I do not believe Kathryn was discrediting the services of white skilled laborers 
in the construction of planter houses but rather giving credit to the fact that 
many of these buildings have a noted architectural style or a known architect. 
However, architects of the  18th and 19th centuries were primarily designers 
and not actually out there with hammers, cut nails, paints, etc. completing 
the construction.

Rather instead these skilled laborers whether they be black or white were 
doing the actual work to complete the house. In the South, it just so 
happened there were slaves to be fully engaged or assist in the completion of 
a project.

Where I work at Petersburg National Battlefield we have one historic house 
with centuries of papers for the Eppes family who owned the property. When 
the property owner Mary (nee Eppes) Cocke added on to her family home in 
1841 she had a white man named Mr. Finn engaged in work to the addition. 
However by September of that year she wrote to her son, Richard Eppes 
(then a student at the UVA) that Cimon (one of the slaves she owned) would 
hopefully soon have the house shingled and she could return to her old 
bedroom. 

Her son, who inherited the property after his mother's death, also used a mix 
of white, free black, and slave labor in projects around the estate. While 
primarily white labor would be used in his 1854 and 1856 addition there would 
be skilled slave labor used. Richard Eppes had hired the services of a 
carpenter named Jef and Eppes recorded that on October 16, 1856, Jef 
had "commenced doors & windows of bath house today." Two days later 
Eppes was bargaining with a free black, Henry Claiborn to put up a kitchen 
building on another piece of property he owned. 

Source: Eppes Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond

Also, William Johnson, free black barber and planter in Natchez, used a 
combination of white and slave labor to build his new house after a fire 
devasted the first. He also noted the hire of other slaves to complete his 
house and hired the services of George Weldon, a white man who owned a 
business with his brother. Which according to an 1885 source said they hired 
some 100 slaves. 

Source: William Johnson House: Historic Structure Report, 1997 
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/natc/hf_johnsonhouse.pdf

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