The Nathaniel Russell House is a historic home located in Charleston, South Carolina, most often known as an extravagant display of antebellum mercantile wealth. The Kitchen House Project, however, works to thwart the National Historic Landmarks’ traditional purpose, and instead refocus attention onto the many enslaved individuals who lived and worked in the separate Kitchen House, a part of the larger Russell House property, from 1808-1863. This summer’s research aimed to gain a greater understanding of the role of cloth in enslaved Charlestonians’ lives by means of blending archival and archeological methods surrounding the Nathaniel Russell House. 

To accomplish this goal, three stages were executed: the cleaning, cataloging, and analysis of archeological materials; the surveying of advertisements listed in The Charleston Daily Courier; and the blending of the two methods’ results alongside existing scholarship to determine the possible purpose of the fabric recovered from the site. For the archeological angle of the project, over one hundred pieces of cloth, which had been torn from garments and carried into the walls by rats, were cleaned, flattened, and stored. Then, eighteen of these cloth pieces were photographed using a microscope and analyzed to determine their condition, primary structure, material, and design. For the archival angle, the survey recorded all advertisements for cloth in The Charleston Daily Courier bi-annually from 1808 to 1815, the first years the house was occupied, ultimately recording 313 advertisements. Both the archival and archeological data demonstrate that most cloth in Charleston, particularly that which was deemed suitable for enslaved peoples’ use, was plain weave, and made of cotton or wool. 

These three strands of thought — archeological, archival, and historical — converged to illuminate the story of the enslaved people who lived at the Kitchen House. In the next year, I hope to further expand this work alongside my mentor, Professor Katherine Moore, through the analysis of more fabric, greater research on the house’s occupants, and an expansion of the newspaper survey.