Slave quarters in the United States

[2] Plantation slavery had regional variations dependent on which cash crop was grown, most commonly cotton, hemp, indigo, rice, sugar, or tobacco.

Westgate in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) about his impression of slave quarters, and he explained that construction materials depended on location and age of the site: "On old plantations the negro quarters are of frame and clapboards, seldom affording a comfortable shelter from wind or rain; their size varies from eight by ten, to ten by twelve feet, and six or eight feet high; sometimes there is a hole cut for a window, but I never saw a sash, or glass, in any.

"[8] He had a number of negroes on his plantations, all of whom were lodged in hovels, as is the custom in this country.Field cabins were isolated and somewhat remote but offered agricultural workers close proximity to crop fields.

[12] On average, slave quarters were log cabins with dirt floors, clay chimneys, wood-shingle roofs, and one unglazed window.

[13] Brick was an uncommon building material, but some slave quarters were constructed from field stone;[3] for example, local limestone was used in Maryland.

[5] Slave quarters were usually located near the big house but subsidiary in size and quality of construction, and subject to surveillance, inspection and regulation.

[15] Household goods in slave quarters were minimal but might have included work tools, iron cookware, pewter spoons,[16] and locally made pottery (colonoware).

Enslaved adults on a plantation were provided with specific food rations and clothing allotments but these were typically inadequate, so the slave quarters were a place where preparations were made for hunting, trapping, and fishing,[13] where chickens were kept, and where kitchen gardens were tended.

[19][20] As one reporter wrote upon visiting the ruins of Prospect Hill in Mississippi: "No one yet knows where the slaves are buried, their wooden markers long since having crumbled into dust.

[22] Urban slave quarters were often mixed-use blocks that combined residential space for the enslaved with laundries, privies, stables, and similar workspaces.

"[24] Slave quarters existed in northern states (in what would become the Union contra the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War), but they were less common and few have been preserved.

[26] Former slave quarters are valuable resources for archaeologists studying daily life under slavery and expressions of cultural identity amongst the enslaved.

[13] The still-extant Historical American Buildings Survey, originally established as a New Deal work-relief program, created an important photographic and documentary record of 485 slave houses.