Black & White Apprentice Gardeners from Philadelphia to Charleston

The growth of professional gardening trades in 18th century America spawned a need for apprentices to assist the craftsmen in their daily chores while training to become the professional gardeners of the future.

Apprentice gardeners were young boys sent to live away from home to learn the trade of gardener. They were usually placed by their parents or guardians or by the courts as orphans to serve under master or tradesmen gardeners for a given period.

Under such an arrangement, intended for the mutual benefit of both the gardener and the young student-laborer, the master contracted to supply instruction, & generally food & lodging, or a weekly sum as an equivalent to what those necessities would cost. The parents of the apprentice gardener would agree to that their charge would be of service to the master gardener his apprenticeship as their part of the contract.

The terms of apprenticeship was generally 3 years. But in America, it is apparent that boys as young as 8 were contracted out to gardeners, and they often served longer than 3 years. Custom and laws called for apprenticeship to end at the age when the attained "manhood."

In England, few could expect to attain to the rank either of master-gardener or tradesman, who had not served an apprenticeship to the one or the other. On the American side of the Atlantic, because the trade & gardens were generally less developed, advancement in the field of gardening was more open to those who never served an apprenticeship.

In Philadelphia, market or truck gardener Richard Collings, who kept a covered seed & plant stall at the Jersey Market, adverised in the 1770 Pennsylvania Gazette, "Any person that has a boy that inclines to learn the art and mystery of a Gardiner, my apply." Market or truck gardeners & farmers grew produce to sell at the markets that supplied food for the growing populations of urban dwellers along the Atlantic coast in the 18th century. They grew culinary vegetables & fruits. Some grew only the more common hardy edibles for the kitchen, such as cabbage, pease, & turnips. Others supplied plants for propagation, such as cauliflowers, celery, & artichoke-plants, & pot-herbs, as mint and thyme. The most ambitious market growers grew items in hot-houses, & produced mushrooms, melons, pineapples, & other more exotic fruits over a longer growing season.
Young men who had apprenticed to other trades were sometimes called into garden service during the growing season. In Annapolis, craftsman William Faris used his clockmaking apprentice as garden help on several occasions.

In Maryland, several young boys were employed as apprentices by both professional gardeners & directly by owners of private gardens. In 1788, at age 8, William Lucas was bound out to Joseph Bignall, a professional gardener. Another 8-year-old, William Martin, was apprenticed to Jacob Eichelberger at his private residence in Baltimore County in 1786, to learn the art of gardening.
A lad named Cornelius Lary was bound out by his older sister at the age of 10, as a gardening apprentice to John Toon, who operated Toon’s Garden in Baltimore County. Toon’s Garden was one of several commercial pleasure gardens operating in the Baltimore area at the turn of the century. In the 1800-1801 Baltimore City directory, the 10-acre Toon’s Gardens was described as being “situated about two miles down the [Patapsco] river…on an elevated situation,” & was said to “command a view of the city & bay...During the summer months,” the directory recounted, “a great concourse of citizens make excursions by land & water to these Gardens…with all kinds of refreshments.”

Andrew Smith was a Charleston, South Carolina, gardener in 1795, who advertised to train apprentices in the “art of gardening” in the March 12 edition of the City Gazette and The Daily Advertiser, "THE Subscriber has taken a lease of Widderburn Lodge, formerly called the Grove; he will take in apprentices for three years, to be instructed in the art of gardening and farming in general, to the best advantage; as great improvement will be made on the farm, in the garden, orchard, and in the common field, the sooner they were to enter to work the better. He does not wish any gentleman to send any negro unless of good principles, obedient to orders, and of a good genius. There is good accommodations on the farm for negros of every size and description. Andrew Smith."

Also in Charleston, South Carolina, gardener John Bryant, active in that city between 1795-1810, advertised for an apprentice to help him in 1796. “An Apprentice is wanted to the above business, either white or colored. A Lad that is honest and industrious will meet with every encouragement.”

