How to buy the book

You can order at History Press as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other on-line retailers. I will send you a signed copy for $23, a little extra to cover shipping. I will send you both Slave Labor in the Capital and Through a Fiery Trial for $40. Send a check to me at PO Box 63, Wellesley Island, NY 13640-0063.

My lectures at Sotterley Plantation in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on September 23, 2015, and the DAR Library on December 5 are now blog posts below listed under book talks. The talk I gave at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on February 28, 2015, along with Heather Butts, author African American Medicine in Washington, was taped by the bookstore. Take a listen.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Digging clay for bricks on Capitol Hill

"In Maryland in the 1790s, most workers in the brick making business were African Americans. Irish canal diggers didn’t dig, mould or bake clay. The commissioners got Middleton Belt and Bennett Fenwick to do that, not Patrick Whalen. Both Belt and Fenwick used slaves.... After Mitchell’s brick making crews were thwarted by fevers, the commissioners ordered pits for clay dug higher up on Capitol Hill for reasons of health."
 Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, pages 116ff 

No one described what workers did or exactly where they did it. But Nicholas King, the newly appointed surveyor of the city, did make a map of where clay for bricks could be dug on Capitol Hill, and to what depth and which contractor was assigned to which street. Both Middleton Belt and Bennett Fenwick hired out their slaves to the commissioners so I assume they used slaves to fulfill their contracts to dig clay in the streets.





Posted by at
Labels: , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)