Housing for slaves.

[matthew mckeon]

WellI was only asking about housing. Better off is a much larger discussion.

I noticed a couple of posts that were very much not on that topic.

 

[lelliott19]

With the cold winters here it is possible that better homes were built quickly due to the difficulties of living in a log cabin in the winter.

Ahhhh. good point and one I had not considered.

Not every slave quarters was a log cabin, some were board, stone, or brick.

In places like Gettysburg, it seems that stone structures are pretty common and, evidently, were at the time. Houses of stone are (and were) uncommon in the deep south. I don't know if stone masons were more numerous up north, or if trees for log and board construction were just more plentiful down south? Either way, stone houses are still an anomaly around these parts.

As promised here is the info I have about housing provided the enslaved on one Alabama plantation (1860-1862):
Number of enslaved: 75
Number of family groups: 15
1 split house - described as a "larger split house" of siding over post/beam construction; 4 rooms; 12-sash windows, 4 stone chimneys, "cooking hearth" and porch. The household servants and cook lived here with their families, so this must have been the largest and most desirable house. (Presume it was dog-trot construction with two rooms on each side.)
5 two-room houses - post/beam with 2 rooms each, sleeping loft, porch, 12-sash windows, 2 stone chimneys, and "cooking hearth."
4 log cabins with sash windows, rock chimney, and "cooking hearth." (Assuming these were one-room cabins; size not specified. Probably the first slave houses built on the property in 1840/41, soon after the Indians were removed in 1838.)
4 "double-pen cabins" with sash windows, two rock chimneys, and "cooking hearth." (A double pen cabin would have had 2 rooms connected by a common roof.)

No information is included for any of the housing types specifying whether or not they had dirt floors or raised wooded floors. Since they all had windows, Id assume they also had a floor of some kind - whether raised or not.

 

[CSA Today]

This is a trope so old its growing hair. How being a slave with all those kindly white masters was a comfortable existence compared to the ghastly horrors of free life. Slavery, its great for black people!

One thing for sure freedom didn't mean a better life for blacks in northern tenements – they weren't welcome there.

 

[ARW]

[QUOTE=" So, in your oppion, were the slave quarters much worse than what poor farmers lived in?[/QUOTE]

When I look at that question I have one overriding thought. Maybe they were the same as what might be called Poor Farmers lived in. The big difference is that the poor farmer could continue to enlarge and improve his home. Many farm homes in PA were expanded on as time went on and families grew. Even as today with hard work and determination people can improve their housing. With hard work slaves could look forward to nothing. That was the best they could do. IMHO you cannot compare the two. It is just another way to say "They didn't have it so bad".

 

[Andersonh1]

Slavery, it weren't so bad!

You can find a group of folks in terrible circumstances, even in a great country like the United States. They stand in for all the free people. And then you can mumble about how great the shacks are in the quarters, and you could get seconds on the cornpone every Christmas. And that stands in for all the slaves.

Were the best treated slaves better off than the most prosperous free people? Were the worse treated slaves better off than the less prosperous free people?

Your contention seems to be that because slavery was bad, we're not allowed to compare and contrast slave living conditions with typical living conditions of the era. I have to disagree.

 

[major bill]

Well the book I am reading deals with the architecture of buildings on plantations not the moral issues of slavery. I find the design interesting. Nearly square seems to have been common as well as two slave families in a long house which was two connected square rooms. Why square, is open to discussion.

 

[Sid J.]

Many of the slave narratives collected by the WPA in the 1930's contain descriptions of the housing types and conditions. "Dirt floor" is a phrase that I recollect.

https://www.loc.gov/collections/sla...s-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

 

[RobertP]

My father began his career in the 1930's as a surveyor on early oilfield seismic crews along the SE New Mexico - Texas line. He visited many ranch houses seeking permits and a lot of them had dirt floors.

