Talk:President's House (Philadelphia)

Resources to Help Expand
Doing research on Independence Mall as a whole and I'm finding crossing sources that may be beneficial to this article. Below is a list of resources that may be of some use to someone (maybe me at a later date) expanding on this article.


 * http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/
 * http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/news/pr121510.htm
 * http://www.kmarchitects.com/projectDetails.php?action=view&id=35 - Kelly Maiello Architects & Planners led the team to develop the President's House project
 * http://www.phila.gov/presidentshouse//index.html
 * http://home.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/the-presidents-house.htm

-- Coplan (talk) 23:10, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Clarification about status of cook Hercules
I didn't understand this edit which you made several years ago to President's House (Philadelphia). "Hercules, a cook who had worked in Philadelphia, escape from Mount Vernon on February 22, 1797 and made his way to Philadelphia; later he lived in New York City. He was listed among the slaves Washington owned and freed in his will of 1801; the fugitive Hercules may never have learned that he was legally free." George Washington died in 1799 and thus he didn't write a will in 1801; and his will, which he wrote in 1799, didn't list his slaves by name (except for one, William Lee). 

I'm sorry to bother you about this old edit, but I didn't want to just remove the sentence without hearing from you first. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:00, 6 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for your interest about clarification. I changed the wording to reflect the Inquirer source. Washington freed the slaves that he owned in his own right in his will, but stipulated that they should not be legally freed until after both he and his wife died. This was in part because his wife had dower rights over numerous slaves of her own, which would be part of her estate to go to her heirs. There were families made up of slaves who had intermarried from each group, making separation difficult. Nonetheless, Martha Washington decided in 1801, two years after her husband's death, to proceed with freeing Washington's slaves. Thus Hercules was legally freed in 1801. This is according to the article, and a couple of historic sources it refers to. Parkwells (talk) 22:51, 9 July 2018 (UTC)