Known until 2018 only as Hercules, or as “Uncle Harkless” — a diminishing nickname that surely rankled — Posey would have directed the meal that was served on that Thanksgiving holiday.
Working in the kitchen of a fine household — much less a presidential one — would not have been easy. Meals were elaborate, multicourse affairs with an astounding variety of local and imported foods. As described by Rep. Theophilus Bradbury, Federalist-Mass., in 1795, the average Thursday Congress dinner would have put any modern Thanksgiving feast to shame, featuring “an elegant variety of roast beef, veal, turkeys, ducks, fowls, hams, & puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, and almonds, figs, raisins, and a variety of wines and punch.”
Producing these meals meant a 12- to-16-hour workday with a variety of cooks and assistants working under Posey. Remarkably, the Washington household accounts tell us that these staff members would have been hired and white indentured laborers — all taking orders from an enslaved Black man.
And yet, no one dared step out of line. In his biography of Washington, the president’s step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, called Posey an “artiste” who ran his kitchen with “iron discipline,” quick to punish those who disobeyed.
In the nearly three pages devoted to Posey, Custis described his carriage, skill, exacting demeanor and love of fine clothes, comparing him to a “veriest dandy.” While preparing the Congress dinners, Posey “shone in an all his splendor,” Custis wrote, and “his underlings flew in all directions to execute his orders.”
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