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 To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html