The Care and Feeding of the Hermitage Mansion Household: Interpreting the Structural and Archaeological Evidence
Author(s): Larry McKee
Year: 2020
Summary
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
For Andrew Jackson, the centerpiece of his plantation, The Hermitage, was his family’s imposing Greek Revival mansion. As with most plantation “big houses,” the floorplan was designed to balance the desired comforts and privacy of the Jackson family with the need for near constant access by enslaved laborers taking care of the household.
For the Hermitage mansion, the kitchen and associated service areas were a main focus of managing interactions between black and white members of the plantation community. Through time, the kitchen and its connection to the formal dining room went through three significant rebuilding events. This poster will present a reading of the documentary, structural and archaeological evidence of the evolution of the service area of the mansion. These changes reveal the evolution of the active presence of enslaved labor within the daily operations of the Jackson family household.
Cite this Record
The Care and Feeding of the Hermitage Mansion Household: Interpreting the Structural and Archaeological Evidence. Larry McKee. 2020 ( tDAR id: 457368)
This Resource is Part of the Following Collections
Keywords
General
kitchens
•
Plantations
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Slavery
Geographic Keywords
United States of America
Temporal Keywords
Nineteenth Century
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 308