"In the commissioners' records there is a unique payroll for sawyers working at the White House in 1795 that probably marks the transition for paying contractors for sawing and using their own hired slaves."
Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 103
In my book I devote half a chapter to the work of the slave sawyers. I like to think of them as the heroes of my book. There work stands out in the records because beginning by August 1795 they were a paid a Maryland shilling a day in extra wages, about 13 cents, that they could keep for themselves. It was paid to them, not their master.
I have another blog that shares all the payrolls I photocopied at the National Archives showing the work of both free and slave workers. In this post I share the payrolls for sawyers that I copied, arranged in chronological order with some commentary on each. One challenge presented by the payrolls is to figure out who owned each sawyer which might be a clue to the slave's last name which might help us figure out what he did later in life.
Although listed as working 30 days in August, I do not think these sawyers worked on Sundays. As you can see from this payroll for stone cutters , free workers also work 30 days that August. In some months some free workers were credited with 31 1/2 days work. I think they were credited with 2 hours extra pay for those long days of summer when they worked from dawn to dusk.
Negro Simon was paid at the same rate as apprentice carpenters. Generally the master received the wages of the slaves he or she hired out and no master received Negro Simon's wage. But free blacks were rarely labeled "Negro" or "N" in payrolls.I haven't seen Simon on other payrolls nor any slave sawyer paid that much.
The payroll above was put on-line by the US Capitol Historical Society and shows in what poor shape the original copies of some payrolls are in. The names are different from the previous August 1795 payroll because these sawyers worked at the Capitol. The August payroll is for work at the White House.
I made the penciled notes on the photocopies. The scan below is a payroll that include sawyers who were in the crew sent to Paint Branch to cut and square white oaks for the roofs of the Capitol and White House.
The payroll below is for work done in August 1798.
I am sharing all this information with hopes that it will inspire others to try to find more payrolls for sawyers in the National Archives and also analyze what I've shared. For example, judging from what is here, we can show that some sawyers like Moses who belonged to Plowden and the Moses who belonged to Queen worked as sawyers from 1796 through 1799, and one of them was sawing in 1795. As you see from the listing of the number of days worked on each payroll, the sawyers did not work every working day and the number of sawyers working varied. So it is difficult to estimate how much the sawyers might have made over the years. Could they have saved money or did they spend it? They were paid by the month, like all workers, so blowing it every night was not an option unless the various purveyors of food and drink near the work sites extended them credit, which they obviously did. I hope my book is just a beginning, an aid to helping us understand how these men lived. The best way to begin to do that is to start with the facts and the payrolls are some of the hardest facts we have.
At the end of my book, I list all the names of slaves and their masters which certainly doesn't include all that worked for the commissioners. Even with that to guide me, it is difficult to connect the names on these payrolls to their masters.
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