 

[ForeverFree]

But did the average slave cabin differ much from the average small farm house? ...my family came from New York to Michigan in 1835 and moved to an unsettled rural area. Thier first cabin would not have been much larger than many slave cabins. That said, within a couple of years they would have had a much bigger and much nicer house. So, in your oppion, were the slave quarters much worse than what poor farmers lived in?

I don't know enough about the material culture of 19th century American farming to answer the question. I can make the comment that if somebody is "poor," whether they are a subsistence farmer or a slave hand, they are going to live a very meager material existence.

One question I would ask is, what is the definition of "poor?"

If poor equals subsistence farming - that, by definition is "farming whose products are intended to provide for the basic needs of the farmer, with little surplus for marketing; farming that brings little or no profit to the farmer, allowing only for a marginal livelihood." A poor subsistence farmer would have only what they could get from their land. Depending on their land, they would be limited on how much of a house they could produce, of course. It's not inconceivable that their homes were no better than than those of enslaved persons.

However, a poor farmer who had some surplus could conceivably purchase or barter for additional property, which would be art of their home. So, a poor free farmer family could conceivably have smaller quarters than an enslaved family, but they might have a better bed, or better clothes, or better pots, or all of the above. These accumulated "things" would make life nicer.

I grew up in a housing project in NYC, we had two small bedrooms, a small living room, a small combo kitchen/dining room, a small bathroom with a toilet and bathtub (later a shower). Looking back, it was tiny.

As a child I visited my great grandparents in rural PA, this was in the early 1960s. They had a house, and it was larger and the rooms were bigger. But they didn't have a toilet, which I noticed immediately. There was no heat on the top floor. I think that in the top floor, where we slept, only two of sereval rooms had electric lights. Another nearby house that was owned by the family had no running water; I was amazed that people had to go to the store to buy water. I remember hating it and just wanting to get back home.

You ask a good question, but I wonder how you quantify "nicer." A slightly bigger home is not necessarily "nicer," it depends on what's in it. The majority of plantation slaves were not paid, they could not sell surplus, so their homes were basically what the individual masters deemed appropriate. A free poor person who nonetheless had surplus could add things to the home that made it "nicer," especially over time.

- Alan

 

[Yulie]

I know a bit about architecture in Michigan in 1861 but not much about architecture of the homes of small farmers in other states. So, in your oppion, were the slave quarters much worse than what poor farmers lived in?

I don't know as the study of African American southern antebellum dwellings appears to be a recent scholarly pursuit. I personally am hard pressed to compare the housing of enslaved African Americans with poor free European American as there exists the free-well and choice factor. For your personal insight, I suggest you connect with the "Slave Dwelling Project" at http://slavedwellingproject.org/ under the leadership of Joseph McGill. Locally, you should consider visiting the Hermitage Slave Quarters at Greenfield Village (The Henry Ford). The houses were brought to Dearborn from Chatham County, Georgia. Although I think they are interpreted as a cleaned up version of history, they will give you an idea of construction and dimension.

 

[DaveBrt]

This is a trope so old its growing hair. How being a slave with all those kindly white masters was a comfortable existence compared to the ghastly horrors of free life. Slavery, its great for black people!

You seem to be making a concerted effort to derail this thread, which is about the architecture, style, material and space of the average man's house, slave or free.

 

[DaveBrt]

Unless women have changed over time, I would suspect that the wife's first demand/request/desire was for a house (rather than living in or beside a wagon). Once she got a log cabin, she would want a board house (to make life better for the children, if nothing else). The board house would, of course, need to be on rocks or foundation of some kind, so floors off the ground. Next would come.......

I honestly cannot believe it did not go this way for the free farmer -- no matter his wealth, he did the best he could for his family and the wife directed the efforts as I have described them.

 

[zburkett]

If we can get off politics and propaganda for a bit, Montpelier (home of James Madison) is doing some outstanding research on slave quarters, including reconstructions. I don't keep up with their web page because they are 20 minutes from my farm but they are a wealth of information and if you can visit you can see first hand. A highlight is the Gilmore Cabin built right after the war by a freed slave from materials recovered from the Confederate camp in the winter of 63/64. Monticello has also done really nice work developing information on slave conditions and housing. At the risk of sounding like a visitors center, when you get to the Wilderness/Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania Battlefields, and you really should, its worth an extra day to see Montpelier. Then take another day to see Monticello.

