Benjamin Quarles

Benjamin Quarles was born in Virginia around 1805.¹ Information about Quarles’s work at the White House is limited to a single source at this time. In August 1850, Quarles appeared on a financial document detailing wages owed to White House domestic workers compiled shortly after President Millard Fillmore took office. The list included staff names, as well as their position, salary, and race. Quarles was recorded among Black staff (alongside William Williams, Charles Beal, Robert Blaxton, Mary Ann Day, and Julia Ball) and identified as a cook earning $20 per month. He was the only cook listed, which presumably made him the head cook responsible for preparing the daily meals for the president, first family, and their guests.² 

Some of the other staff members on the list also worked for Fillmore’s predecessor, Zachary Taylor, but it is unclear if Quarles did.³ It is also unclear how long Quarles worked at the White House. There is no known evidence that he worked under Fillmore’s successor, President Franklin Pierce, which would mean he stopped working there before Pierce’s Inauguration in March 1853. 

After Quarles’s tenure in the White House, he remained in Washington, DC, and worked as a cook and caterer through at least 1880, after which he disappeared from the historical record.⁴ 

Thank you to Michael Cohen and Amy Larrabee Cotz, editors of the Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore papers, for providing research assistance with this biography.