Augustus Price
Cite this Page
"Augustus Price," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/217.
- Position
- Unclear from Context Unclear from Context
- Years in President's House
- circa 1833 – 1835
- Legal Status
- Free Person
- Gender
- Male
- Race/Ethnicity
- Black or African American
- Presidency
- Andrew Jackson
- Biography
- Information about Augustus Price’s birth and early life remains unknown. According to the editors of the Andrew Jackson papers, he was a free Black resident of Washington, D.C. From November to December 1833, President Andrew Jackson sent Price on a trip to New York to exchange a carriage for a new one made by “Messhrs. Kowles & Thayer.” (1) Although details of his time in the White House are scarce, he was still working there in July 1835. A letter from Andrew Jackson to his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Jr. stated, “I will thank you to direct Augusta to see that the foot of the crippled horse is bathed & worked daily…it will require attention or it will not heal soon.” (2) This letter indicates Price likely worked with horses. It is possible he was a coachman or stable boy at the White House. In 1835, he co-authored an address to the Fifth Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Colour [sic] in the United States. (3) Price married a woman named Sarah Ann Carroll on April 8, 1837. (4) Details about his later life and death remain unknown.
- (1) “Andrew Jackson to James Reeside, November 26, 1833,” The Papers of Andrew Jackson edited by Daniel Feller, Vol XI, 1833, 779, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=utk_jackson
(2) Pauline Wilcox Burke, Emily Donelson of Tennessee Volume II, (Richmond, Virginia: Garrett and Massie, Incorporated, 1941), 88, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b538591&seq=10&q1=Augusta.
(3) “Augustus Price in the District of Columbia, U.S., Marriage Records, 1810-1953,” Ancestry, accessed January 7, 2026, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/61404/records/84606?tid=&pid=&queryId=9f159892-28f2-4c2c-a522-66ebabe5cdcc&_phsrc=OuO817&_phstart=successSource.
(4) “Andrew Jackson to James Reeside, November 26, 1833,” The Papers of Andrew Jackson edited by Daniel Feller, Vol XI, 1833, 779, https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=utk_jackson - Birthplace
- Unclear from Context