Occasionally gardeners advertised their need for apprentices through help-wanted notices in local newspapers. When the enterprising William Booth was establishing his nursery, he advertised, on March 2 1795, in the Federal Intelligence & Baltimore Daily Gazette, that he was looking for one or two boys between the ages of 10 & 12 to serve as apprentice gardeners. As ad inducement, Booth noted that in several years such trainees would be capable of managing the gardens of gentlemen’s county seats around Baltimore, which, he declared, were “going to ruin, for the want of a skillful gardener.”

Booth’s ad reflected the post-Revolutionary trends in professional gardening in the 18th-century Mid-Atlantic & South. White indentured & convict servants from the British Isles & black slaves had toiled side by side to design & maintain Mid-Atlantic & South gardens before the war with England.
After the Revolution, growing numbers of immigrant European, Caribbean, & British independent gardeners, assisted by white apprentices & free & slave blacks, took over the work. The American Revolution was the turning point in the development of independent gardening in the newly emerging capitalist nation, However, some aspects of Mid-Atlantic & South gardening did not change until the Civil War.

John Renauld was a gardener who immigrated from Rambouillet, France to Charleston some years after his birth in 1772. His only newspaper notice occurred in the Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser when he lost his young garden apprentice on July 7. 1806. "Strayed, From the subscriber, a small new Negro Boy named JIM; about four feet 5 or 6 inches high; slender make and this vissage; has a scar on the right side of his face- above his eye; had on an oznaburgs shirt and blue cassimere trowsers. Whoever will deliver the said Boy at No. 34 Tradd-street, shall receive a reward of Five Dollars. JOHN RENAULD."

As visiting English agriculturalist Richard Parkinson pointed out about the Chesapeake and the South at the end of the 18th-century, “where the livelihood is got out of the poor soil--it is pinched & screwed out of the negro.”

Plants in Early American Gardens - Bloody Geranium

Bloody Geranium (Geranium sanguineum)

This attractive, clump-forming, Eurasian native is an old favorite in the British cottage garden. John Gerard called it “Bloody Cranes-bill” in his Herbal, 1633 edition, and wrote that it was one of the “wild cranes-bills” that he cultivated. Shirley Hibbert’s The Amateur’s Flower Garden, 1871, also considered this species one of the best. In the 1835 edition of the Horticultural Register, American garden writer J. E. Teschemacher recommended the “bloody geranium” for the rock garden. This plant is not attractive to deer.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Mount Vernon after Geo Washington's (1732-1799) Death

1800 Francis Jukes Jukes (American artist, 1745–1812)  Mount Vernon

1842  Susan Whitcomb Residence of General Washington

1846 Matthew Prior Mount Vernon

1850 Jennie Bellows Millard (American artist, 1816-1853)  Mount Vernon

1850 Russell Smith (American artist, 1812-1896) Mount Vernon

John Eastman (American Painter, fl 1842-1880) The Old Mount Vernon 1857

John Eastman (American Painter, fl 1842-1880) The Kitchen at Mount Vernon

1858 Mount Vernon Currier and Ives

1858 Vernon, West Front, C. B. Graham, lithographer, and J. Crutchett, publisher

Plants in Early American Gardens - Globe Thistle

 Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro)

Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro)

Globe Thistle, a Mediterranean plant long in cultivation throughout Europe, is an undemanding perennial suitable for the border or the wild garden.

Williamsburg’s John Custis might have received this species, or its more vigorous cousin, E. sphaerocephalus, from his English patron Peter Collinson in 1738. Both are listed in Parkinson’s early 17th-century herbal, and Philip Miller’s 18th-century botanical dictionary. 

Thomas Jefferson’s gardening mentor, Bernard McMahon, also included Small Globe Thistle in his 1806 American Gardener’s Calendar. 

Today it is popular as a cut flower and for drying, and the flowers attract butterflies.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden Structures & Ornaments - Prayers for the success of the Dovecote 1829

BENEDICTION of The DOVE-COTE, COCK and HEN ROOST, and OTHER AVIARIES.

