The House

Photograph of Gunston Hall. Although this house was built with the labor of unfree people, enslaved people were not permitted to use the front door. 

The master's house was typically a special site for enslaved individuals.  In Gunston Hall severe social limitations were placed on workers who entered corridors, rooms and staircases. Prominent members of the colonial Virginia elite such as George Mason IV restricted the movement of enslaved people as a way to control black bodies, especially in the more intimate manor.[1] As historian Stephanie Camp argues, "the disciplining uses of space and time did more than maximize efficiency; they reminded black and white plantation residents of the racial etiquette that governed their world.”[2] This racial etiquette determined the ways in which Gunston Hall functioned.  The free white inhabitants of this property and their visitors used two front doors to enter and exit Mason's home.  By contrast, enslaved people knew to use a side door to step into and out of Gunston Hall. The white people of George Mason IV's class could use the main staircase to access the second floor while enslaved people had to climb a concealed and cramped staircase in darkness, balancing items for the plantation master and his family.[3] 

Image of the cramped staircase that enslaved people had to use

Hiding enslaved people in plain sight was considered an accomplishment of Virginia planters.  Many of Gunston Hall's slave quarters, for example, could not be seen from the main house. Mason’s bedroom and his study faced away from the working and living areas of the people he owned. The community called "Logtown," where dozens of enslaved families resided, was probably clustered behind a thick tree line--way beyond the master's view.[4] This settlement might have enabled the bondspeople of Gunston Hall to carve out "a ‘rival geography’--alternative ways of knowing and using plantation . . .  space that conflicted with planters’ . . . demands."[6] Logtown could have represented the outer frontier of subjugation, and a reachable horizon line of greater, if perilous freedom.  An enslaved man named Dick, who worked at Gunston Hall, might well have passed through Logtown on his way to escaping Mason's bondage.  A "waiting man" who served meals, Dick might have learned the best routes to walk when leaving Gunston Hall from his master's guests who spoke to their host about the direction of local roads and movement of policing slave patrols. Perhaps Dick shared the knowledge he learned while waiting on Mason's table with other bondspeople. Dick ran away in 1784  with another enslaved person called Clem.