Servants at the Palace

In 1764, William Tryon was accompanied to North Carolina by an unknown number of paid staff. In 1765, Tryon listed in his service “The Lad we took from Norfolk [Virginia], a sailor I have made my groom and a little French boy I got here [in North Carolina],” along with Pierre Le Blanc, Cuisinier (cook), Turner, a farmer, and “My trusty servant George.” Tryon’s personal banking records also show payments to Patty Hatch (housekeeper), Ann Patterson (Margaret Tryon’s maid), and Tryon’s personal secretaries, Fountain Elwin (Margaret Tryon’s cousin) and Isaac Edwards. 

Tryon also owned between ten and 12 enslaved black men and women. 

• Pierre Le Blanc died at Brunswick in August 1766, four years before the Tryon household moved into the Palace at New Bern. 
• The Tryons left North Carolina in 1771, when Tryon was appointed governor of New York. Their home at Fort George was destroyed by fire in 1773. Depositions listed twelve persons in service to the Tryons: 
• Patty Hatch, housekeeper 
• Malcolm McIsaac, steward 
• Colonel Edmund Fanning, secretary to Governor Tryon 
• Two servants of Colonel Fanning 
• Elizabeth Garrett, Elizabeth Laycock, Elizabeth Dudley, maids 
• Ann Patterson, Margaret Tryon’s maid 
• Moses Marden, footman 
• Isaac Dupeuy, manservant 
• Tom, an enslaved man 

Josiah Martin employed six white English servants. His household also included four enslaved people sent to him from Antigua by his father.