From The Protestant's Companion: A Collection of Presevatives Against Popery published by T Brettell, London. 1829

"Everlasting God! before whose view are all the angels, and by whose nod all things are governed, who also, in thy excellence, doth not cease to regard the meanest objects which are necessary for human frailty, and who givest food to all flesh, and fillest every living being with blessing; as supplicants we implore thee to shed thy benediction on this pigeon-house (or poultry, or keep of geese, ducks and drakes, &c.), that redounding to us, thy servants, by the agency of thy grace, the glory of thy majesty may be exalted."

Charles Chaplin (English artist, 1907–1987) A Beauty with Doves

History Blooms at Monticello - European Copper Beech

European Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Atropunicea')


European Copper Beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Atropunicea')

The original purple-leaf beech was discovered in the Hanleiter Forest of Germany before 1772. The copper beech was an early offspring of this wild form with paler leaves. 

In 1807 Jefferson twice ordered “Purple Beeches” from Thomas Main’s nursery in Georgetown. Jefferson directed his overseer, Edmund Bacon, to plant them in the southwest and northwest angles of Monticello.

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The Slave Garden or Huck Patch

Occasionally slave owners in the 18C allowed their workers to layout and plant small gardens to supplement the usually meager food provisions allocated to the field slaves. Some masters intentionally delegated a small plot of ground for this purpose near the slave quarters. Slaves would prepare their garden plots after sundown and on Sundays when most had a lighter work schedule.

The problems with planting and harvesting herbs and vegetables were the same for both groups of gardeners; and of course, the slaves knew the challenges well, since they planted and maintained the gardens of their masters. Nature makes no class distinctions. It would be relatively easy to save the seeds for annuals, just as they did for their masters year to year. The wealthy landowner would have his slaves build a wall or intricate fence around his plantation's kitchen garden to keep deer and other interlopers at bay, and his slaves would need to find a way to do the same.

Permitting slaves to independently raise produce, and even livestock, was not new in the 18C Chesapeake. Earlier in 17C Virginia, some masters had allowed their slaves to grow tobacco, corn, horses, hogs, and cattle and to sell them to gain enough money to buy their freedom and the freedom of their wives and children. Sensing that this was a serious threat to their labor pool, in 1692, the Virginia General Assembly ordered slave owners to confiscate "all horses, cattle and hoggs marked of any negro or other slaves marked, or by any slave kept."

Apparently the practice of allowing independent garden plots had begun again in the first half of the 18C or earlier. In 1732, traveller Hugh Grove noted Virginia slaves planting "little Plats for potatoes or Indian pease and Cimnells."

Cimnells were small squash. In addition to field peas and squash, Chesapeake slaves also planted potatoes, beans, onions, and collards. All these crops could be eaten raw, boiled in an old pot, or roasted in the coals of a small fire. Over winter, the slaves could store some of their produce inconspicuously in the ground, banking them just like they did for the master.

In the warmer climate of South Carolina, slaves were growing more familiar heat-loving varieties of vegetables. In the 1720s, Mark Catesby recorded a new variety of yam in South Carolina, calling it, "a welcome improvement among the Negroes," who were "delighted with all their African food, particularly this, which a great part of Africa subsists on." Slaves in the Lowcountry could grow tania roots, millet, sorghum, sesame, peppers, and okra in addition to the traditional colonial vegetables.

In the Chesapeake, those with larger plots might attempt to grow mellons and corn, which required more room to grow and would certainly draw more attention from the gentry; something that might be considered risky by a group of people trying to maintain a low profile just to survive. A good slave did what he was told and kept his mouth shut. The slave might appreciate the autonomy a little patch of garden land would give him, but he wouldn't advertise it.

A few years later, in the 1740s, itinerant Chesapeake traveler, Edward Kimber also mentioned that slaves were cultivating "the little Spots allow'd them."

Slaveowners knew they could learn about both life and gardening from their enslaved servants.

