Begin by sharing the student context of an overview with students to help them understand the reliance of Early America on the skills of enslaved people.

By the eighteenth century, laws regulating slavery existed throughout the colonies but life under slavery differed greatly depending on local needs, conditions, and the skills of the enslaved themselves. Southern plantations organized systems of labor modeled on the nearby slave colonies of the West Indies, where enslaved people tended to crops in large groups, driven by an overseer. But enslaved people were also tasked with performing every duty and trade that the colonial economy required. 

Provide students with a copy of “Tasks Identified by Age and Gender” from George Washington’s Diary, 1786-87. Explain to students that a historian compiled the list from tasks mentioned in Washington’s diary in the given years, and give them time to read the list. Then provide time to examine the website attached to the museum Royall House and Slave Quarters located in Medford, Massachusetts, beginning at Enslaved People’s Lives at the Royall House – The Royall House and Slave Quarters. Instruct students to note similarities and differences between the tasks identified. 

After time to review individually or in pairs as a whole class discuss: 

• In what ways are the lists of tasks similar? Different? How might these differences be attributed to the region?
• In what ways would these tasks have contributed to the financial success of the people and communities surrounding these farms and plantations? What would the impact be on the enslaved people and their communities? 

As a final question, ask students to consider and discuss how enslaved labor contributed to the development of the United States?