Sorting out the White House Staff

[kerry]

(06-06-2018 12:03 AM)Donna McCreary Wrote:  I just finished the manuscript for a book I hope will be published. It is a question/answer format, and one of the questions is about which servants had the most contact with Mary. My information will not answer your question completely, but it will help.

That sounds really interesting - I look forward to it!

I reactivated my ancestry.com account and actually found answers to a lot of this in government records. The weirdest thing is how frequently people switched jobs - I think a lot of people held jobs in name only and got paid directly or did different jobs than what is on record, for reasons that aren't totally clear, but probably involve typical minor corruption and the need to maintain everything despite the craziness of the war.

The big report in Jan. 1865 was "Jimmy" McManus getting fired after being there since Jackson's time. Edward McManus, according to his family, went by Ned. Idk if he also went by Jimmy, but one person wrote in he was getting confused with Jemmy O'Neal, Jackson's doorkeeper, who had been long since gone. Records do not indicate that he was consistently employed at the White House - he was a doorkeeper during the Pierce administration, and sometimes in a more minor position. So I think that story was largely a press attack. Some years are incomplete so I can't tell for sure (most of the 1860s and early 1870s - then they got serious about records - there are also detailed records from the 50s, but I guess the war derailed that). Her correspondence with Wakeman regarding that issue still baffles me and I'm not sure why it's not mentioned anywhere else. I'm not entirely certain that Edward is who was being referred to, but it would make sense.

I don't know that Cuthbert is officially named anywhere on the payroll, but I did find records of her existing into the 1870s in DC.

There were a ton of grounds staff listed as laborers who were called gardeners.

I still have no idea where William S. Wood went to.

ETA: Thought that just occurred to me. In place of McManus and Burns, Pendel and Dunn/Donn were hired from the police force as ushers/doorkeepers. Pendel claims he was clearly intended as a bodyguard - I forget if Dunn was as well. But Lincoln wanted no fuss and plain clothes, so they seem to have initially posed as ushers. Perhaps this was an intentional deception? And the other doorkeepers were somehow taken care of elsewhere? I don't see Crook mentioned much.