In 1771, Virginian Landon Carter wrote in his diary, "I walkt out this even to see how my very old and honest Slave Jack Lubber did to support life in his Extreme age; and I found him prudently working amongst his melon vines, both to tivert the hours and indeed to keep nature stirring that indigestion might not hurry him off with great pain." Carter took "notice of his Pea Vines a good store and askt him why he had not got them hilled." Lubber replied, "they have not got age wnough and it will hurt too young things to coast them too closely with earth." Carter wrote that his answer showed, "the Prudence of Experience."

In March 1774, New Englander Philip Fithian, who had journeyed south to temporarily tutor the children of Robert Carter at Nomini Hall, watched as, "Negroes make a fence; they drive into the Ground Chesnut stakes about two feet apart in a straight Row, & then twist in the Boughs of Savin which grows in great plenty here." The savin or red cedar would be easy to weave in and out of the more permanent stakes. A month later he noted the plantation's slaves "digging up their small Lots of ground allow'd by their Master for Potatoes, peas &c; All such work for themselves they constantly do on Sundays, as they are otherwise employed on every other Day." One of Robert Carter's slaves offered Fithian "Eggs, Apples, Potatoes."

About twenty years later, Englishman Isaac Weld also wrote of the slave quarters in Virginia: "Adjoining their little habitations, the slaves commonly have small gardens and yards for poultry, which are all their own property… their gardens are generally found well stocked, and their flocks of poultry numerous." If the master allowed his slaves to keep poultry, the slave not only took advantage of the extra food, but also sold some of the chickens for extra spending money.

Virginia planter James Mercer declared that the "Negroes…are the general Chicken merchants" in the state.

In Maryland, as Colonel Nicholas Rogers (1753-1822) planned a new home in the 1780s, he designated an area for the household slaves to plant their own garden. Back of the master's house at the end of this second yard, an area measuring 36' by 82' was dedicated "For Servants' Vegetable Patch or For Other Purposes." Within the area was an 18' by 16' slave quarter with the remainder of this long rectangular plot to be used by the slaves to grow fruits & vegetables.

Peter Hatch, long-time director of Thomas Jefferson's gardens and grounds at Monticello, reports that "Jefferson's Memorandum Books, which detailed virtually every financial transaction that he engaged in between 1769 and 1826, as well as the account ledger kept by his granddaughter, Anne Cary Randolph, between 1805 and 1808, document hundreds of transactions involving the purchase of produce from Monticello slaves."

Hatch calculates that the records show the purchase of 22 species of fruits & vegetables from as many as 43 different individuals..."much of the produce purchased from Monticello slaves was out of season: potatoes were sold in December and February, hominy beans and apples purchased in April, and cucumbers bought in January. Archaeological excavations of slave cabins at Monticello indicate the widespread presence of root cellars, which not only served as secret hiding places, but surely as repositories for root crops and other vegetables amenable to cool, dark storage...

"Both Jefferson and Ann Cary specified the person from whom they purchased vegetables and fruit; however, the person involved in the sale might not have been the one gardening. Thirty-one males, averaging about 37 years of age, and twelve females, averaging 41 years old, were involved in the transactions. Since many of the sellers were older, seven of the males were over fifty, they may have been representing the family garden. Squire, for example, a former Peter Jefferson slave leased by Thomas Jefferson from his mother, represented the most sophisticated garden. He sold thirteen different commodities, including cymlins (a patty-pan-shaped squash), potatoes, lettuce, beets, watermelons, apples, and muskmelons. He sold a cucumber to Jefferson on January 12, 1773, suggesting either that the fruit was pickled and preserved, or that artificial heat in a cold frame or hot bed was used to bring this tender vegetable to fruition in the middle of winter, a rather remarkable feat in 18th-century Virginia. Bagwell, Squire's son-in-law, was also a major supplier, and sold Jefferson sixty pounds of hops for twenty dollars...

