Domestic Servants in Philadelphia 1780-1830
Dearhorn K. 1986. Domestic Servants in Philadelphia 1780-1830. National Park Service. Philadephia, PA
Research paper discussing social and economic history of domestic servitude in Philadelphia. We in the twentieth century often cast the servants of past societies as Dickensian drudges or as buffoonish pranksters like Don Quixote's Sancho Panza. Such perceptions stem from the often frustrating search through contemporary documents for unbiased and realistic portrayals of servants and their lives. Both written and material resources of the past :'escribe servants in terms of their masters' experience. The servants' own voices are maddeningly silent. Domestics lived in other people'a houses and tended other people's families; the mundane nature of their work placed them everywhere and no where. Seen through their masters' eyes, servants often appear to us as one-dimensional, anonymous inhabitants of the past. Despite their social invisibility however, servants performed a large part of the daily household work in early American society. They provided their masters with creature comforts, thus freeing them to create or conguer. Great exploits and modest endeavors depend, in part, upon freedom from worry over a empty stomach or an ailing child. Servants' historical anonymity belies their contemporaneous necessity; their work facilitated that of their masters, making both contributors to the shape of history.