History Nerds! An Example of What Excites Us!

"Carpentry in the Southern Colonies during the Eighteenth Century with Emphasis on Maryland and Virginia"
Peter C. Marzio
Winterthur Portfolio
Vol. 7, (1972), pp. 229-250
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Inc.

There were no architects in the colonies at this time, the first decades of the 18th c.  Yet Annapolis has these exquisite edifices of classic Georgian architecture.  How did this happen?  A very old book which is a paeon to the old city (1937) and serves as a popular history and guide to historic Annapolis states that several Annapolis men hied themselves to England around 1730, subjected themselves to the most strenuous training in drafting and all the other associated crafts and skills of building, from assessing the quality of sand and paint, to wood working.  Then they came back and built historic Annapolis.

Well, yes, I believed what he said was true.  But this long ago author provides no references or citations -- this was a book for the popular market.  I also know like anybody else that most crafts were performed by slaves -- the more skilled your slave, the higher the fee for which you could hire him or her out for.  So obviously slaves had to be trained by these architects when they returned, for otherwise there would have been only one or two of these precious Georgian buildings in Annapolis built between the 1730's and 1775, where  there are in fact dozens.  These buildings were fashioned perfectly from design, to framing, to those finishing touches that take the longest, which means ornamental plastering, woodworking and carving of all kinds.  No one man, not even 30 men working alone could do that.  You need a crew.  You probably had to train your crew of slaves in these skills.

Now I have citation documention that proves this was so.  Ha!

How we spend our days, combing indices.