 

[major bill]

Would "proper housing" have a whether element to them? A farmer in Northern Michigan could expect a couple hundreds of inches of snow and temperatures down to below zero every winter. Some of the slave cabin's roofs would have caved in if they had the weight of 4 to 6 feet of snow on them. Also hearting a spacious cabin at 15 to 20 below zero is difficult. In this kind of environment a smaller roof with low ceilings might be a "proper house" while the same style of house in southern Georgia would be unneeded. House roofs in southern Georgia would rarely have 6 feet of snow on them.

 

[RobertP]

Would "proper housing" have a whether element to them? A farmer in Northern Michigan could expect a couple hundreds of inches of snow and temperatures down to below zero every winter. Some of the slave cabin's roofs would have caved in if they had the weight of 4 to 6 feet of snow on them. Also hearting a spacious cabin at 15 to 20 below zero is difficult. In this kind of environment a smaller roof with low ceilings might be a "proper house" while the same style of house in southern Georgia would be unneeded. House roofs in southern Georgia would rarely have 6 feet of snow on them.

You are probably safe to say that house roofs in southern Georgia would rarely have 6 feet of snow on them. I'd bet the farm on that!

 

[Gettmore]

Quarters at the Lee and Gordon Plantation

 

[lelliott19]

Nearly square seems to have been common as well as two slave families in a long house which was two connected square rooms. Why square, is open to discussion.

Square or rectangular required the simplest construction. Inner corners to make L-shaped required additional skill set that may not have been available. If you're building a 14 x 14 foot square or a 16 x 16 square, there are no inner corners - only four outer corners.

In the example I provided, the structures were all built by the enslaved workers themselves, using trees and lumber from the property. In that specific example, besides working in the fields, the enslaved had certain specific skills listed - tailor, seamstress, carpenter, sawmill, cabinet maker, cook, husbandry (taking care of animals), blacksmith, driver, house servant, body servant, etc. I think people tend to generalize and underestimate the skills of the enslaved. Some of the men - those listed as carpenter, cabinet maker, and sawmill operator at least - were likely skilled enough to measure and add an L but that probably wouldn't have been the case on every plantation.

You'd need logs at least 10" or 12" diameter. If the sides are all the same length (for a square) and the logs are 10" diameter, you'd be able to cut all 44-60 trees at the same; cut them to length ahead of time; haul them in with mules; wait for them to dry properly; and build the cabin easily. Adding L-shaped extensions would require figuring in additional lengths of logs and measuring for inner corners on the L. That's why the buildings were usually square or rectangular. And why the larger cabins usually involved connecting two squares with a breezeway/common roof.

 

[DaveBrt]

We need to be careful to distinguish between wealthy plantations and the small slave holdings. I doubt the man who owned a dozen or so hands would have the resources to build the cabins like we see at some of the wealthier places. I suspect slave cabins, like the master's house, reflected the growing wealth of the owner. This would mean that slave cabins, like the free farmer's, would improve from a hut to a reasonably nice place with time and success.

 

[mofederal]

I have been to several plantations that had brick slave quarters. Boone Hall is the most notable. Other's were the Royall House, The Hermitage, Stanley Hall, Belvoir, Lee and Gordon Plantation, Berry Hill (stone) and others also. Some of these families were wealthy while others not so much. The construction materials used might have came down to available building resources, stone, and lots of clay for brickmaking.

 

[zburkett]

While we were looking for a Virginia farm to buy we looked at a small place with a modest farm house an two slave cabins. One of the cabins was still in good enough shape that had we bought the place we would have turned it into our guest house. The "main house" only had two bedrooms. The slave cabin was larger than either bedroom and the construction was similar to the construction of the main house. The slave quarters I have seen are well built. Of course any poorly constructed structed is long gone by now.