; Barbers; Basket Makers; Blacksmiths; Brewers; Bricklayers; Brick Makers; Butchers; Cabinet Makers; Canoe Men; Carpenters; Carters; Cartwrights; Caulkers; Coachmen; Colliers; Cooks; Coopers; Curriers; Dairy Maids; Dancers; Ditchers; Drivers; Doctors; Dressmakers; Farmers; Ferrymen; Fiddle Makers; Fiddlers; Finers; Firemen; Fish Dealers; Fishermen; Foremen; Forge Men; Founders; Furnace Men; Furnace Keepers; Gardeners; Glaziers; Gunsmiths; Hairdressers; Hammermen; Harness Makers; Hostlers; House Joiners; Knitters; Millers; Mill Wrights; Miners; Musicians; Nurses; Overseers; Pilots; Plasterers; Preachers; Rope Makers; Saddlers; Sailmakers; Sailors; Sawyers; Seamstresses; Ship Carpenters; Ship Builders; Shoe Makers; Smiths; Skippers; Spinners; Stone Masons; Tailors; Tanners; Turners; Wagon Makers; Wagoners; Waiters; Watermen; Weavers; and Wheelwrights.
In the antebellum American South, by law slaves had no say in what task they were required to do, as by legal definition they were considered property and afforded none of the constitution, civil, or criminal legal protections afforded to any citizen of the United States.
They also had no control over the length of their working day, which was usually from sun-up in the morning to sunset in the evening (“can see to can’t see” in the slaves’ language). As such, slaves work was whatever their owner required of them. They labored mostly in menial agricultural work, but really in whatever task that was not so totally unnecessary that a machine could not do it for a fraction of the price. Since the South was lightly industrialized at this time, few tasks fit this criteria.
Although slaves were used in the northern states in factories to produce manufactured goods, at least prior to those states abolishing slavery, most slaves worked on plantations in the southern states.
Slaves were used on plantations for a variety of tasks:
| Picking cotton | Harvesting Sugar Cane | Planting and Harvesting Rice |
| Harvesting Tobacco | Growing and Harvesting Coffee | Building Railroads |
| Working in the Dairy | Weaving | Carpentry |
| It was usually young girls that churned the milk into butter. | “My mammy was a fine weaver and she work for both white and colored.” | “He used to make spinning wheels and parts of looms. He was a very valuable man.” |
| Washing Clothes | Cooking | Butchering and Preserving |
| ‘I used battling blocks and battling sticks to help clean the clothes when we was washing’ | ‘The cooking was done in the kitchen in the yard.’ | Meat was butchered by the slaves, then preserved in the smokehouse |
This article is part of our extensive resources on black history. For a comprehensive article on black history in the United States, click here.
"Slaves Work and Work Done By Slaves" History on the Net© 2000-2022, Salem Media.September 15, 2022 <//www.historyonthenet.com/slaves-work-and-work-done-by-slaves>
More Citation Information.