Just before his death, Washington was responsible for feeding and clothing a community of more than 300 slaves; half of which were either too old or too young to work. .
Although only a few Mount Vernon slaves left accounts of their lives, much is known about certain slaves and their Mount Vernon community through the writings of George Washington and his family members, as well as interviews with several slaves after Washington's death. .
A carpenter named Sambo Anderson was well-known for his gold earrings and the ritual scars on his face, which signified the West African tribe he belonged to as a boy prior to his capture. As a slave, he was trained in carpentry by William Bernard Sears, a widely-known and highly respected craftsman, hired by George Washington to work at Mount Vernon (Dalzall 47). Sambo would often hunt birds in his canoe and then sell them to Washington and others in nearby Alexandria to earn money. After he was freed, Sambo supported his family by supplying hotels and individual customers with wild game and eventually raised enough money to buy the freedom of two slaves, probably his grandchildren. .
The lives of slaves were dictated by their work on the plantation. Some slaves lived above their place of work, such as the kitchen or carpentry shop. Others lived in quarters adjacent to the greenhouse. Although we know a great deal about many of the slaves living on the estate, the records, for the most part, do not tell us how the living spaces were assigned, or who lived in each quarter. .
Slaves living on the outlying farms were not housed as well as those on the Mansion House farm. They lived in small wooden cabins, with dirt floors, which were drafty and hard to keep clean. A Polish visitors described these cabins as "more miserable than the cottages of our peasants" (qtd. In Dalzall 35).
Their workweek lasted six days, Monday through Saturday, with Sundays off and the length of their workday changed with each season, ranging from about ten hours in the winter to 16 hours in the summer with two hours off each day for breakfast and dinner.
