Hercules ("Herculas", "Uncle Harkless") was the head cook at George Washington's Virginia plantation Mount Vernon in the 1780s. In November 1790, he was brought to Philadelphia (then the national capital) to work in the kitchen of the President's House. Most of what is known of him comes from Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, whose memoirs were published posthumously in 1860.[1]
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Hercules was born probably around 1755 and was either the child of Washington's slaves or was purchased following Washington's 1759 marriage to the widow Martha Custis. Hercules took Alice, one of Martha Washington's "dower" slaves, as a wife, and they had 3 children: Richmond (born 1777), Evey (born 1782), and Delia (born 1785). All appear in the February 1786 Mount Vernon Slave Census, with "Herculus" one of two cooks in the Mansion House.[2] Alice died in 1787.
Hercules was one of 9 enslaved Africans to work in the Philadelphia presidential household. The others were Richmond (his son), Oney Judge, Moll, Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Paris, and Joe (Richardson).[3] G.W.P. Custis states that Hercules was "a celebrated artiste ... as highly accomplished a proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States." He was given the privilege of selling the extra food from the Philadelphia kitchen, which Custis estimates earned him over $100 a year.[1]
Pennsylvania had begun an abolition of slavery in 1780, and prohibited non-residents from holding slaves in the state longer than 6 months. If held beyond that period, the state's Gradual Abolition Act[4] gave slaves the legal power to free themselves.[5] Washington argued (privately) that his presence in Pennsylvania was solely a consequence of Philadelphia's being the temporary seat of the federal government, and that the state law should not apply to him. On the advice of his attorney general, Edmund Randolph, he systematically rotated the President's House slaves in and out of the state to prevent their establishing a 6-month continuous residency.[6] This rotation was itself a violation of Pennsylvania law, but the President's actions were not challenged.[7]
Richmond worked alongside his father for about a year in the Philadelphia kitchen, before being returned to Virginia. In November 1796, he was implicated in a theft of money at Mount Vernon. Washington concluded that the father and son were planning a joint escape.[8]
Since the 1933 publication of Stephen Decatur, Jr.'s book, Private Affairs of George Washington, conventional wisdom had been that Hercules escaped to freedom from Philadelphia in March 1797, at the end of Washington's presidency. Decatur, a descendant of Washington's secretary, Tobias Lear, discovered a cache of family papers unavailable to scholars, and presented Hercules's escape from Philadelphia as fact.[9] In November 2009, Mary V. Thompson, research specialist at Mount Vernon, proved that the Philadelphia escape was Decatur's conjecture and that it was wrong.
The Mount Vernon farm records list Hercules and Richmond at the plantation during the winter of 1796-97, not working in the kitchen, but laboring outdoors, along with other domestics, pulverizing stone, digging brick clay, and grubbing honeysuckle. Following the November 1796 theft, Washington did not bring the cook back to Philadelphia. Thompson's biggest discovery was the exact date of Hercules's escape from Mount Vernon: On Wednesday, February 22, 1797 – Washington's 65th birthday – the farm records list Hercules as "absconded".[10]
Louis-Philippe, the future king of France, visited Mount Vernon in the spring of 1797. According to his April 5 diary entry:
The general's cook ran away, being now in Philadelphia, and left a little daughter of six at Mount Vernon. Beaudoin ventured that the little girl must be deeply upset that she would never see her father again; she answered, "Oh! Sir, I am very glad, because he is free now."[11]
Hercules remained in hiding. The first reference to him is in a January 15, 1798, letter from former-President's House steward, Frederick Kitt, indicating that the fugitive was living in Philadelphia.[12] Washington died on December 14, 1799, and through his will Hercules was freed on January 1, 1801, along with Washington's other 124 enslaved.[13] There is no evidence that Hercules knew he had been manumitted, and legally, was no longer a fugitive.
A December 15, 1801, letter by Martha Washington indicates that the now-freedman Hercules was living in New York City.[14] Nothing more is known of his whereabouts or life in freedom.
Because Hercules's wife Alice had been a "dower" slave, owned by the estate of Martha Washington's first husband, their children could not be freed by George Washington's will. Instead, the children remained enslaved, and were among the 153 "dowers" divided up by Martha Washington's four grandchildren, following her 1802 death.
A new building for the Liberty Bell opened in Philadelphia in 2003, which partially covers the back buildings of the long-demolished President's House. The plaza in front of the Liberty Bell Center is today an open-air footprint of the President's House and a commemoration of the house and all it residents, focused on the enslaved people of African descent.
A portrait attributed to Gilbert Stuart, now at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, Spain, may portray Hercules.[15]
