For centuries, the story of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was told through a single, narrow lens. We focused on the architects, the presidents, and the grand stone walls that came to define American power. But those walls hold a deeper, more complicated reality. The literal foundation of the executive mansion was dug, quarried, and assembled by people who were denied the very freedom the building symbolized.
Recent historical breakthroughs have finally put names to a history that was long treated as a footnote. The 10 Million Names project, a major genealogical initiative, recently confirmed the first living descendants of an enslaved laborer who helped construct the White House. For Jackie Smith Sullivan and her daughter Ashley Swain, discovering that their fourth great-grandfather was one of the enslaved laborers who built the White House changed everything. It transformed an abstract historical stain into a direct, living legacy.
If you want to understand how the capital was actually built, you have to look past the myths. The truth isn't found in pristine portraits. It's written in 18th-century payroll sheets and etched into the stone quarries of Virginia.
The Recruitment Failure That Changed American History
Washington, D.C. didn't just appear out of thin air. In the 1790s, the newly formed federal city commissioners faced a massive logistical nightmare. They had a grand design by Pierre Charles L'Enfant and an ambitious architectural plan by Irish architect James Hoban, but they had almost no one to actually do the heavy lifting.
The commissioners originally planned to import thousands of skilled white wage laborers and craftsmen directly from Europe. They sent out recruitment calls. They waited.
Almost nobody came.
Faced with a severe labor shortage and skyrocketing costs, the commissioners fell back on the brutal economic engine of the American South. They turned to local slaveholders in Maryland and Virginia, renting out enslaved Black Americans for year-long periods to clear the dense forests, drain the swamps, and build the president's house. Slavery wasn't an afterthought in the construction of Washington, D.C. It was the backup plan that became the entire foundation.
Blood and Sweat at Aquia Quarry
Building the White House required massive amounts of raw material, and the labor was brutally physical. Much of the pale sandstone used for the exterior walls came from a government-run quarry at Aquia Creek in Virginia.
Enslaved men spent their days excavating massive blocks of rock from the earth, loading them onto boats, and transporting them up the Potomac River. Under the direction of stonemason Collen Williamson, many of these men were trained on the spot in advanced masonry and stone cutting. They worked alongside European immigrants, Scottish masons, and free Black laborers.
The historical record shows that at least 200 known enslaved individuals worked on the White House and the U.S. Capitol. Their identities were hidden in plain sight on official government payroll sheets. On these ledger pages, clerks typically scrawled a letter N next to names like Simon, Jerry, Jef, Charles, Len, and Dick. The letter stood for Negro, a bureaucratic marker indicating that these men were property.
Even James Hoban, the building's architect, brought his own enslaved carpenters—Ben, Daniel, and Peter—to work on the structure. The government paid for their skilled labor, but the money never touched the hands of the men holding the tools.
The Economics of Unfree Labor
Let's talk about the money because the financial records expose the stark reality of the operation. Unskilled enslaved laborers generated about 31 cents a day for their work on the executive mansion. Skilled craftsmen could command over a dollar a day.
The federal government didn't technically own these workers. Instead, they operated a massive government-sanctioned rental system. The commissioners paid wages directly to the slaveholders, who pocketed the profits while providing minimal clothing and food for the workers. If a worker fell ill or skipped a day, the overseer simply docked the payout sent to the master.
We have eyewitness accounts of what this looked like on the ground. When Abigail Adams arrived at the unfinished mansion in November 1800, she was struck by the miserable conditions. In a letter to her daughter, she described watching a dozen poorly clothed, half-fed enslaved laborers working on the grounds while their owners stood by idly. She noted with sharp New England pragmatism that the system was incredibly inefficient, but her letters serve as a permanent record of the human cost built into the property.
Beyond the White House Walls
The use of unfree labor didn't stop once the roof was on. At least nine early presidents brought enslaved staff to live and work inside the White House. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Andrew Jackson all relied on enslaved cooks, maids, and gardeners to keep the mansion running.
The story extends to the very top of the U.S. Capitol building. The massive bronze Statue of Freedom that sits atop the Capitol dome was cast with the vital assistance of an enslaved artisan named Philip Reed. When the white foreman in charge of the casting process went on strike for higher wages, the foundry owner turned the project over to Reed.
Reed worked tirelessly on the monument. His owner collected his wages for six days out of every week, leaving Reed with only his Sunday pay of $1.25. By the time the statue was finally lifted to the peak of the dome in December 1863, Reed was a free man, thanks to the D.C. Emancipation Act signed a year earlier. The man who helped build the ultimate symbol of American liberty spent most of that project as a piece of property.
Why This History Matters Right Now
For generations, the names of these builders were buried in archives, treated as collective statistics rather than individual humans with families. The work happening today changes that narrative completely. Projects like 10 Million Names are actively digitizing and analyzing records to trace lines of descent that went unclaimed for more than two centuries.
When we look at the White House today, we aren't just looking at a monument to early American political theory. We are looking at the physical endurance, skill, and forced sacrifice of Black Americans who built the stage upon which American history is performed. Knowing their names isn't about rewriting the past. It's about finally reading the whole page.
How to Explore and Support This History
If you want to move beyond reading and get involved with preserving this history, you can take several immediate steps.
Search the Enslaved Laborers Index
The White House Historical Association maintains an active, ongoing database of the enslaved individuals identified in early building records. You can look through the wage rolls and historical timelines to see the raw data yourself.
Support Genealogical Research
Organizations like American Ancestors are constantly looking for volunteers and researchers to help transcribe old property records, church ledgers, and government payrolls. Your time or support can help uncover the next family connection.
Visit the Local Exhibits
If you are in the Washington, D.C. or Boston areas, make it a point to visit the specialized exhibits tracking the Patriots of Color and early federal builders. Seeing the physical documents and tools used by these laborers brings the scale of their achievement into stark reality.
