Lillian Carter began working as a bath maid in the Woodrow Wilson White House in 1913 and continued to work there through part of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency.¹ According to White House Maid Lillian Rogers Parks, Carter was inspired to retire when Parks’ mother, Maggie Rogers, left, placing her departure date around 1939. Parks wrote: “For twenty-five years she had been taking care of the bathrooms at the White House and had been in charge of the linen. She had also set up the powder rooms for all the formal White House parties… and the job of keeping the linen inventory.”³ Because Carter’s name is very common in the D.C. area, it is difficult to verify her identity in existing census data and city directories.

Ellen A. Riley to Lou Henry Hoover, January 1929, Lou Henry Hoover Papers, Subject Files, Servants and Aides General 1929-1933, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library. Christmas 1930, Lou Henry Hoover Papers, Subject Files, White House Christmas 1930, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; Xmas List 1931, Lou Henry Hoover Papers, Subject Files, White House Christmas 1931, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; White House Employees, 1932, Lou Henry Hoover Papers, Subject Files, White House Christmas 1932, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.
Lillian Rogers Parks, The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1981), 49.

Birthplace

Unclear from Context

Related Workers: Lillian Rogers Parks
Housekeeping and Laundry, 1929 – 1960; Maggie Rogers
Housekeeping and Laundry, 1909 – 1939