Hercules

This is NOT a portrait of Hercules, Washington’s chef. See the end of the blog entry for the story.

Public Domain (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hercules_(chef).jpg)

One of Washington’s most famous slaves was Hercules, who served as the Washington family chef in their Presidential house in Philadelphia. The story around this man makes him a virtual metaphor for the life and fate of Washington’s slaves.

Colonel John Posey owned the plot of land near Mount Vernon which eventually became the Ferry Farm. He operated a ferry from the Neck to the Maryland shore across the Potomac. Colonel Posey had managed to convince Washington, his fox-hunting buddy, to make him several loans over the years. By 1767, Washington found that Posey owed him nearly £750 in loans secured with mortgages on Posey’s property, including his slaves. When Posey begged him in September, 1767 to wait longer for his money and to secure a loan from Colonel George Mason, Washington was querulous:

Having receivd your Letters of Wednesday last and today, it appear⟨s⟩ very clear to me from them, as well as from some other convincing Circumstances that you are not only reduced to the last Shifts yourself but are determined to involve me in a great deal of perplexity and distress on your Acct also. why else will you press so hard upon me to do more than I have already done, & consented to do, in waiting two years longer for my Money when it is not only inconvenient, but very disadvantageous also for me to do so and when I have informd you as every body else I suppose may also do that the Security I have upon your Lands and Slaves is only answerable for the £750 lent, and Interest.

By 1769, Posey’s situation resulted in the Court in Chancery mandating the sale of his property. At this point, Posey owed Washington about £1,000. In 1767, as part of the mortgage, Posey transferred several slaves to Washington:

Know all men by these presents that I John Posey of the county of Fairfax in the colony of Virginia Gentleman for and in consideration of the sum of seventy pounds current money of Virginia to me in hand paid at and upon the sealing and delivery of these presents by George Washington of the said county and colony aforesaid Esquire the receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge have bargained and sold & by these presents do bargain and sell unto the said George Washington the following slaves to wit. Bob, James, Jack, Henley, Casar, Bacchus, Hercules, Luke, Ben, Isaac, Jacob, Jean, Winney, Judy, Nancy, Sinah, Silvia, Chloe, Lett, Vincy, Jean, Henrietta, Farthing, Sarah, Nan & Hester, in possession of him the said John Posey and now by him delivered to the said George Washington to satisfy and secure the debt aforesaid in manner & form aforesaid being supposed by the above mentioned John Posey and George Washington that part of the above mentioned slaves would be more than Sufficient to Satisfy the Just consideration of a bill of sale for the above mentioned slaves…

By 1770, Hercules showed up on the list of tithables due to the Truro Parish of Fairfax County, with his name spelled “Herculas,” as a “ferryman.” This suggests that Hercules moved to Mount Vernon as part of the mortgage resolution in 1769. Historians are reasonably certain that this man is the same man who became Washington’s chef in the 1780s. By 1773, the tithables listed Hercules as a house servant. Washington’s list of slaves in February 1786 lists “Herculus” as a cook. In September 1787, the Mount Vernon Store Book lists 3 bottles of rum to be given to Hercules “to bury his wife.”

In November 1790, President Washington and his wife prepared to leave Mount Vernon for their new house in Philadelphia. They sent Hercules (again spelled “Herculas”) off on November 22 by stage to be their cook, and Washington reluctantly allowed Hercules to bring his son Richmond along as a scullion for the kitchen. Richmond was a dower slave, the son of Lame Alice, a dower slave (see my blog entry on slaves in Washington’s will for an explanation of “dower slave” and its implications; slavery inherits through the mother). Hercules and Alice also had two daughters, Evey and Delia, who remained at Mount Vernon. (Details are in Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s book Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, and the three children and their mother appear in the 1786 slave list.)

In 1791, Tobias Lear sent a letter to Washington telling him that Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General, had lost 3 slaves to a 1780 Pennsylvania law that freed any slave brought into Pennsylvania after 6 months of uninterrupted residence. Washington wrote back in April with a contingency plan to send all the slaves back to Virginia for a time to evade this law. This letter is remarkable because it is a documented case of Washington telling someone to lie for him:

If upon taking good advise it is found expedient to send them back to Virginia, I wish to have it accomplished under pretext that may deceive both them and the Public;—and none I think would so effectually do this, as Mrs. Washington coming to Virginia next month (towards the middle or latter end of it, as she seemed to have a wish to do) if she can accomplish it by any convenient and agreeable means, with the assistance of the Stage Horses &c. This would naturally bring her maid and Austin—and Hercules under the idea of coming home to Cook whilst we remained there, might be sent on in the Stage.

