White House Historical Association

Alice Clarke

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"Alice Clarke," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/619.
Position
Laundress
Years in President's House
circa 1903
Legal Status
Free Person
Gender
Female
Race/Ethnicity
Unclear from Context
Presidency
Theodore Roosevelt
Biography
In early 1903, a woman named Alice Clarke who lived in Washington, D.C., wrote to First Lady Edith Roosevelt and asked for employment at the White House. The letter has not been located, but the Library of Congress holds two other letters related to it. On February 23, 1903, William Loeb, secretary to President Theodore Roosevelt, wrote to Clarke and told her: “Your letter of recent date, addressed to Mrs. Roosevelt, has been received, and I will see what can be done for you, although I cannot give you any definitive assurance. The difficulty has been to find work that you would be able to do.”1 On the same day, Loeb wrote to White House Steward Henry Pinckney, who helped manage the domestic staff, and told him: “When there is a vacancy in the laundry of the White House, call to my attention the name of Mrs. Alice Clarke, of 1103 18th Street, N.W. Mrs. Roosevelt wishes something done for her, and this seems to be the only work she is fitted for.”2 No evidence has yet been found that Clarke was hired to work as a White House laundress, as little is known about the identities of the women who performed this work during Roosevelt’s presidency. James A. Amos, who served as butler at the White House during this time, wrote in his memoir that there were “about ten girls in the laundry” during Roosevelt’s presidency, but he did not provide any names.3 At this time, no further definitive information is known about Alice Clarke. There were at least three women by that name living in D.C. around this time, making it difficult to determine who was the Alice Clarke that applied to work at the White House.4
  1. William Loeb to Alice Clark, February 23, 1903, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, o184284, Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Dickinson State University.
  2. Memorandum for Henry Pinckney, February 23, 1903, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, o181610, Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Dickinson State University.
  3. James E. Amos, Theodore Roosevelt: Hero to his Valet (New York: John Day Company, 1927), 34-35.
  4. The 1905 D.C. City Directory lists an Alice A Clarke, an Alice J Clarke, and an Alice R Clarke. See The D.C. City Directory (1905), pg. 315, accessed via Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2469/records/1473256831?tid=&pid=&queryId=5a981d70-310c-43c3-8788-37fb23c1c2db&_phsrc=SaP55&_phstart=successSource. The most likely person by that name to be the White House applicant was an African American born in Virginia around 1882 who moved to Washington, D.C., by 1900 and worked as a laundress in 1920, according to census records. See “Alice Clarke” in the 1900 United States Federal Census, accessed via Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/7602/records/33877522; “Alice Lear” in the 1920 United States Federal Census, accessed via Ancestry.com, https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/6061/records/19779567
Birthplace
Unclear from context
Unclear from context