Holzey
Cite this Page
"Holzey," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/172.
- Position
- Unclear from context Unclear from Context
- Years in President's House
- 1826 – 1828
- Legal Status
- Enslaved Person
- Gender
- Male
- Race/Ethnicity
- Black or African American
- Presidency
- John Quincy Adams
- Biography
- Little is known about Holzey outside of his work at the White House under President John Quincy Adams. On February 23, 1828, President Adams recorded in his diary: “Holzey, the black boy, belonging to Johnson Hellen, and who has been several years with us, died about five O’Clock this afternoon. He has been sinking several months in a consumption.”1 Adams’s use of the term “belonging” indicates Holzey was enslaved to the Hellen family but working at the White House. Johnson Hellen was John Quincy Adams’s nephew by marriage, the son of his wife Louisa Catherine Adams’s sister, Nancy Hellen. When Johnson’s father passed away in 1815, he came to live with the Adams family. He began living in the White House with them in 1826. Holzey was an enslaved servant, owned by the Hellens, sent to the Adams household with Johnson to care for him.2 On February 24, 1828, the day after Holzey passed away, Adams wrote in his diary: “Johnson Hellen’s black boy was buried.” He then wrote in his diary a brief excerpt from a poem by the ancient Roman poet Horace with the message that death claims kings and paupers equally.3
- John Quincy Adams Digital Diary, February 23, 1828, https://www.primarysourcecoop.org/publications/jqa/document/jqadiaries-v37-1828-02-p419--entry23?navmode=searchresults&doci=0&ss=Holzey
- Lindsay Chervinsky and Callie Hopkins, “The Enslaved Household of President John Quincy Adams,” White House History (January 3, 2020), https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-enslaved-household-of-john-quincy-adams
- John Quincy Adams Digital Diary, February 24, 1828, https://www.primarysourcecoop.org/publications/jqa/document/jqadiaries-v37-1828-02-p419--entry24?navmode=chronological; Enslaved Household of JQA
- Birthplace
- Unclear from context
- Unclear from context