Events developed, and by June the deception was laid bare, with interesting results, in a letter from Lear to Washington on June 5, 1791:

In my letter of the 22d of may I mentioned that Hercules was to go on to Mount Vernon a few days after that. When he was about to go, somebody, I presume, insinuated to him that the motive for sending him home so long before you was expected there, was to prevent his taking the advantage of a six months residence in this place. When he was possessed of this idea he appeared to be extremely unhappy—and altho’ he made not the least objection to going; yet, he said he was mortified to the last degree to think that a suspicion could be entertained of his fidelity or attachment to you. and so much did the poor fellow’s feelings appear to be touched that it left no doubt of his sincerity—and to shew him that there were no apprehensions of that kind entertained of him, Mrs Washington told him he should not go at that time; but might remain ’till the expiration of six months and then go home—to prepare for your arrival there. He has accordingly continued here ’till this time, and tomorrow takes his departure for Virginia.

Lear paid for the stage trip and noted the monies in his ledger (Stephen Decatur’s exposition of Lear’s ledger is the book The Private Affairs of George Washington, Houghton-Mifflin, 1933). Martha Washington wrote to her niece Fanny Washington, the wife of George Augustine Washington, who was managing Mount Vernon in Washington’s absence, that Hercules was on his way with various articles for family members.

By June 6, 1792, Hercules was back in Philadelphia. Lear gave him $1.50 for a ticket to see a play with two other slaves, Oney Judge, Mrs. Washington’s maid, and Austin, Oney’s brother (who died in an accident in 1794). Later in July, Hercules again went back to Mount Vernon, according to Lear’s ledger entry of November 2, 1792. Back to Philadelphia by March 1793, and still there in July, when he got a ticket for the circus. In January and February 1795, Lear bought Hercules some “linniment” and some pills. George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s grandson who grew up at Mount Vernon and in Philadelphia, remembered Old Uncle Harkless as “highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States” who went around Philadelphia as a dandy in fine clothes bought from monies he got selling excess food from the Presidential kitchen.

By November 5, 1796, Hercules was back at Mount Vernon while the Washingtons were still in Philadelphia, and he was doing construction work according to letters to James Anderson, a Mount Vernon manager. (These letters have not yet been published but are quoted in the Mount Vernon Slavery Database). In January 1797, he was doing garden and general farm work (referred to under the name “Harkles”, which was apparently a family name, as George Washington Parke Custis referred to him as “old Uncle Harkless” in his memoir of Mount Vernon and Philadelphia). My guess is that Washington sent Hercules back to Mount Vernon toward the end of his Presidency and, as he didn’t need a cook while he was not there, put him to work. Washington expressed several times the attitude that if he was to have slaves, they needed to work hard for him, and I think making his “celebrated chef” do construction, garden, and farm work was totally in character. Later comments from Martha Washington indicate she definitely intended him to continue as her cook at Mount Vernon, although that did not turn out as planned.

On February 25, 1797, the farm reports have a little notation: “Herculees absconded 4 [days]”. By March 10, Washington is trying to recover him: “I pray you to desire Mr. Kitt to make all the enquiry he can after Hercules, and send him round in the Vessel if he can be discovered & apprehended.” Kitt wrote back on 15 January 1798 that it was known he was in Philadelphia:

I have been making distant enquiries about Herculas but did not till about four weeks ago hear anything of him and that was only that ⟨he⟩ was in town neither do I yet know where he is, and that will be very difficult to find out in the secret manner necessary to be observed on the occasion. I shall however use the utmost exertions in my power, and hereafter inform you of my sucess….

Washington replied on January 29^th:

Continue your enquiries, I pray you, after Herculas; and if you should find it necessary, hire some one who is most likely to be acquainted with his haunts, to trace them out; and if you should learn of him, advise with Colo. Biddle on the most effectual mode of securing him until he can be put on board one of the Packets for Alexandria with a strict charge to the Master not to give him an opportunity of escaping.

But nothing more was heard of Hercules. An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on March 1, 2019, has some speculative information about his fate. A letter from Martha Washington to Richard Varick, the mayor of New York City, thanks him for looking for Hercules and says that she declines to take him back, suggesting he was known to be in New York. By this time, Washington’s death had freed Hercules, though his status as an absconded slave might have complicated his freedom. It  also notes a death notice of a Hercules Posey, originally from Virginia, in New York City, age 64, and a burial record stating that he died of consumption on May 15, 1812, and was buried in the Second African Burying Ground in Lower Manhattan (believed to be under the sidewalk on Christie Street). His children, Richmond, Delia, and Evey, all appear in the list of slaves in 1799. A letter from Washington refers to an incident with Richmond, Hercules’s son, stealing from a saddlebag in November 1796. As dower slaves, George Washington Parke Custis would have inherited the children on Martha Washington’s death in 1802.

The Inquirer article’s main revelation is about the 18^th-century portrait that illustrates this blog entry, which the Mount Vernon library displayed as part of its big exhibition on slaves at Mount Vernon. Long thought to be a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Hercules, the painting turns out to not be by Gilbert Stuart, to not be of a cook, and therefore to not be of Hercules. The “chef’s hat” is really a hat worn by free Dominican negroes at the time. The chef’s toque wasn’t even invented until the 1820s in France.