Eve McGuire was one of the women sold by President Monroe to Joseph M. White for the Casa Bianca plantation. Records suggest she served as an enslaved domestic in Monroe’s household, as an account book from his first presidential term notes Eve receiving shoes and medical care.1 It’s likely she continued in this role at Casa Bianca, as a shipping manifest from 1858 shows her being sent from New Orleans to Florida by James Patton Anderson, Casa Bianca’s manager and Ellen White’s nephew.2
Two additional shipping manifests from 1847 and 1849 further confirm Eve’s role as an enslaved domestic within Ellen White’s intimate household.3 These documents also indicate that Eve often traveled with Ellen White, including a journey from New York City to Savannah.
Tragically, this meant that Eve was regularly separated from her children, who were left behind at Casa Bianca. By the late 1840s, Eve McGuire was a widow with six children—William, Jane, Hannah, Patsy, Ellen, and Richard—ranging in age from 7 to 22. During her forced absences, her older children and others enslaved at Casa Bianca had to care for her youngest.
- Record Group 233: House of Representatives 15A-D13.1 ↩︎
- J. Patton Anderson, 11 May 1858 [handwritten], Slave Manifests of Coastwise Vessels Filed at New Orleans, Louisiana, 1807–1860 (National Archives Microfilm Publication M1895, roll 30); Records of the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. ↩︎
- J.G. Anderson was Ellen’s agent. J.G Anderson, 24 July 1847 and 10 October 1849, Coastwise Slave Manifests, 1801-1860, Savannah, Georgia, Records of the US Customs Service, Record Group 36. ↩︎