Emmanuel,
Thank you for this insightful response.

Anita


>From: Emmanuel Dabney <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history         
>      <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Slave carpenters and Planter's buildings
>Date: Sat, 3 Feb 2007 10:28:09 -0500
>
>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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