In the novel, I chose to give Hercules a firmer hold on a successful new life—not in small part because I myself could not bear to see him go—and Hercules finds himself a co-owner of a tavern along with the character of James Brown. Those who know New York City will recognize the location of the tavern as the site of the Ear Inn or the “James Brown House.” The real Mr. Brown was a free African American Revolutionary War veteran who purchased the house and ran a tobacco shop there—later selling it to owners who eventually turned it into a tavern. I’ve taken the liberty to use Mr. Brown’s name and home (built some twelve years after this story ends), but there is no evidence that he knew the General’s cook or was in the tavern business himself.
As to General and Mrs. Washington: George Washington died in 1799 at the age of sixty-seven and his wife just two years later. By the time the president died, he had altered his views on slavery considerably—the culmination of a slow evolution. I like to think that as the General lived through the horrors of war and the fierce work of building a new nation, he came to see the value of each person for their own merit and so valued Hercules’s clear talents as individual achievement. Perhaps this is what led him, bit by bit, to personally reject the idea of slavery although he, self-admittedly, did not see how the nation could do without it.
Still, in an act of personal evolution, Washington did attempt to sell his own real estate holdings during his life to make provision for the freedom of whatever enslaved people he personally owned at his death. He even went so far as to command that his freed slaves not be turned out of Mount Vernon as a retaliatory measure when the time came to exercise their manumission.
Had our national father had taken a stronger stand against slavery while he yet lived, he was probably the one American who could have ended the practice of slavery and changed history. But Washington was truly a man of his time, not a visionary for all humankind. Just as he undeservedly enjoyed wealth and comfort predicated on enslaved labor in his lifetime, so too did his contemporaries and the nation as a whole. He believed the fledging nation could not do without enforced labor of African Americans and still maintain an economy that unjustly advantaged the few. Certainly, scholars have well established that the free labor of the enslaved gave America a financial jumpstart, the residual effects of which the United States economy still benefits from today. And so the viciously cruel and morally corrupt institution of slavery continued for 66 years after his death and the nation continued to be built upon the backs of those robbed of their own freedom.
BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES
IN ORDER TO RECREATE THE LATE eighteenth-century world of Hercules, George Washington’s enslaved cook, in both Philadelphia and in Virginia, the following sources were invaluable. The archives of the National Park Service, Independence Hall district, provided extensive detail on the President’s House site, what it looked like, who lived there, and in what condition. While the house is no longer standing, a curated plein air exhibit serves as a memorial to the enslaved persons of African descent who labored there. It’s well worth a visit.
Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of the first president, Washington: A Life, proved the best examination of the first president’s evolving mind-set on slavery. Edward G. Lengel’s Inventing George Washington was helpful in this as well.
Events in the lives of Hercules and the household at large were largely reconstructed with the help of the historians at Mount Vernon and their aid in my reading of The Private Affairs of George Washington by Stephen Decatur Jr., which included the household accounts for the President’s House in Philadelphia.
Books such as Billy G. Smith’s The Lower Sort: Philadelphia’s Laboring People, 1750–1800 and Life in Early Philadelphia: Documents from the Revolutionary and Early National Periods as well as Gary B. Nash’s Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 allowed me to reconstruct the lives of everyday folk in Philadelphia during this time period.
Birch’s Views of Philadelphia 1800 provided actual glimpses into the physical structure of the town in this era before photographic evidence. Slavery at the Home of George Washington, a series of scholarly articles edited by Philip J. Schwarz, was quite useful for understanding how the peculiar institution of African enslavement worked at Mount Vernon. The George Washington Papers collection at the Library of Congress offered insight into the man himself as well as some of the excerpts of the letters and period papers in this book.
Volumes such as Independence: A Guide to Historic Philadelphia by George W. Boudreau and Sex Among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 by Clare A. Lyons rounded out my understanding of the most intimate aspects of daily life among all classes and races in the City of Brotherly Love at this time. Washington in Germantown by Charles Francis Jenkins helped my descriptions of the family’s time in Germantown during the summer of 1794.
The food and culinary information in this book was dependent on fine works as such as Food in Colonial and Federal America by Sandra Oliver, Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery annotated by Karen Hess, Dining with the Washingtons: Historic Recipes, Entertaining, and Hospitality from Mount Vernon by Stephen A. McLeod, The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph, and The First American Cookbook by Amelia Simmons, as well as “History is Served,” the website of Colonial Williamsburg Historic Foodways (recipes.history.org/).
Finally, the weather in the novel is accurately portrayed thanks to A Meteorological Account of the Weather in Philadelphia, From January 1, 1790, to January 1, 1847, Including Fifty-seven Years; With an Appendix, by Charles Peirce.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Over the course of five years researching and writing this book I had immeasurable help and support from many people whom I wish to thank here.
First and foremost is culinary scholar Adrian Miller, author of The President’s Kitchen Cabinet (University of North Carolina Press). Adrian not only introduced me to Hercules but has done remarkable work deeply researching and sharing the true stories of the African American cooks who have fed the American presidents from Washington through President Obama.
Thank you, Adrian, for bringing Hercules into my life—for even now he remains my silent daily companion. I immediately felt a kinship to Hercules on many levels. Our most obvious similarity is that we are both chefs but we are also people who are not what we may immediately appear to be. I can’t overstate the extent to which Hercules’ ability to maintain his dignity in the most unimaginably inhuman circumstances, has awed me as I’ve researched and written about him.
Thank you to my editor Lilly Golden for her sharp eye in fine-tuning the manuscript and most of all to my agent and first editor Jane von Mehren who worked with me on many drafts of the book over the course of multiple years.
I am extremely grateful to Arcade Publishing for letting me share Hercules’ story as I always meant to tell it. Editorial Director, Mark Gompertz was open-minded enough to give me—and Hercules—a chance following the controversy around the offensive illustrations for my picture book about Hercules, and over which I had no control.
While no one alive today or for many generations past can fully understand the lives or know the feelings of those who lived centuries ago, research through primary source material help us paint a more accurate picture. The help of skilled historians was seminal to writing this book. I wish to thank Anna Coxe Toogood, Historian at the National Park Service, Independence Hall National Historic Park, for helping research the site of the President’s House in Philadelphia and the Germantown White House. Ms. Toogood’s aid in guiding me toward resources to reconstruct African American life in late 18th century Philadelphia was invaluable. Thanks, too, to the Germantown Historical Society for aiding my understanding of that area, particularly the role of the Chew family.
Mary Thompson, Historian at Mount Vernon was instrumental in providing detailed information about Hercules within the historical record as well as larger
context for the lives of those people enslaved by George and Martha Washington. Leni Sorensen, Ph. D and retired African American Research Historian at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, helped me contextualize figures like Samuel Fraunces early on in my research as well the lives of enslaved people and Southern plantation culture—particularly as cooks and kitchen workers.
Dr. Sorensen also offered moral support and courage when it seemed that, because of the picture book controversy, The General’s Cook would never see the light of day although it had been completed long before the other book came out. Like Dr. Sorensen, there were others who also believed that Hercules’ story was too important to remain untold and these dear souls never let me give up on him. They include my brother Ramesh Ganeshram, who has forever been my champion in matters large and small; My dear friends Lorilynn Bauer, Victoria Kann, Andrea Kalb and Renee Brown whose love and support make all things possible and my husband, Jean Paul Vellotti, who has always backed my fight to give Hercules his rightful due.
There are many more too numerous to name here. Heartfelt thanks to them all for insisting Hercules’ truth be spoken so he may yet live again. They know who they are.
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