Fanny Paris Hurley
Cite this Page
"Fanny Paris Hurley," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/37.
- Position
- Laundress
- Years in President's House
- circa 1789 – 1790
- circa 1793
- Legal Status
- Free Person
- Gender
- Female
- Race/Ethnicity
- White
- Presidency
- George Washington
- Biography
- Information about Fanny Paris Hurley’s life outside of the President’s House remains unknown. According to a book written by Stephen Decatur, Jr. compiling the records and accounts of George Washington’s private secretary, Tobias Lear, Decatur notes that “Fanny Paris had been one of the housemaids in New York for nearly a year when she married James [Hurley]. A few months later she left the family, but frequently was sent for when extra help was needed.” She doesn’t appear in Lear’s accounts from the household.1 However, she does appear in household records in June 1793 washing clothes for Washington. She earned $14.69 for 4 months of washing. She then appears the following month “for 7 days work in the kitchen,” earning $3.00.2 She was married to James Hurley who worked as a postilion, footman, and porter in the household.
- Stephen Decatur, Jr., Private Affairs of George Washington, from the records and accounts of Tobias Lear, Esquire, his secretary, (New York: De Capo Press, 1969),165, https://archive.org/details/privateaffairsof0000deca/page/124/mode/2up.
- “Washington’s Household Account Book, 1793-1797,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1905), 402, https://www-jstor-org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/pdf/20085306.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default:1a1a99de40908600f170fd7090362ceb&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1; “Washington’s Household Account Book, 1793-1797 (continued), The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1906, Vol. 30. No. 1, 35, https://www-jstor-org.mutex.gmu.edu/stable/pdf/20085321.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default:ab86c0303dedbf6f100a15649b1e9efb&ab_segments=&initiator=recommender&acceptTC=1.
- Birthplace
- Unclear from Context
- Unclear from Context
- Related Worker
- James HurleyTransportation, 1789 – circa 1793