Maid of All Work: The Women Who Worked for the Lincolns

Like most middle-class women of her time, Mary Lincoln relied on hired help to manage her household. These women worked and sometimes lived in her house, cleaning, cooking, and caring for the children alongside her. Who were these women? What were their duties? What was their experience like within the household? What were the Lincolns experiences living and working intimately with a cross-section of society that they might never have encountered otherwise? Drawing on letters, reminiscences, and county records, University of Illinois at Springfield's Sangamon Experience Director and Curator, will examine the nature of domestic service in the Lincoln household in Springfield, Illinois, to attempt to answer these questions. In doing so this program aspires not only to establish a social and cultural context for the Lincolns’ experience but to flesh out the experiences of working-class women who are often on the margins or outright invisible to history.

"Mr. Lincoln gave [me] an extra dollar each week on condition that she would brave whatever storms might arise, and suffer whatever might arise, and suffer whatever might befall her, without complaint.” -Miss. Mary Johnson

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