Jemmy

Little is known about Jemmy outside of his work at the White House, including his full name. The only known source about Jemmy is a newspaper article from 1851 originally published by the Cincinnati Commercial. The article mentions a conversation between President Millard Fillmore and “Irish Jemmy, the White House Coachman.”¹The article was presented as a joke at Fillmore’s expense, so it is unclear if someone by the name of Jemmy actually worked as coachman at the White House in 1851 or if the author of the article made him up for the sake of the joke. 

No one by that name appears in other records at that time, casting doubt on whether he existed. He is not listed on a staff list compiled under President Fillmore in August 1850, shortly after he took office. Instead, the coachman is listed as a free black man named William Williams.² However, the list was compiled more than a year before the newspaper article about Jemmy was published, and it was not uncommon for presidential households to hire multiple coachmen to serve the president and the first family. Furthermore, records of staff from Fillmore’s presidency are scarce, making it difficult to determine whether someone a coachman named Jemmy worked there or not. There was an Irish American named James Maher (nicknamed “Jemmy”) who worked at the White House under President Fillmore, but as a gardener, not a coachman, further complicating the record.