Dick
Cite this Page
"Dick," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/202.
- Position
- Unclear from Context Unclear from Context
- Years in President's House
- circa 1832
- Legal Status
- Enslaved Person
- Gender
- Male
- Race/Ethnicity
- Black or African American
- Presidency
- Andrew Jackson
- Biography
- Dick was born into slavery around 1781. (1) He was enslaved by Dr. James C. Bronaugh, a U.S. Army surgeon and friend to Andrew Jackson. After Bronaugh's death, legal ownership of Dick passed first to Bronaugh's mother and then later his sister, Sarah. In 1830, Jackson purchased Dick, his wife Sally, and their four children from Sarah for $900. (2)
Dick may have worked at Andrew Jackson’s White House. A letter from Andrew Jackson to his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Jr. on December 8, 1832, states: “When you come on you will have to bring charles or Dick with you, as I will give you up Adam when you return.” (3) Here, Jackson tells his son back at his plantation, The Hermitage, to bring either Charles or Dick to the White House to swap places with another enslaved man named Adam. If Dick did go to the White House, letters show that he was back at The Hermitage by April 1833.
Additional information about Dick’s life is currently unknown. - (1) “Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson, Jr.” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XII, 1834 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), ed. Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, Thomas Coens, and Aaron Crawford, 125, https://trace.tennessee.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/d5f39fd7-8542-4445-874b-5ff62fd02959/content
(2) “Calendar, 1830,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume XI, 1833, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), ed. Daniel Feller, Laura-Eve Moss, and Thomas Coens, et al., 41-42, 199-200, 774.
(3) Letter from Andrew Jackson to Andrew Jackson Jr., December 8, 1832,” in The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume X, 1832, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2016), ed. Daniel Feller, et al., 677, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=utk_jackson. - Birthplace
- Unclear from Context