Chimney Bricks

Walk up to the chimney on the right side of this house. This is the last original standing chimney. The bricks in this chimney were handmade by enslaved brick masons. They dug red clay out of the ground nearby and piled it into open pits. They poured in water and sand, and marched through the clay with their bare feet to break it down. After hours of mixing, the clay was ready to mold. Men, women, and children packed the clay into brick molds and tapped the bricks out to dry in the August and September sun. Each brick had to be turned until every side was dry. When thousands of bricks were ready, enslaved people stacked them into a kiln and fired them until they were baked hard enough to build with. The brickmakers here made 100,000 bricks in 1850 alone. 

 Look very closely at the bricks again. 

Can you see fingerprints still left in the clay? If you look very closely you can see the indentation of four fingers in one brick. There are several others with fingerprints and thumbprints. Some of these prints may have been made by enslaved children who were only 12 or 13 years old. Young people worked in the brickyard turning and checking the bricks as the clay dried in the summer sun.