Dining Room, c. 1883

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Date

1883

Description

A photograph of the dining room at Cherry Hill. The Cherry Hill family ate their meals here. People also worked in this room. Domestic workers were responsible for setting the table and serving the meals. There was a dumbwaiter in this room. It was like a little elevator, and workers would use the dumbwaiter to send food from the kitchen in the basement up to the dining room. When this photograph was taken in 1883, Harriet Maria Elmendorf “Minnie” Knapp was a domestic worker at Cherry Hill. Minnie was the great-grandchild of Dinah Jackson. Dinah Jackson was a cook and the last person who was enslaved at Cherry Hill. After her mother died in 1854, Minnie became a ward of the Van Rensselaer family at Cherry Hill. Like her great-grandmother, Minnie also cooked for the family. Minnie lived at Cherry Hill from 1854 until 1884. In 1884, she moved with the Elmendorf-Goulds to New Jersey. Minnie visited the Rankins of Cherry Hill often. She took care of the children and cooked meals. This item was added as part of the Diversity and Collaborative Knowledge Program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Type

Photograph

Region

Capital District

Era

Industrialization

Topic

Architecture, Community

Repository

Historic Cherry Hill

Identifier

5594-DR

Source

Historic Cherry Hill

Rights

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