"Israel Gillette Jefferson, a waiter and carder in the Monticello cloth factory, represented another productive African American family garden. His father, Ned or Edward Gilette, sold watermelons, beans, and potatoes, while Israel sold large quantities of cabbage, fifty to one hundred at a time. Caesar, a farm laborer at Shadwell, Jefferson's birthplace and a satellite farm to Monticello, was another major supplier of cucumbers, cabbages, and greens, and Burwell Colbert, probably Jefferson's most valued and trusted slave, sold 'sprouts' to Jefferson. Boys and girls were also involved in the bartering process; Billy, at the age of eight, sold strawberries, perhaps collected from the wild, while Madison and Eston Hemings, most likely Jefferson's sons by Sally Hemings, were 15 and 18 when selling 100 cabbages to Jefferson in 1822."

Hatch further notes that "Except for watermelons, and perhaps sweet potatoes, few of the sold fruits and vegetables were either African in origin, or closely associated with African American food culture. Cucumbers were the most common commodity, with 23 transactions, followed by cabbages, watermelons, hops, Irish potatoes, cymlins, and greens."

In 1792, George Washington wrote to English agricultural writer Arthur Young, "Ground is often allowed them for gardening, and priviledge given them to raise dung-hill fowls for their own use."

Julian Niemcewicz reported visitin George Washington's Mount Vernon in 1797. He noted that in the slave quarters, "a small vegetable garden was situated close to the hut. Five or six hens, each with ten or fifteen chickens, walked around there. That is the only pleasure allowed to Negroes: they are not permitted to keep either ducks or geese or pigs. They sell the chickens in Alexandria and with the money buy some furniture."

In Virginia, Englishman John Davis visiting the Spencer Ball plantation in Prince William County about 1800, wrote that one old slave declared, "There is few masters like the `Squire.' He has allowed me to build a log-house, and take in a patch of land, where I raise corn and water Melions." Perhaps it was easier for the older slaves, who usually were not assigned as much heavy labor, to keep an eye on the growing slave gardens.

In Maryland, an 1801 garden plan for Colonel Nicholas Rogers's property in Baltimore indicates a space in one of the far corners of the property "for servants vegetable patch or for other purposes." This garden space that Rogers chose for his slaves was inelegantly bounded by the slave quarter, the privy, and the hog pen. Elderly Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a Maryland signer of the Declaration of Independence, advised his overseer in 1823, that his new slave, "Clem a blacksmith must not have more priveleges than my other slaves or be better fed...he desires a huck patch; these I grant...as many of my slaves have that privelege."

Convict servant, who was not a slave, James Revel wrote a poem about his experiences in The Poor Unhappy Transported Felon's Sorrowful Account of His Fourteen Years Transportation, At Virginia, in America.

At last to my new master's house I came,
To the town of Wicowoco called by name,
Here my European cloaths were took from me,
Which never after I could see.

A canvas shirt and trowsers me they gave,
A hop-sack frock, in which I was a slave,
No shoes or stockings had I for to wear,
Nor hat, nor cap, my hands and feet went bare.

Thus dress'd unto the field I next did go,
Among tobacco plants all day to hoe.
At day break in the morn our work begun,
And lasted till the setting of the sun.

My fellow slaves were five transports more,
With eighteen negroes, which is twenty-four,
Besides four transport women in the house,
To wait upon his daughter and his spouse.

We and the negroes both alike did fare,
Of work and food we had an equal share;
And in a piece of ground that's call'd our own,
That we eat first by ourselves was sown.

No other time to us they will allow,
But on a Sunday we the same must do,
Six days we slave for our master's good,
The seventh is to produce our food.

And when our hard day's work is done,
Away unto the mill we must begone.
Till twelve or one o'clock a-grinding corn,
And must be up by day-light in the morn.


The above poem was Published in York, England in 1800, the full text of the book may be found at the site of the collaborative effort between the University of North Carolina and Duke University called Documenting the South.

To see Peter Hatch's full article go to the Twinleaf Journal.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Dwarf Witch Alder

Dwarf Witch Alder (Fothergilla gardenii)

This choice native shrub can be found in moisture rich woodlands and boggy areas from Virginia to Georgia. The name honors John Fothergill, a London physician who corresponded with America’s first botanist, John Bartram. Their correspondence during the mid-eighteenth century revealed much about the native flora of North America.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Historic Gardens - Spring at Colonial Williamsburg

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All photos from Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
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