Smokehouse
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
![Text, Photograph, Style, Line](https://storage.googleapis.com/clio-images/medium_1551_Screen%20Shot%202020-12-14%20at%205.47.52%20PM.jpg)
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
The smokehouse and the summer kitchen were the domain of the enslaved Black men and women who prepared the food and maintined the fires. These spaces were places where the knowledge and skill passed down through generations were utilized and exploited by the Grahame and Thomas families. The hands that care for the animals, butcherd the meat and prepared it for others' consumption were rarely allowed the opportunity to enjoy the tatste themselves.
In 1831 a law required free Blacks to buy permits to sell bacon, pork, beef, mutton, rye, oats, gunpowder, and alcohol and could only be granted with the recommendation of three white people. Legal regulations such as these demonstrate the value of preserved meat and the limited access that enslaved and free Blacks had to it.
Both free and enslaved Blacks were often accused of stealing meat. If you were free, being caught stealing could result in being sold back into slavery for life. Samuel Key, a free Black who worked for David Thomas was accused of stealing unknown objects from the nearby farm of James Finney in 1852. A warrent was issued for his arrest in 1853 and apparently Samuel Key went on the run as no further court records have been found.