Washerwoman/Laundress

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  • Washerwoman/Laundress x
  • 1775–1800: The American Revolution and Early Republic x
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Scott, Harriet Robinson  

Eric Gardner

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

litigant, slave, and laundress, was born probably in Virginia to enslaved parents about whom nothing is known. By the 1830s, she had become the slave of Lawrence Taliaferro, an Indian agent and a major in the U.S. Army. When Taliaferro, a Virginian who had transplanted to Pennsylvania, was stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, he brought Harriet with him. There she met Dred Scott soon after his master, Dr. John Emerson, was also posted at Fort Snelling. Though such weddings were exceedingly rare, Taliaferro, also a justice of the peace, performed a formal marriage ceremony between Scott and Robinson in 1836 or 1837. After the marriage, Harriet Scott was either given or, more likely, sold to Emerson.

Emerson hired the Scotts out to various officers at Fort Snelling before he married Irene Sanford on 6 February 1838. After a brief period at the Jefferson ...

Article

Spear, Chloe  

Caryn E. Neumann

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
06 April 2006
Published online:
01 December 2006

Chloe Spear was born in Africa. At about the age of twelve, while she was playing on the shore, she and three or four other children were captured by a band of white men who had hidden in the bushes nearby. They were transported to a slave ship for passage to the American colonies and arrived in Philadelphia. Too sick to be an attractive purchase, she went unsold at a slave market while her childhood companions were dispersed to various buyers. Eventually, a Mr. B. of Boston bought the young slave to serve as a household worker.

In this era the state of Massachusetts attempted to promote Christianity by forcing masters to rest slaves on the Sabbath Mr B permitted his slaves including Spear to attend church services for half of Sunday Like the others Spear lacked a strong enough command of English to understand the services The slaves ...

Article

Williams, Cathay  

De Anne Blanton

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

cook, laundress, and Buffalo Soldier, was born into slavery in Independence, Missouri. Nothing is known of her parents, except that her father was reported to be a free black man. At some point in her early childhood, she went with her master's family to a farm near Jefferson City, where she toiled as a house servant until the start of the Civil War.

Probably in the summer of 1861, when she was nearly seventeen years old, Williams fled the plantation and joined the large group of escaped and newly freed slaves seeking the protection of Union troops occupying Jefferson City. Within months she was pressed into service as a laundress and cook for a Union regiment, possibly the Eighth Indiana Infantry. She maintained that position for nearly two years, accompanying the troops on campaigns in Missouri and Arkansas. In the summer of 1863 Williams found ...